Innocent
until proven Guilty ? Not so in India any more
By Ram
Krishnaswamy
11th
May 2017
One of the most sacred principles in criminal justice system is holding
that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. In other words, the
prosecution must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, each essential element of
the crime charged.
This may not be so in India in the future the way things are panning out. State
will assume all Indians are guilty until the individual proves beyond reasonable
doubt his or her innocence
PDS (Public
Distribution System) for BPL (Below Poverty Line)
In 2012, the Indian government stated 22% of its population is below its
official poverty limit. The World Bank, in 2011 based on 2005's PPPs
International Comparison Program, estimated 23.6% of Indian population, or about
276 million people, lived below $1.25 per day on purchasing power parity.
Poor Indians belonging to the Below Poverty Line category were accused of
double dipping and drawing more government subsidies than they were entitled to.
Not surprising at all that a Neo Indian Billionaire, who spent more time in New
York than India and confessed he had never visited villages in India and knew
the slums of NY better, believed that by giving every poor individual and
identification number linked to his or her photo, address, DOB, Finger Prints,
Government of India could save thousands of crores in subsidies that were being
stolen every year by the greedy poor. When fingerprints posed technical
glitches during authentication Iris scans were included. In years to come it is
possible that government will capture poor peoples DNA to be doubly sure they
do not double dip into PDS.
Does it sound Pathetic ?
India has a culture were it is a crime to be poor and all poor people are deemed
criminals and are like termites who will eat away food supplies indiscriminately.
The minute there is something missing in a household in India, the blame automatically
falls on the servants of the house; this is part of the Indian culture, like it
or not. So it is not at all surprising that elite politicians born with silver
spoons look down upon the vermin at the bottom of the food chain.
Aadhaar was issued to each and every Indian drawing rations from the Fair
Price Govt shop. It was purely voluntary but not really a choice for people who
needed these rations to survive and avoid starvation.
The real scenario here is that the central Govt procures the food grains,
stores it and makes bulk allocation to various state governments and transports
the allocation to the states. The Government spends nearly Rs 750 Billion (about
US$ 13.5 Billion) which is about 1% of India’s GDP on PDS. The State
Governments are in charge of all distribution through Fair Price shops (also
called Ration shops) to the consumers who are BPL or Below Poverty Line
Population. There are nearly 500,000 Ration shops Nation wide, creating a huge
potential for leeches to bleed the system.
Blind Freddy can see that 90% of the fraud occurs in the procurement,
storage, allocation, transport and distribution; meaning PDS is a flawed Govt
system that is being sponged for decades; a system where the states had no
control over the procurement or quality and a final distribution system of food
grains by State Govts through Fair Price shops to the poor and needy over which
the Central Govt had little control.
To add to this neither State or Central govt had any idea who the needy
poor were as there was no database of India’s BPL Population and this meant any
one could get a ration card by using influence or paying a small bribe and
hitch a ride on the gravy train. More often than not it was the 500,000 ration
shop owners who generated and owned hundreds if not thousands of ghost ration
cards, whose rations were hoarded and sold in the black market. This means the
best grains never reached the needy poor.
Neither the Central Govt nor State Govt Politicians or Babus were going to
blame each other for the leaks in the system, so they blamed the last mile and
have attempted to clean up the PDS by pointing fingers at the Last Mile (this
is a term used in supply chain management and transportation planning to
describe the transportation of goods from a transportation hub to the final
destination meaning the ration shops and finally the poor people).
NREGA: The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
was passed in 2005. ( Now Called MGNREGA- Mahatma Gandhi National Rural
Employment Guarantee). This is a Labour Law and a Social security measure that
guarantees the Right to work. It provides 100days of paid work at Rs 100 per
day for every adult in a household volunteering to do unskilled manual work.
This guarantees an annual income of Rs 10,000 per annum per adult volunteering
to work under the NREGA scheme. This costs the Indian Govt Rs. One Trillion or
nearly US$16 Billion.
Again like PDS, NREGA was to aid the estimated 300 million poor Indians, or
the BPL population mostly in Rural India living below poverty line.
So on an average between PDS and NREGA Govt of India spends around US $ 30
Billion annually to assist 300 million strong BPL Population. Whilst this looks
like a gigantic amount to spend it in fact works out to US $ 10 per person or
Rs 650 per annum, which is less that 2 Rupees per day per person. This is
assuming that all the money goes to the poor people, In reality we can assume
that at least 40% gets spent on admin, storage and transport costs and running
Ration shops and gram panchayats etc and another 30% of leaks and corruption in
the system. Basically this means that even though the Govt believes it is
spending 2% of its GDP which is nearly US$30 billion, a poor Indian Living
below Poverty line gets less that 60 paise a day.
The question is: Is this worth the effort and the cost and is this serving
any purpose towards India’s growth ? There has to be a better way. We need to
teach people to fish and not feed them fish.
Rural employment guarantee is similar to what is known as the dole in
Australia. While dole is meant to assist unemployed survive until they find a
job it also encourages people not to want to work as they receive adequate
handout from the Govt to survive. To prevent this Australian Govt created the
work for the dole scheme. This does not work either as dozens of people meet
and stand around talking and smoking most of the day and not doing any productive
work and this is precisely what I have heard about NREGA employees from friends
in Rural Tamilnadu. NREGA has hurt the small farmers with small tracts of land
that are mostly non profitable to cultivate and made worse by the acute
shortage of casual labourers to assist with farming as they are all assembled
and sleeping under the trees most of the day and collecting NREGA payments
where they share their emoluments with the people who enlist them. Sad but True
that middlemen are again swindling funds aimed to help the BPL population.
There has to be a better way to serve and care for the needy poor.
With Aadhaar being thrust on India’s unsuspecting BPL population, who have
become dependent of PDS and NREGA, covering nearly 300 Million Indian residents,
the Govt next targeted the Middle Class LPG Customers. Every Indian family
needing cooking gas had to get the Aadhaar. This meant that the Govt having
eliminated the cheats in PDS and NREGA aimed at the next rung of low income
Indians The Middle Class; and what did they receive from the Govt ? Subsidy for
cooking gas. LPG subsidy means customers had to buy LPG Cylinders for cooking
at Market prices and then receive the subsidy for the Government. Indian Govt
used to sell fuels meaning petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG cooking gas at
subsidized rates. However Govt of India
has decontrolled the prices of petrol and diesel, but continues with subsidy
for kerosene and LPG. One wonders why LPG and kerosene prices cannot be
decontrolled as well eliminating the LPG subsidy that costs the Govt as much as
Rs 40,000 crores per annum. Around 15.3 crore
consumers are registered with the three companies, Indian Oil (Indane), Bharat
Petroleum (Bharat Gas) and Hindustan Petroleum (HP Gas), which incur a total
subsidy cost of Rs 40,000 crore on providing 12 LPG cylinders per year to each
consumer.
The new rule is that
people with annual family income of more that Rs. 10 Lakhs per annum are not
eligible for LPG subsidy and media reports suggest that over a million people
have surrendered LPG subsidy
Having forcibly thrust
the Aadhaar Numbers on the unsuspecting poor and middle income groups even
before legislating a law for Aadhaar it was common knowledge that Aadhaar was
required to get passports, driving licences, pensions, scholarships, a must to
get a mobile phone, admissions to schools including kindergarten and
universities and the list is endless. Whilst UIDAI claimed innocence and
insisted Aadhaar was absolutely voluntary almost every govt department seized
the opportunity to insist of Aadhaar number to receive that govt departments
services. It became necessary for Railway tickets and almost a must for Air
Travel.
This benign but
ubiquitous Aadhaar has now enrolled nearly 113.3 crores (which is over 1.13
billion) of Indian residents out of a total of about 130 crores population as
of March 2017 and this accounts for 99% of the Population over 18 years of age.
The ones left out were children under 18. So the Govt insisted on Aadhaar for
Mid day meals making Aadhaar ubiquitous for all children in India. Govt was
overwhelmed by the numbers who had enrolled, that Supreme Court rulings that
were issued before the Aadhaar Act in April 2017 were ignored at best.
The next Govt move to
catch the crooks amongst the 113.3 crores of Indians enrolled with Aadhaar was
demonetization of Rs 500 and Rs 1000. This was meant to trap Alibaba and the 40
thieves or should we say India and its 113 crore thieving poor residents.
Encouraged by the
Aadhaar Act that bypassed the Rajya Sabha by taking the Money Bill Route (not
that Congress, the very party that gave birth to this monstrosity called UID /
Aadhaar would have done much to block it in Rajya Sabha besides creating
political hurdles for the Modi govt thus
delaying the process) sneaked another legislation using the money bill route
this time as part of a Finance bill, making Aadhaar Mandatory for PAN Card.
Hang on PAN card I
thought was like a Tax File number and one has to be an idiot to have two PAN
numbers. Who wants to pay Income Tax twice?. No Sir the Govt believes that a
large number of Indians or shall we say the 113 crore Indian thieves had
multiple PAN cards and the Govt had to catch them all by linking their PAN
Cards with their Aadhaar numbers. The fun continues.
Not sure how true this
is but we are led to believe by articles in the media “India has approximately 19 million income taxpayers
versus 250 million PAN cards, and there is no way to de-duplicate the latter
without Aadhaar”. One wants to ask the Govt on
what basis did the Tax department issue 250 million PAN Cards in the first
place. Was PAN Card a necessary ID to apply for Driving Licence? Passports?
Bank Accounts? Cooking Gas? There has to be a valid reason why 250 million
Indians have a PAN Card. Surely the Govt is not saying 250 million Indians with
pan cards are all criminals and thieves.
The Govt & UIDAI says
to its people “If you have nothing to hide, you have got nothing to Fear”. Well
113 crore Indians have proved they have nothing to hide by trusting the Govt
and Nandan Nilekani and enrolling for Aadhaar which might earn 300 million poor
people about 60 paise per day in subsidy at best and the rest are guinea pigs
who have put their heads on the guillotine as they are deemed guilty until they
themselves prove they are innocent.
As for Nandan Nilekani
he has achieved his goal of enrolling 113 crore Indians residents through lies
and deceit claiming Aadhaar was not mandatory but was ubiquitous. Now one may
ask what is in it for NN? UID has the
potential to generate about US$ 60 billion worth of business for the Private
sector in India in the near future and NN and his hand picked friends have
positioned themselves well in Govt bodies to create new opportunities to rake
in billions.
That aside, while now
the Govt has the tool to investigate 113 crore corrupt Indians, the mega Crooks
like Lalit Modi and Vijay Malllya are hiding overseas and Modi Govt is
reluctant to investigate and charge the likes of Robert Vadra, Suresh Kalmadi
for corruption. Nor does the Modi Govt want to talk about bringing black money
stashed in Swiss accounts as promised during elections.
World wide it is common
knowledge that just 1% of the Population holds and controls 50% of a nations
wealth and these are the very people, the Rich, Powerful and Corrupt Indians
plus the criminal elements, underworld figures and genuine money launderers who
have not enrolled for Aadhaar (Excluding a few hundred Activists opposing
Aadhaar).
This makes India a True Orwellian state where “all people are
equal but some people are more equal than the others” meaning the 1% above 18
years age who do not have Aadhaar numbers yet are free to rule the roost and
carry on their merry ways.
