Black Money – What it means to me?
Ever wondered what is this fuss about the Indian black money in foreign banks is? This one is buzzing all over the news these days. Government trying to defend its stand and opposition using it as yet another weapon to punt the ailing government. I wonder if they ever did anything to eradicate corruption from the system when they were in power. But that’s a discussion for some other time.
For those who don’t have the facts in hand – One of the estimates puts the figure of black money – money raised through illegal means, tax evasions etc, as Rs 280 lakh crores rupees. Some say it's around Rs 70 lakh crores. While there is no accepted figure nor there is any consistency with these numbers, what is not disputed is the amount is certainly high, as high as Rs 50 plus lakh crores.
So, for the sake of discussion let’s take a lower side estimate and peg it at Rs 50 Lakh crore. One can easily arrive at that number going by a simple average of all those rumored figured on the lower side.
Remember no one is denying these rumors. So there must be a kernel of truth in those after all. Further Swiss bank had issued an official statement to this effect agreeing to share information with Indian Government on request. Indian Government now has the details but they do not want to make it public for reasons best known to them or may be known to everyone in this country. None of the official reasons quoted sound logical though.
Coming to the point, what does this mean to me? or for that matter any common man – “aam admi” – one of the most abused terms of the decade.
If you ever go to the Govt website to see at how the Indian budget looks like (link:- http://indiabudget.nic.in/ub2010-11/bag/bag1.htm), Below is the table that can be seen.
Union Budget 2010-2011
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The point to be noted from the table is our deficit has never exceeded Rs 2 Lakh crores. Even if we take a pessimistic estimate of Rs 2 lakh crore deficit, we can get rid of that deficit for next 25 years with this money.
Sounds amazing? Hold it for a moment..
This money is “at least” 10 times more than annual tax receipts for any given year in the Indian history (that’s a minimum estimate, real figure would be much larger). That means we can survive without a single citizen of this nation paying any tax for “at least” 10 years. I can go on and on and on. The list would never end. It would not be extraordinary to say that this money can change the face of this nation.
Hence, this should be the most important issue for all Indians. Nothing else would impact our lives more than this. Yet most Indians are not showing any vexation. Why? Because we are “used to” the word corruption more than anyone else on the planet earth. The mainstream media would make merry out of this to grab eye balls until they get the next “breaking news” to amuse us
It’s time for us to wake up and be more informed. After all awareness is the first step towards any revolution.
Jai Hind!
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