Today, I read an article titled “20 years on, LPG stands for loot, plunder and goonda-raj” written by Mr. M R Vekatesh. While I appreciate some points, very correctly raised by the writer against the economic-phenomenon called ‘Economic Reforms’, but he seems to have relied merely on figures produced by the Government and is not even five-km near to the reality. Here are my arguments against the writer’s figures and claims.
Despite saving rates of 35-36 per cent, most of the working youngsters today are under huge debt; About number 1 ‘Saving Rates’ they read only in newspapers and books. It raises a pertinent question – “who is making out for this gap?” Forbes’ lists for richest people in the world and millionaires provide answer. The growth rate is not distributive. That means the growing number of rich people along with the richest are making for society down these economic-levels.
It is required to clarify in advance that I am no Socialist or Maxist. My own experience as a former Journalist concludes that privatization has merely changed the group of corrupt people and corruption has just changed the form. ‘Ghoos’ or ‘Rishwat’ has been ornamented with softness of western words and during India’s ‘Reform Age’, it is called as ‘Commission’. Construction business is the leading example of ‘Commission-Corruption’ where the ‘Happening-and-just-passed out-Engineer’ from crème-de-la-crème institutions, demands commission from sub-contractors. Of course, he is forced to do that because he has to satisfy many interests from his employer to his wife, with ‘little’ for his ‘happening’ life.
The writer talked about telecom field as how before 21st century, only those people who could afford linesmen, got telephones. Cut to present, the ‘Reformist’ private telecom operators are using MTNL-BSNL infrastructure for peanuts! But, neither people takes it as ‘Corruption’ nor government is worried about rising looses of these two government companies because it presents this game as ‘reform’! huh! If that is not sufficient for private telecom players they knowingly activate a Value-Added-Service on your phone and before you wake up, you have lost your money. It may sound funny because of little amount (Rs.30/- per month in most of the cases) involved, but when you get to know that even if this telecom operator activates this service on, conservatively speaking, randomly selected 10000 subscribers on a particular day, the amount is Rs. 300000/- (three lakhs rupees). On, monthly basis, this amount reaches Rs.9000000/- (Rupees ninety lakhs a month)! Mind you, this money is earned by cheating, so it is corruption of different form. Now, one would ask how this amount is earned every month? Well, for that purpose only companies have adopted a policy of meeting the target i.e. add as much as subscribers its ‘Hip-n-happening’ and ‘Smart’ Marketing boys can add. Moreover, they have post-paid customers who are fooled by charging a fixed monthly amount for no use! Against this amount, they don’t provide even the storage for contacts, leave alone any other value-added service. Moreover, even if they set a certain amount credit limit for your post-paid number and though you haven’t reached that amount by the date of payment, they will add Rs.100/- in the next bill as fine! Now, even if 10000 subscribers become victims, the amount comes to rupees ten lakhs a month per operator. Well, have guys from TRAI ever thought about this way of corruption or are satisfied with their monthly share and foreign tours fully funded by these telecom operators!
Rising GDP or Per Capita Income figures merely reflect impact of money in the hands of super-rich and growing rich class, not the 90 per cent (assumptive figure) left-outs. So, this so called ‘economic reforms’ were merely proxy to benefit selected few.
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