The Bankruptcy of India’s Economic and Political “Miracle”

[marmar]

from In These Times:



The Bankruptcy of India’s Economic and Political “Miracle”
India is neither the vibrant global South democracy nor the poster child for globalization’s benefits that global political elites have insisted it is for over a decade.

BY KAMIL AHSAN


[font size="1"]A resident of the Dharavi, Mumbai, slum walks home alongside a trash heap. (Meena Kadri / Flickr)[/font]


In 2008, under the aegis of a Congress Party-led coalition government in India, the country was rocked by one of the biggest scandals of graft and corruption it had ever seen. The scandal was led by Andimuthu Raja, a member of a regional party that had formed a coalition with the old dynastic Congress Party, who became the minister of communications in 2007.

The scandal, the “2G spectrum” scam, involved the sale of bandwidth licenses to select telecom companies at underpriced rates. In exchange, Raja received millions of rupees in kickbacks. The loss to the Indian government due to the 2G spectrum scandal was estimated between US$8-10 billion. In 2011, Time ranked the scandal second on an “Abuses of Power” list—right behind Watergate.

Even as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raided Raj’s residence, finding bank notes in pillowcases and suitcases, it became clear that the corruption scandal implicated not just one minister but India’s political system as a whole. Raja was immediately arrested but the court cases—and insistent calls by opposition parties to investigate the role in the scandal of then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—rumbled on for years.

The 2G spectrum may be one of the most egregious cases of graft the country has ever seen, but such scandals are now a routine feature of politics in modern India. Without fail, with each scam, corruption is revealed as extending all the way to the uppermost echelons of the Indian political establishment. ...............(more)

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18724/the-bankruptcy-of-indias-economic-and-political-miracle

[MisterP]

1. bbbut they sent a metal block to Mars and renamed Bombay in a way that they pretended

was anti-British but was just really just a Shiv Sena saffronization ploy! all their worries are over! like in 1958!