12/22/1789: Justice Levi Woodbury born. The post Today in Supreme Court
History: December 22, 1789 appeared first on Reason.com.
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For a couple of decades now
everyone talked about how the Italian born Sonia Gandhi looted the poor Indians
and hid the money abroad. If she indeed has
all those billions, why no one has seen any of those spent during this election?
In fact, in comparison to the
thousands of Crores of rupees the
opposition BJP had splurged so far on a massive election campaign Sonia’s
Congress Party looked really a poor man’s party, with candidates having to
depend on meager handouts from the election fund.
When it comes to arithmetic and
the value of zeros when you put them on the right, everyone from the CAG to the
aam admi on the street in India get a bit confused. Astronomical figures are
attributed to various corruption charges from Sonia Gandhi’s foreign deposits
to A Raja’s 2G scandal and the Coalgate scam.
But even a school student can
work this out. Going by the standard international kick back rate of 5 or even
10 %, how much foreign money should have been invested in India for Sonia to
receive a billion dollar? To be sure you can add up all the money spent in
India’s Five Year Development plans. Yet, even western media have estimated her
foreign asset to be around USD 19 Billion, accusing her to be the 4th richest politician in the
world.
Despite investigation costing Rs
2.5 Billion by different governments, no one could convict Ottavio Quattrocchi,
the Italian businessman acquainted with the Gandhi family before he finally left for a place where all
wrong doings must be answered for.
The loss of Rs 1,490 Billion, which DMK’s Raja has caused by not auctioning
the 2G spectrum as per the CAG could have
bought the nation 13 brand new steel plants
like the POSCO plant being put up in Orissa.
But a real auction by the UPA
Government hardly had any takers. If the foreign telecoms had invested all that
money as per the CAG, everyone in India could have expected a telephone bill of
at least Rs 2000 per month for life.
Certainly it is wrong to say that nothing
ever happened in these allegations of kick back and corruption; they are out of all proportions and blown out for political mileage.
Billion dollar deals and
allegations of kick back keep happening all over the world and will continue to
happen. While in many countries such ill begotten wealth merely dissipates into the economy by clever investment, in democratically sensitive India, they become an election issue.
In India, where the political parties,
which had to start with empty bank accounts after independence, soon realised
that elections cannot be won without investing massive amounts of money and widespread corruption became a means of
amassing the required funds well ahead of the elections. So such scams occurred
irrespective of the party ideology, even the Communists being accused of
similar scandals.
But in India of 2014, the whole
nature of funding of election seems to have changed. With the outcry against government
corruption during the last five years, with everyone in power, including the
Prime Minister put under intense scrutiny,
old style kick back is no more a funding
source.
However, with the influx of
massive foreign money into India, the source of political funding also seems
to have shifted to India. The new deals seem to be not with foreign companies
but with their joint ventures within India.
There is no doubt that massive
amounts of money are needed and clearly spent on the huge rallies and campaigns
and possibly to buy the votes wherever possible by various parties, much above
the limits set by law.
Questions and uproar will be raised
by those who will lose out in the elections over such spending, only to be
forgotten till the next election.
It will be a long time before a
poor candidate like Barak Obama will be able to raise massive funds by meagre donations
of millions of supporters in India for countering the campaign of opponents.
For now everyone seems to have
stopped searching for the treasure trove of Sonia and is looking to pin her
with the new scam of her son in law Robert Wadra. Fortunately, it is only worth
a few measly careers.
The perils an Italian wife who
shared the bed with an Indian man has to go through is endless, it seems.
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In fact, in comparison to the thousands of Crores of rupees the opposition BJP had splurged so far on a massive election campaign Sonia’s Congress Party looked really a poor man’s party, with candidates having to depend on meager handouts from the election fund.
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