Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Is Anyone Left Without A Trace Of Misappropriation?

Vasu Reddy from Chicago

Each day we hear of massive use of influence to build books and gain financial strength that is unimaginable in a business environment.  Each instance typically is backed with a government in power, and person of interest is either someone in power or related to someone in power.  You seldom hear of anyone who is not connected to a position of power.
 
Last couple of weeks have yielded great fodder with one building books from a few hundred thousand rupees to billions of rupees with in a fairly short span.  Typically when a company goes public through share markets, they can yield massive investments to great ideas, but not to real estate investments without any track record.  This really doesn’t mean that there was something wrong with the way business was built, just that the person who is building it and the support of the massive corporation that has helped build the books of a brand new company without any track record of performance.

India is place of great disparities and great differences in people and their living.  While the super rich have the resources and the ability to connect with investors and capital, it is also a market that fosters good/great ideas into opportunities for development and massive market growth.  The years of computing and customer support has seen massive growth with the Indian businesses, and many of the global information technology giants that have come out of India are new enterprises which were supported quickly by the public markets and fostered into massive billion dollar enterprises, without any hint of misappropriation or political support.  They were developed with market potential as the main backing and only controlled by performance.  Barring a big company example in computer services, all major Indian Information Technology companies have been excellent examples of global adaptation of Indian enterprises to meet the demands of the markets.

Highly competent and competitive people will find that the world embraces their work and will reward them, irrespective of the environment or country.  There is always acceptance for work and people who wants to work, and hard work has no other replacement.  It always rewards people who work hard.

While the latest incident for book building of a single individual who is well connected to perhaps the most powerful person in India could have been accomplished with market support, the conditions that surrounding the business development raise questions of quid co pro, placing the burden of proof with the accused, and although all powerful politically at the present time this is not going to go away quietly.  Even if this is pushed under the rug as long as the current leaders are in power, it is likely to continue to be a point of political discussion for years to come, and the current leaders are voted out of power, the new governments with start to which hunt the current accused.  The cycle of disruptive practices and politics will continue to haunt the country, and with each passing year the scandals and politicizing of them by opposition parties will be the norm of the system, rather than finding solutions for people’s issues.

It is a wonder that the country continues to function and actually grow with the politics and pillaging of the nations resources.  While the democratic wonder of India continues to surprise the world and itself, the continued scams that haunt every state, every department and every aspect of Indian life is a great distraction to its people, its economy and it way of life.

While no immediate solution is available for fixing the loop holes that allow people in power to loot public resources, it is appropriate that the country and its public start seriously look at putting a stop to the large scale misappropriation of national resources.  There are many democracies that for a long time continue to be democracies and foster public interest, and when there is a deviation of the public interest by the elected or appointed officials, they are quickly dealt with and sent home.  One of the greatest examples of such act of democracy without disruption of the national interest or economy was impeachment of President Nixon in the United States.  There are many such instances of change of power or change of functioning of governments without disruption of life in democracies.

India needs public response to these daily disruptions by vested interests, and only when people reject such blatant abuse of power, we will see restoration of public interest.  There is no sure cut way for restoring normal democracies that have such diverse tradition, culture, language and interests, but certainly the people of the country should come together to abolish the custom of public looting.

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