Making Politician accountable

The ‘sting’ is once again in India’s political air! Barely had the Indian public absorbed Operation Duryodhana — which showed 11 Members of Parliament accepting cash to raise Parliament questions — when another TV channel did another sensational "sting"-based story.

This showed seven MPs accepting kickbacks for sanctioning funds from the Rs 2 crores annually available under the MP Local Area Development Scheme. If the first operation exposed corruption among different political parties, the second showed MPs abusing a privilege given to them by virtue of being MPs.

MPLADS has long been used to distribute patronage. It was launched by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao in 1993 as part of a "package" to buy support for his minority government, which included bribing Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MPs. It’s widely believed that MPLADS funds are channelled to contractors who give kickbacks to MPs. Many fictitious, irrelevant, or me-too projects are sanctioned at public expense under it.

Cumulatively, Rs12,800 crores has been spent under MPLADS, a sum higher than the Union elementary education budget.

It’s tempting for MPs to exploit a scheme that’s totally ‘legitimate’ to buy support from key groups in their constituencies. A majority succumb to the temptation. Some North-eastern states have adopted similar schemes where each MLAs can spend/sanction a huge Rs 1 crore. Under India’s Constitution, MPs can have no executive power, which MPLADS illegitimately gives them. The scheme should be scrapped.

The cash-for-questions scam corrodes an important democratic device, the Parliament question. MPs can ask starred or un-starred questions to extract information from the government and understand the rationale behind its policies so they can scrutinise these. Even cynical government officials take Parliament questions seriously because they can be punished for lying.

It’s outrageous that MPs should ask Parliament questions at the behest of interest groups out to embarrass competitors or illegitimately influence policy. The pharmaceutical industry has long been notorious for this. Even if a question is genuine, it’s wrong to accept a bribe for asking it. If it’s not authentic, the offence is doubly deplorable. The two exposes highlight the need to make India’s political system more participatory and accountable. It’s noteworthy that six of the 11 MPs caught in the first sting operation belong to the BJP, as do 4 of the 7 in MPLADS. This exposes as hollow the BJP’s claim to be a "party with a difference" — composed of people with integrity and convictions (however wrong). Over the years, the BJP worker, rooted in the RSS’s supposedly austere culture, has been edged out by carpet-baggers, or bitten by the corruption bug himself. Four of the 7 BJP MPs trapped in Duryodhana sting were RSS activists!

The exposes have generated anger and strengthened the view that politicians are uniquely corrupt. Some reactions are clearly excessive. An opinion poll found that 76 per cent of people think that the tainted MPs shouldn’t merely lose their seats. Forty-nine per cent think they should be barred from elections for life, and 26 per cent that they should be jailed. One per cent want to hang them! Two-thirds say less than 10 per cent of politicians are honest.

This expresses a strong upper or middle class prejudice. Politicians are certainly no more corrupt than the businessmen who bribe them. Corruption is pervasive in India. A Transparency International survey finds that Indians annually pay more than Rs21,000 crores in bribes to get public services. Eighty per cent bribe the police — 14 per cent just to file a First Information Report and 7 per cent to avoid false arrests! Among India’s most corrupt institutions are schools and hospitals. Schools alone make Rs4,000 crores in bribes. The upper class can be extremely hypocritical about corruption. Take its remarkably hostile reaction to the current drive launched under court orders to demolish 18,000 illegal constructions in Delhi. These thieves of public space are protesting the demolition with almost righteous anger: had they not paid municipal officials Rs 500,000 to start unauthorised buildings, and then up to Rs 100,000 a month during construction?

Such protests only show the rich have internalised corruption. They have no right to condemn others for doing the same, and even less to single out politicians. This is not to condone corruption among politicians. Many politicians are corrupt, but other groups are equally, if not more, so. The Duryodhana-sting MPs took a maximum of Rs 1.1 lakh. But Indian businessmen have under- and over-invoiced exports and imports to transfer an estimated Rs 90,000 crores to 450,000 crores abroad.

Political leaders should be judged by strict criteria because they represent the public. But other groups shouldn’t be let off the hook. All holders of office, and beneficiaries of government actions, must be held accountable. That’s democracy’s fundamental requirement. This means applying the rule of law universally-in municipal functions, collecting taxes, supervising the police and making the bureaucracy accountable.

However, how should the public make lawmakers accountable? Four measures are necessary. First, the sting operations warrant exemplary punishment, including the tainted MPs’ disqualification from elections for six years. They offer a good chance to evolve a consensus on differential penalties for varying malpractices, including defection, defalcation, intimidation and thuggery. This will help deter political wrong-doing.

Second, there must be the right to recall MPs for incompetence or corruption. Third, MPs must evolve a code of conduct. This was first proposed in 1951, in the Mudgal cash-for-question case. It was revived in 1993, and led to the creation of Ethics Committees in the two Houses. Under the code, MPs must truthfully record their assets and interests. All their actions which have a bearing on policy or monetary gain should be scrutinised under the Right to Information Act. Finally, there must be a focused effort to reverse the recent deterioration in the quality and duration of parliamentary debate. India must reform certain ultra-conservative conventions which exempt government from debating policy in Parliament and from seeking Parliamentary ratification for international agreements. The sting operations show that the time has come for real, focused, political reform.

Indian MP caught 'trying to smuggle woman and boy on to plane'

A member of the Indian parliament has been arrested at the international airport in Delhi for trying to smuggle a woman and a teenage boy to Canada using his own family’s passports.

Police said today that they had arrested Babubhai Katara, a member of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and his companions as they tried to board an Air India flight to Toronto yesterday.

Immigration officials alerted the police after noticing that the woman and the boy did not match the photographs in the passports they were carrying, which belonged to Mr Katara’s wife and son.

Relatives of the woman, identified as 26-year-old Paramjeet Kaur, said they had paid an agent in the northern state of Punjab three million rupees (£36,000) to arrange for her to join her husband in Canada.

“We didn’t know how they were taking her. We don’t know who the man is, I just came to know he is an MP,” Ms Kaur’s mother-in-law told India’s CNN-IBN television news network.

Mr Katara’s lawyer said his client was innocent and blamed the incident on a conspiracy between Ms Kaur and the travel agent.

The arrest highlights the problem of illegal migration from India, especially Punjab, which accounts for the largest number of illicit Indian migrants despite being one of its richest states.

But it is also a shocking illustration of the criminalisation of Indian politics, which analysts say is undermining the country’s democratic system and becoming a significant obstacle to economic growth.

A 2004 study by an independent watchdog found that nearly a quarter of the more than 540 members of parliament’s lower house faced criminal charges, including murder and rape.

The BJP sought to limit the fallout from the scandal by immediately suspending Mr Katara and promising to expel him as soon as police had completed their investigation.

“This is a very serious offence. We cannot tolerate this sort of behaviour in the party or in parliament,” Prakash Javadekar, a BJP spokesman, told The Times.

“This is a warning signal to all those who become involved in corruption and criminality.” He insisted that any criminal charges against other BJP members of parliament were politically motivated.

But the BJP’s political opponents were quick to exploit the incident, which came in the midst of crucial elections in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and politically important state.

“This is the true face, nature and character of the BJP,” said Abhishek Singhvi, a spokesman for the ruling Congress Party.

A statement from Congress’s coalition partner, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said: “The BJP, instead of talking about its clean image . . . should ponder why it has become a refuge for venal and corrupt people.” Police said Mr Katara, 46, and his companions had been charged with “cheating by impersonation, forgery for cheating, using forged documents, misuse of passports and criminal conspiracy”.

Local media reported that Mr Katara had arrived at the airport only half an hour before the flight and sent his staff to hurry his group through check-in and security — common practice for Indian VIPs.

A Delhi court ordered Mr Katara to spend ten days in police custody and sent the teenager, identified as Amarjeet Singh, 17, to a remand home, pending further inquiries.

Ms Kaur was given four days in police custody.

The court was also told that Mr Katara had taken another person to a foreign country on his wife’s passport. The couple both have diplomatic passports.

The incident is the latest in a string of recent scandals that have tarnished the reputation of India’s political elite.

Last year, a Cabinet minister was given a life sentence for kidnapping and murdering an aide who was blackmailing him.

In 2005 a television sting operation caught 11 MPs on camera receiving money in exchange for asking questions in parliament.

Article published in http://e-paper.timesonline.co.uk/

A cancerous growth in India's body politic

India likes to treat its VIPs well. Traffic is stopped for them, armed escorts are provided, queues are swept aside. Police handle politicians and celebrities with obsequious respect and even airport officials quaver at the sight of a dignitary flanked by bodyguards.

This culture of extreme deference seems to have been exploited in the latest political corruption scandal to dismay a nation already weary of the antics of its politicians.

Babubhai Katara, a member of Parliament with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, is in custody as the police investigate his alleged role in a people-smuggling operation, which apparently relied on the special privileges meted out to politicians at airport check-in.

Armed with the diplomatic passport granted to all politicians, Katara sent his staff ahead to ease him through immigration last week, hoping to board a flight to Canada with two companions. Because of his status, he was subjected to "fleeting scrutiny," the Indian media reported.

It was only a last-minute check by a lone vigilant airline official that revealed that the veiled woman traveling with him who was carrying his wife's passport was not his wife and that the teenage boy carrying his son's passport bore no resemblance to his son.

As police inquiries began, several other politicians came under suspicion of abusing their position in the same way.

During interrogation this week, the agent accused of putting Katara in touch with his traveling companions swiftly gave the police the names of four other elected members of Parliament who he claimed were also in the business of smuggling migrants abroad.

"One of the accused has claimed that these men were involved," Rajan Bhagat, a spokesman for the Delhi police, said in a telephone interview. All four have been invited to help with the investigation, but two have already told the police that they are currently too busy to answer questions. "We hope that they will cooperate and that we will not be required to take further steps," Bhagat said.

Katara's lawyer has said that his client is innocent, simply the victim of a "conspiracy." Meanwhile, newspapers reported Thursday that a fifth lawmaker and four locally elected politicians were under investigation for an apparently unconnected people-smuggling scheme in the southern city of Hyderabad.

The incident served as the latest uncomfortable reminder of the extraordinary wealth of corruption flourishing in the Indian Parliament.

Social Watch India, a political watchdog, reported last year that 125 of the 538 members of Parliament have criminal cases pending against them. Around half of these cases relate to relatively minor allegations, the other half concern serious charges that could lead to jail terms of five years or more.

The growing number of corrupt politicians represented "a cancerous growth in the Indian body politic, threatening the rule of law and the very basis of Indian democracy," the report stated. "This has led to a very undesirable and embarrassing situation of outlaws becoming lawmakers and moving around under police protection."

Late last year, an Indian cabinet minister was given a life sentence after being found guilty of kidnapping and then murdering an aide. A televised sting operation recently caught 11 M.P.s on camera as they accepted bundles of notes in exchange for asking questions in Parliament.

The electorate is so jaded by these recurrent scandals that few now can muster the energy to express outrage. A poll by Transparency International revealed that around 98 percent of the population believes that politics is affected by corruption.

Himanshu Jha, a researcher with Social Watch, said he was "not surprised in the least" by the allegations of a people-smuggling ring. "This is not abnormal behavior for our M.P.s. These are not stray cases," he said.

Some politicians fought to get elected primarily because they saw holding office as a "business opportunity," he said. "A culture of corruption has emerged in Parliament which allows people to feel that they can misuse their privileges and abuse their position. They feel they can do what they like; they know that nothing will ever happen to them."

Part of the problem lies with India's notoriously slow-moving justice system. Politicians facing corruption charges can bask for years in the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, as trials meander through the courts.

Editorial writers responded this week with muted distress.

The Times of India noted mournfully: "Even by the standards of political morality in India, Babubhai Katara's involvement in human trafficking touches a new low."

Tavleen Singh, a columnist in the Indian Express, caught the general mood of depressed cynicism. "It surprises me that it continues to surprise us every time one of our elected representatives is caught indulging in criminal activity," she wrote.

"What's the big deal? Human trafficking is a white-collar crime, compared to murder, rape, armed robbery and kidnapping, and we know that across our unfortunate land we are increasingly being forced to elect people who have been charged with one or the other of these crimes."

All political parties are touched by the problem, and in Parliament the affair has descended into cross-party mudslinging. Katara has been suspended by his party, the BJP, pending investigation, but party officials have emphasized, rightly, that it is not only their M.P.s who are prone to criminal activity.

During an all-party meeting convened to discuss how to restore "the image and dignity" of Parliament on Wednesday, politicians could come to no agreement - aside from resolving not to refer the case to an internal ethics committee on the grounds that the allegations did not directly concern Katara's parliamentary work.

The affair has underlined the lucrative nature of India's people-smuggling business. The economic boom here has yet to touch the rural majority, and thousands of illegal migrants take huge risks to flee the country every year in search of a better life abroad.

A down payment of around $2,500 was passed to the agent who allegedly recruited Katara to help get the woman and her son out of the country, relatives of his traveling companions said this week; a second payment, several times that amount, had been agreed on successful completion of the mission. Officials are working with embassies in New Delhi to investigate a number of earlier trips made by the M.P.

For anyone inclined to abuse his privilege and position, this is a profitable line of work.

article published on http://www.iht.com

Indian politicians caught again in corruption scandal – this time in Australian wheat

The Australian Wheat Board confirmed that documents pointing to a payment of $2.5 million (Rs 11.25 crore) into a Cayman Islands account as commissions for a 1998 wheat import contract to India were now part of an internal inquiry.

The Central Bureau of investigation (CBI) of India is also in the process of investigating. But CBI’s efforts are affected by the politicians and oligarchs of India.

According to media reports, undisclosed large commissions were paid into an unknown company's bank account through stargnge agents. It was found in Australia as part of the probe into illegal payments made by Australian Wheat Board as part of the oil-for-food program in Iraq. The corruption chain of Iraq caught the Indian politicians again.

Top officials of the CBI says that they were in a wait-and-watch mode and would either look for a Government request to re-open the case or wait for the Australian government to send them the latest information.

In the mean time the opposition parties like BJP and SP is embarassing the Congress led UPA Government for kick backs.

Article published on indiadaily.com.

H1B visa abuse

A recent report suggests that US employers are using the H1B visa program to pay lower wages than the national average for programming jobs.

According to "The Bottom of the Pay Scale: Wages for H-1B Computer Programmers — F.Y. 2004," a report by Programmers Guild board member John Miano, non-U.S. citizens working in the United States on an H-1B visa are paid "significantly less than their American counterparts."

How much less? "On average, applications for H-1B workers in computer occupations were for wages $13,000 less than Americans in the same occupation and state."

Miano based his report on OES (Occupational Employment Statistics) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which estimates wages for the entire country by state and metropolitan area. The report's H-1B wage data came from the U.S. Department of Labor's H-1B disclosure Web site.

Miano, in his report, whenever possible gave the benefit of the doubt to the employer. For example, he used OES data from 2003 because this is the wage information that would have been available to the employers when filing an LCA (labor condition application).

Miano had some difficulty matching OES job codes with LCA job titles, which employers typically create. Where both the OES and the LCA listed a job as "programmer/analyst," Miano took the conservative approach of assuming that the LCA was describing a programmer, a job title that typically earns a lower wage than a systems analyst.

Nonetheless, Miano's report shows that wages paid to H-1B workers in computer programming occupations had a mean salary of $52,312, while the OES mean was $67,700; a difference of $15,388. The report also lists the OES median salary as $65,003, or $12,691 higher than the H-1B median.

When you look at computer job titles by state, California has one of the biggest differentials between OES salaries and H-1B salaries. The average salary for a programmer in California is $73,960, according to the OES. The average salary paid to an H-1B visa worker for the same job is $53,387; a difference of $20,573.

Here are some other interesting national wage comparisons: The mean salary of an H-1B computer scientist is $78,169, versus $90,146 according to the OES. For an H-1B network analyst, the mean salary is $55,358, versus the OES mean salary of $64,799. And for the title "system administrator," there was a $17,478 difference in salary between the H-1B mean and the OES mean.

H-1B visa workers were also concentrated at the bottom end of the wage scale, with the majority of H-1B visa workers in the 10-24 percentile range. "That means the largest concentration of H-1B workers make less than [the] highest 75 percent of the U.S. wage earners," the report notes.

While it would be difficult to prove that any one particular employer is hiring foreign workers to pay less, the statistics show that, for whatever reason, this is exactly what is happening on a nationwide basis. Miano says lobbyists will admit that a small number of companies are abusing the H-1B program, but what he has found in this research is that almost everyone is abusing it.

"Abuse is by far more common than legitimate use," he says.

See Article published on http://www.workpermit.com/

Corruption - major threat to our happy living

Corruption is a major cause and result of poverty around the world, at all levels of society, from governments, civil society, judiciary functions, military and other services and so on. The impact of corruption in poor countries on the poorer members of those societies is even more tragic.

Political Corruption:

In broad terms, political corruption is the misuse by government officials of their governmental powers for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, like repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Illegal acts by private persons or corporations not directly involved with the government is not considered political corruption either.

Three major areas of political corruption are worth noting. First, bribery is clearly an example. Second, some people claim that certain government practices such as patronage, while legal, might be suspect. This definition sets a very high standard for political propreety. The conflict-of-interest definition—use of public office for personal gain, usually money—is a third aspect of political corruption. This is an ethical issue dealing with the premise that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Corruption, therefore, is a catchall expression for illegal as well as ethically questionable behaviors. Ironically, the very nature of federalism contributed to the potential for corruption. Since power corrupts, the challenge is to require accountability at all levels of government and to create various and ethical citizens.

The issue of corruption is very much inter-related with other issues. At a global level, as globalization continues at rapid pace, with promises of prosperity, the “international” (Washington Consensus-influenced) economic system that has shaped this globalization in the past decades requires further scrutiny for it has also created conditions whereby corruption can flourish and exacerbate the conditions of people around the world who already have little say about their own destiny.

Welcome!

Welcome to "Fight against corruption" Blog.