Recently it was reveled by an US agency that 500 billion dollars are stashed abroad, Like Germany, Italy and UK India could have taken stern measures to make sure that It gets it's money back home and invest it in some meaningful work, remember everyone always cry foul about poor infrastructure we have in India, the biggest obstacle in the way of progressive society and it's ambitious young people. The planning commission has pegged the total cost to improve the infrastructure between 2007 to 2012 as 500 billion; the same amount that has been theft away from India.
So what is government is doing? It is quite so easy to put the blame on the difficult Swiss laws which only reveal the information if you prove that it is used for the some unholy purposes like the drugs and smuggling rackets, unfortunately for us, tax invasion is not considered "unholy", but consider this, India has still been unable to ink a deal which would have given it access to the Swiss bank accounts if the it manages to prove that the money stashed is truly a black one. The lousiness is in the part of government, when SC asked recently,"why you can't reveal the names of those names submitted by Germans about the black money" solicitor general was looking like a poor helpless lamb. Ashok Chavan was asked to quit as a CM but Vilas Rao Deshmukh, who was CM when the Adarsh project was expedited was still allowed to retain the status of cabinet minister.
Now question arises, why India has not been able to ink the deal with Switzerland which would have given the access to the bank accounts? Why can't it reveal the names of the defaulters? Why can't it remove it's tainted minister? Where is truly the miss? The answer was perhaps best explain by Minhaz Merchant from times of India group. He asserted that Manmohan Singh has absolute accountability but no power while Sonia Gandhi has absolute power and no accountability. Manmohan Singh may be consulted before his cabinet is reshuffled but even a most buoyant supporter of the congress would agree that he is not the one who calls the shots, during UPA1 there was a very fine tuning among the four power houses, Sonia, Pranab Mukharjee, Singh and Ahmad Patel. Every one backing one another whenever needed; Nuclear deal was the best example among all. Ahmad Patel, The right hand man of Sonia Gandhi was first time seen as demonstrating in the parliament against maneuvers of BJP. Sonia was of notion; whether government remains or falls, Singh would be the head of government.
But with increased numbers and less dependency on the hardcore allies this fine balance is looking lopsided towards the president of Congress. While Singh is duty bound to offer his position on the various scams that are cropping up like mushrooms, Sonia have the veto in every decision that is made. So as the PM in waiting Rahul Gandhi, Both Gandhi's have absolute power but are not at all accountable to anyone, it is Singh who has to face all the seem and spin attacks but alas! he did not even have a bat to defend himself.
The corruption can only end if there would be an absolute accountability.It is however implicit that power lies within the domain of all those who should be accountable. Gandhi's however in spite of enjoying the full power in 10 Janpath; does not fall in the brackets accountability. This is perhaps the biggest shortfall of current structure of Congress and government.
