A forest of words has been written and spoken on the 2G spectrum allocation scam under which former Union telecommunications minister A. Raja sold off scarce telecom spectrum to his cronies’ shell companies on a first-payment basis for a song, inflicting a loss calculated by the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) of India at Rs.176,000 crore. This sum could comfortably have met the entire lib-lab-lav (library-laboratory and lavatory) needs of all the country’s 1.25 million Central and state government primary schools and fulfilled the modest education aspirations of over 150 million children enroled in them.
Yet in the massive national debate in which every angle seems to have been covered, one curious omission is the sheer ignorance of law of the former Union telecom minister who was hitherto reportedly a duly qualified practicing lawyer in Tiruchy, Tamil Nadu. The reckless illegalities of this law graduate of Madurai and Coimbatore universities during his three-year tenure in the telecom ministry raises disturbing questions about the quality of legal education being dispensed and certified within the country.
Indeed, the unasked question in the multi-billion dollar 2G spectrum scam is how could Raja — a duly qualified and certified practitioner of law who had risen to high national office — have been so ignorant of the law and Constitution, and unmindful that his arbitrary acts of omission and commission while selling national assets would be subject to judicial review? Surely he knew that the wronged applicants would move the courts and blow the whistle on him? If not, what does it say about the quality of legal education being dispensed and certified in contemporary India? And what is the connection between the certification of thousands of such low-calibre legal practitioners and the woeful condition of India’s dysfunctional legal system? Connect the dots!
Beggar nation
Although an embarrassing, if not huge, row has broken out in Blighty over the British government’s stated intent to deliver development aid aggregating £1 billion (Rs.7,300 crore) to India over the next four years, neither the shrinking minority of print media pundits nor the crusading anchors and talking heads of cable television have thought this controversy stoked by the tabloid press in Britain, worthy of notice.
Yet there is considerable substance in the bewilderment expressed in the British media about Westminster doling out development aid to a nation which has a larger space programme than the donor country, maintains a 1 million-strong army and has a Rs.140,000 crore annual defence budget. Moreover there’s the not unwarranted apprehension that Britain’s mite will be swallowed up by India’s notoriously corrupt politicians and middlemen. “Much of Britain’s promised £1 billion aid to India will be administered through a political system mired in corruption,” warns the best-selling daily tabloid The Sun (February 18), disclosing for good measure that “the national Indian parliament has a staggering 161 MPs out of 545 facing criminal charges”.
The plain truth is that six decades of neta-babu socialism has reduced independent India to the status of a beggar nation unable to look after its own people and ever ready to accept handouts from any country anywhere. Opposed to the creation of a culture of dependency, your editor has consistently maintained that foreign aid is money taken from the poor of rich countries for the rich of poor countries. But who’s listening?
Party time’s over
As if corrupt politicians, venal bureaucrats, crooked cops and crony capitalists weren’t enough, a new parasite has grafted itself upon the body politic, long-suffering the law’s delay, the insolence of office and the proud man’s contumely, to say nothing of the pangs of disprized love. I refer to the country’s over-rich, overbearing and regrettably over-here, IT industry’s techies community which is feeding greedily on the body politic. For the past several decades, the income derived from exports of IT companies has been exempt from the universal obligation of income tax. As a consequence, their market capitalization and equity prices have soared sky-high, transforming a host of inadequately-educated techies into dollar billionaires gracelessly lording it over the lay public.
These bitter sentiments relating to the nation’s over-privileged techies community have resurfaced following the abrupt resignation of Ravi Venkatesan, the slippery chief executive of Microsoft India on February 12 — barely a few days after he was given high prominence in a detailed cover story in this publication (EW January) highlighting Microsoft’s admittedly numerous and laudable contributions to the public weal and education in particular. Now it can be told that like most of the techies tribe, Venkatesan is afflicted with overweening pride and a gross good manners deficit. For instance, while your editor was cataloguing the numerous contributions of Microsoft to Indian education — quite obviously initiatives of Microsoft, USA rather than of Microsoft India — Venkatesan was “too busy” to be interviewed personally, preferring the electronic medium. Nor did one receive any word of acknowledgement, forget about thanks.
This elementary good manners deficit of Microsoft techies could be dismissed as exceptional, if your correspondent had not repeatedly experienced the gracelessness of this I-me-myself tribe. For instance Infosys abruptly cancelled the annual EW-Infosys Young Achievers Awards (annual spend: Rs.5 lakh); Wipro withdrew 500 EW subscriptions to government school teachers (Rs.1.5 lakh); and recently N. Chandrashekaran ‘celebrated’ his appointment as chief executive of Tata Consultancy Services by canceling the annual EW-TCS India’s Best School Teachers Awards (Rs.8 lakh). The thousand unnatural shocks visited upon this public-interest publication apart, you’d have to search far and wide to find an NGO or charity which has a good word to say about this tribe.
Last year your editor had written to Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to withdraw the income tax exemptions granted to IT companies with annual revenue of more than Rs.100 crore. If the Union budget due to be presented on February 28 doesn’t withdraw the unwarranted tax exemptions granted to this greedy tribe, stand by for a PIL (public interest litigation) writ petition in the Supreme Court. It’s time this prolonged party at public expense is shut down.