Swiss Black Money - Much Ado About Nothing

How shrill was the hue and cry about black money stowed away in Switzerland! Estimates ran to the tune of several tens of thousands of crores in the far away tax haven and it was prophesied that confiscation of the money will put an end to all of our economic woes.

Not any more..

Switzerland has publicized the amount of money illegally stashed away in the Alpine republic. And the amount does not seem to be staggering, by any scale we may care to apply - a mere 14,000 crore rupees!

Suppose for now, that the government succeeded in bringing all the depositors to account and forced them to pay taxes for the till now hidden wealth (government can only make them pay taxes, and cannot confiscate all of it). The highest tax rate in the country is 30%. The maximum that can be obtained is thus Rs. 4,200 crores.

This is paltry sum, as far as the needs of a big nation like India is concerned.

Remember, during the last Deepavali, we used up fire crackers worth Rs. 4,500 crores.

So, the scramble for black money ends in a whimper.

Much ado about nothing! 

Cleaning the Ganga

Ganga was a highly polluted river even in the 17th century

Cleaning of the river Ganga has obtained a place of prime importance in the new government's agenda due to factors more sentimental than concerns about value for invested money. However, the socio-economic relevance of this mighty river on the Indian mind cannot be denied. In the long run, cleaning of the river would certainly be beneficial to the country and its people in the northern states.

However, the cleaning party must read history before attempting anything solid on the spot. It has been our avowed practice to blame riparian industries for whatever pollution seen manifested in the water body. Industrial contamination of water indeed is a factor of concern, but the industry should not be singled out for the sorry plight of the Ganga. There is historical evidence that even before these industries began, the Ganga was a heavily polluted river. That's the reason why the river cleaners should read history first.

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was a French jewel merchant who travelled extensively in India between the years 1636 and 1662, overlapping the reigns of Shah Jehan and Aurangzeb. Apart from business, he compiled several volumes of his travelogue which were published from 1675 to 1684. It makes interesting reading what he records near the city of Varanasi in those days. Tavernier says that "Claude Maille, who practised both surgery and medicine advised us not to drink any of the Ganges water, which would produce disturbance of the stomach, but to drink rather the water from wells". If this was the condition of the river in the 17th century, the problem lies deeper than mere industrial contamination and the policy makers should not lose sight of this fact.

At least, an awareness of what went wrong in the past would detain us from making the same mistake again!

(Book referred was published by Low Price Publications, 2007 under the title 'Travels in India' by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, translated by Dr. Valentine Ball, ISBN 81-7536-206-5, see pages 95-96)

Pragmatism of Indian Society

Hinduism is riddled with caste and the dynamics it enforces on its members. Untouchability is banned by law, but we know it still exists openly in some isolated places and secretly in the minds of most of us, to be frank. When the issue of marriage crops up, a partner is invariably to be found from one's own caste. And, some even select their friends from the same caste. Thus we say, Hinduism is split into compartments made water-tight by the injunctions of caste dynamics. 

As I remarked before, if one were asked in the future to list out reasons why Hinduism failed and disappeared, caste will be the numero-uno item in that list. It debilitates the body social, splits people unnecessarily on an imaginary criterion and sows dissent. It seems like the withered trunk of Hinduism needs only a shove for the entire tree to come down to a crash.

But still, the religion flourishes and even displays the skill of adaptation to new realities on the economic, social and political fronts. Isn't this a paradox?

The answer to this paradox came out in this general election in which Narendra Modi single-handedly lifted his party from oblivion and rode an unbelievable wave of popular support which silenced all critics and spellbound all opponents. And this, even after he publicly announced his backward caste origins at election rallies. But this was only an anti-climax, because he declared a fact which was known to everybody! We Indians have a sixth-sense of identifying a person's caste after a very few doses of interaction. 

But the redeeming issue at focus is the acceptance of the leader, by all sections of the Hindu society. It didn't become an obstacles for the upper castes to vote for a lower caste leader. Every section of the society forgot their caste affiliations and shared a thought that was percolating through the social mind - whether justified or not. It is often said that "in democracy, people cast their votes, but in India, people vote their caste". This adage was proved false in this election, when all castes came in support of a lower-caste leader and to put him in the most powerful chair of the country.

May be this resilience in the face of a crying need is what instils Hinduism with its vitality and stamina to go strong in a changing world? There may be castes - thousands of them, in fact - but the ability to think and act out of the confines of it has not dried up in the Hindu mind. 

And this sense of acceptance and accommodation makes me surprised pleasantly at the pragmatism of Indian society!