What a joy! We could be affluent

The day seems not to far when we could be richer by 70 lakh crores of rupees or US $ 1400 billion by bringing back the black money stashed in swiss banks. It's a huge sum of money, and the matter is taken up by the main opposition party as their important election issue. Looking at the current recession and job cuts, the governments of United States and Germany have raised the curtain to recover the illegal money flown into foreign banks. Before it could take any ugly turn, the Swiss authority assures that they would cooperate if the concerned governments initiate the proceedings. Though the amount of money stored in foreign banks by Indians are the largest amount by any country, our government seemed gasping on the hearing of the story, as expected, and did not pursue the matter, as yet.

When it seemed to be either a matter of election hype, the issue of bringing back the black money has been filed by none other than the charismatic lawyer Ram Jethmalani along with others before the Supreme Court. The PIL will come for hearing now, and thus the country would anxiously watch how our Finance Minister rescript the government position, when asked.

Summarily, the amount is so large that even if it is distributed amongst the one billion population, each person would receive an amount of Rs. 70,000 cash. If we presume that each family in India consists of only four members (which is not, it is much more), each family could make its own house for decent living from its share of Rs.2,80,000. This is really a matter of sheer joy, and must receive an accolade by all if it is taken up as a real election plank.

It is however said that all this money belongs to the influential people of this country, and cannot be recovered so easily. Promoters of big industrial groups, politicians, bureaucrats, senior police officials are in nexus in siphoning off these huge wealth from this country. In 2007 Vikram Chander established his claim of aspirating off black money to the swiss account by the senior police officials, businessmen and politicians in his book “Sacred Games”. The book evokes with devastating realism of how huge wealth is garnered by the influential people and brings in trouble in the society. Two years have since passed, no one in the authority seemed to have cared.