COMMENTS

Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata on Monday said he did not enter the airline business as he was not comfortable with the idea of bribing Rs 15 crore to a minister, as had been suggested by an industrialist.

The corruption is hitting right from the common man to big business house. It is good that Ratan Tata is coming out openly & revealing the details, he should reveal the name of the minister too. Few other airline companies would have probably paid the bribe.

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'Public Agenda' has indeed hit the nail on the head - it's 'liberalisation' that's at the root of all the problems. How come everybody else is so blind to it?

If not for liberalisation, telecom would have remained at-most a Rs 1,000 cr sector, and consequently the loots would have been limited to well within that figure, and all for the taking of 'namma BSNL/ DoT' lot, and not for the Ambani's and multi-nationals to build their 'Antilla's' and what not.

Only, instead of blogging about it all, the Public Agenda's and Muralidhar Rao's of this world would have still been writing 'letters to the editor' - indeed a very romantic notion, if you ask me. Yes, let's pursue that agenda - do join me here

 

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Yesterday Mr. Ratan took high moral ground of not heading to Bribe's demand from a minister. Now the CAG reports accuses govt of giving "undue" benefits to Anil Ambani-led RCom and Tata tele services.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/CAG-indicts-Raja-in-2G-scam-says-every-rule-flouted/H1-Article1-626961.aspx

"...The CAG said the process of giving dual technology licences to leading telecom firms including Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices "lacked transparency and fairness", and equal opportunity was denied to other similarly placed operators who could apply for use of dual technology only after formal announcement of the policy..."

Would these gentlement now take more higher moral ground by returning the spectrum they got from government?

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2 days have passed since that famous statement from Mr. Ratan Tata, still no clarity on his statement particularly the name of the person who demanded 15Cr.

What is interesting is now the buzz according to electronic media is that Mr. Tata has retracted a bit. Now the news is that Mr. Ratan Tata was not directly asked by any minister, but it was his fellow passenger industrialist who made that statement.

Mr. Tata, however you slice it, the fact remains is that it is all about corruption. I am sure you and all your fraternity knows that no one would ask directly and the corruption process has been institutionalized much more than the public accountability and transparency. It is the some odd govt karamchari gets caught taking 10-20 rupees. The bigger ones has their ways and means to flourish and sophisticated ways for doing it again and again.

Getting down to ourselves, the scene is no different. How many of us would like to stick our neck and say it is time to abolish BDA, the den of all corruptions in Bengaluru. Probably all land scams starts and end there.  The process has so institutionalized can be gauged from one example.

This was told by a first hand source who are directly effected by the BDA notification. The source is one of the inheritors of his fathers agriculture lands that BDA notified for acquisition citing industrial park near the airport. Now one can pay the money and get it de-notified. Otherwise all the land owners would get is pittance. This source of mine is seriously considering the option, given their earlier experience when they lost the land to the airport. In that experience some were lucky to have their land de-notified by giving money to the politician-BDA babus. The land owners only got few 3 lakhs or so for one acre. Those who paid about 50k - 1 lac as bribe, saved the land and sold the same at commercial prices of 20-30 lakhs per care.

 The one's who dare to stick their neck either get killed or silenced for ever. Therefore very few would come forward even to file a RTI asking the basic rudimentary information. This is not based on any fiction story, but from our own experience during the BIAL-RTI efforts. We were cautioned and alerted not to get involved.

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That Rs 15 cr comment from Tata is shameful, might I say for both the private sector as well as the government.

Why it is shameful for the govt is obvious, anyone who is "into" these things knows how and who you have to "feed" to "move on" with things.

It is shamefule for private sector because even the likes of Mr Tata have to be silent about such things (revealing after 20 years, and that too only one such thing, god knows how many more he would have come across), probably because "it will hurt" their operations, and perhaps because they want to be "practical" and move on.

Industry bodies like CII have to do more than just ignore or comply with such "requests" from neta/babus. May be they need a whistelblower act for themselves, or may be they need to champion a change within their community where small or large businesses are encouraged to report such instances.

Instead, most industry captains prefer taking the highgrounds and criticize corruption and governments on various platforms, while living with the bribe-culture for "practical" reasons. Mind you, eventually,  you and me, the consumers, pay for all those bribes they give around to get projects or whatever.

Solutions? Start with Transparent FIFOs in all citizen/business facing processes in the government, simple, quickstart and practical way to get started against corruption, givers, as well as takers.

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