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Bank on Swiss bank savings
THIS is not a grandma’s prescription. This is plain commonsense. Whenever you are hard up you reach for the money you have hidden. India or, for that matter, the entire South Asia, is facing the crisis of liquidity. And this is the time when politicians, industrialists and bureaucrats from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka should bring back the money they have stashed away in Swiss banks.
The amount reportedly runs into billions of dollars which the corrupt elite have come to possess through dishonest methods. I do not want to argue the rights and wrongs of their deeds because that would start
another kind of a debate. We need money to stave off the crisis we face. Even otherwise, if the corrupt have even an iota of patriotism, they should not hesitate to bring back the much-required finance to bolster our sagging economies.
Since Switzerland njaintains secret bank accounts, it is not possible for any intelligence agency, however resourceful, to trace the money. The account holders will have to do it themselves provided they feel the pain which their nation isgoingthrough.
I do not know how much money is hidden by the Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalese or the Sri Lankans. But the estimate about
Indians is around $1,500 billion which, translated into rupees, comes to some 675 thousand crores (I have calculated it at the rate of Rs 45 per dollar). Indeed, the figure is mind-boggling.
In the 2006 report on black money in Swiss banks, the Swiss Banking Association has put the deposits of five top countries as: India, the Jiighest, with $1456 billions, Russia $470 billion, the UK $390 billion, Ukraine $100 billion and China $96 billion. If India's deposits were to be distributed, 45 crore people would get Rs 1 lakh each.
When I was India's High Commissioner at London, 1 met a
bank manager from Switzerland at a party. He said that his bank alone had so much money of Indians that their country could meet foreign exchange requirements for 10 Five Year Plans. Those were the days when we were acutely short of foreign exchange and had even pledged our gold to the Bank of England as a guarantee.
Financial situation in the world is not getting better. India is bound to be affected sooner or later. The money in Switzerland would come in handy at this time. Yet, the question is how to persuade the corrupt politicians, IAS, IPS. Indian Revenue Service (IRS) personnel and industrialists to move their piles from
abroad to India. Threats to them will not work because nobody except the Swiss banks knows how much they have. There has to be an appeal to their better senses and assurance that they can possess most of the money legally.
It sounds immoral. But there will have to be something like a tax holiday or some scheme where no questions are asked. If they were to give one-third of the amount they have abroad, they can retain the rest. I wish they realise that one-third is too little a price they will be paying for legitimising their loot in which they have indulged since independence.
In fact, tax havens that
Switzerland provides are a drag on poor countries. It is the exploitation to which South Asia has been subjected to by the West for centuries. A book written by a Western economist -- entitled Capitalism's Achilles' heel: Dirty Money and How to Renege the Free Market System -estimates that at least $5 billion have been shifted out of poorer countries to the West since the mid-1970s.
Still the markets and several banks in the West have crashed. They are in fact responsible for ruining our measly financial institutions. Imagine what would have happened to them if they did not have the money which our corrupt industrialists, bureaucrats and politicians have deposited with them? Add to this the money they have stashed away else - wherein the UK, the US and tax havens like St Kitts.
South Asia has been hit because it is part of the global economy which has caved in. Under pressure from the West, we have opened up several sectors to them. It has been seen during the last few weeks that they have been the first to sell their shares in various Indian companies, bringing the share market tumbling down. It is estimated that in India alone they were withdrawing Rs
2,000-Rs 3,000 crore in foreign exchange per week because they experienced hardship in their own country.
In India, the Left who were supporters of the Manmohan Singh government have saved us from further disaster by not allowing some financial sectors opening up to the global players. We also owe it to the Left that the Western institutions were not allowed to enter insurance to the full extent The Left also put in place some regulatory measures on banks.
The economic crisis, primarily because of Western wasteful living, brought the entire Europe. America and others together the other day at Washington to discuss how to overcome the situation. 1 wish New Delhi had taken the initiative to get the countries of South Asia around the same table to have a joint action to face the problem.
Poor countries have a lot of resilience. They may therefore weather the storm. But it will be again at the expense of the lower half. In a capitalist economy, the upper half loses luxuries, not comforts. The poor had to cut down on their necessities. One per cent of world population is said to be Folding more than 57 per
cent of the total global weal th.
Manmohan Singh who authored a-South-South Commission report proposed a close commerce and economic cooperation among the countries in the third world. The suggestions never tookoff. He should wash off the stigma by grouping the countries in South Asia into a common market World financial crisis can be turned into an opportunity for the region to lessen dollar transactions. We can meet most needs from our own resources. We haw men and material, technology and manpower to do so.
We have lost enough to the West before and after independence. Let us at least start depending on ourselves and do away with such foreign goods that are available in the region. And it becomes all the more necessary for civil societies to band together with national and international experts to put moral and legal pressure on Swiss banks to reveal the identities of account holders. This money belongs to the people of South Asia and it should be available to them when they need it We should also develop confidence to borrow from one another instead of looking towards the West.
KuWtp Nayar is an eminent Indian co'vmnist