Tuesday, May 5, 2009

$1456 Billion & Not Out !!!

This is so shocking. India has more money in Swiss banks than all the other countries combined. Recently, due to international pressure, Swiss govt. agreed to disclose the names of the account holders only if the respective govts formally asked for it. Indian govt. is not asking for the details - No marks for guessing why ... Please read on! Is India poor, who says? Ask Swiss banks ... With personal account deposit bank of $1500 billion in foreign reserve which have been misappropriated, an amount 13 times larger than the country’s foreign debt, one needs to rethink if India is poor indeed?

Some 80,000 people travel to switzerland every year, of whom 25,000 travel very frequently. Obviously, these people won't be tourists. They must be travelling there for some other reason, opines S Narayan

Dishonest industrialists, scandalous politicians and corrupt officers have deposited in foreign banks in their illegal personal accounts the huge sum of about US$ 1500 Billion which have been misappropriated by them creating scandals and by corruption. This amount is about 13 times larger than the country's foreign debt. This amount is such a big amount that from it 45 crores of poor people can get Rs 1,00,000 each. This huge amount has been collected really from the people of India by exploiting the people of India and by betraying people of India.

Once this huge amount of black illegal money and property comes back to India, the entire foreign debt can be repaid immediately in 24 hours only. After paying entire foreign debt, we will have surplus amount almost 12 times larger than the foreign debts.

If this surplus amount is invested in earning interest, the amount of interest will be more than the annual budget of the Central Government. So even if all the taxes are totally abolished, then also Central Government will be able to maintain the country, very comfortably.Some 80,000 people travel to Switzerland every year, of whom 25,000 travel very frequently. 'Obviously, these people won't be tourists. They must be traveling there for some other reason,' believes an official involved in tracking illegal money. And, clearly, he isn't referring to the commerce ministry bureaucrats who've been flitting in and out of Geneva ever since the World Trade Organization negotiations went into a tailspin !

Just read the following details and note how these dishonest industrialists, scandalous politicians, corrupt officers, cricketers, film actors and personalities
, administrators, illegal sex trade and trading in protected wildlife, to name just a few, sucked this country's wealth and prosperity. This may be the picture of deposits in Swiss banks only. What about other international banks? Black Money In Swiss Banks ~ Swiss Banking Association report 2006 By Naman Sood, April 15, 2008. Deposits in Banks located in the territory of Switzerland by nationals of following countries:

Top 5
India >>> $1456 billion
Russia >>> $470 billion
UK >>> $390 billion
Ukraine >>> $100 billion
China >>> $ 96 billion

Now do the maths - India with $1456 billion or $1.4 trillion has more money in Swiss banks than rest of the world COMBINED. Public loot since 1947: Can WE bring back our money?It is one of the biggest loots witnessed by mankind -- the loot of the aam aadmi (common man) since 1947 by his brethren occupying public office.

It has been orchestrated by politicians, bureaucrats and some businessmen. The list is almost all-encompassing. No wonder, everyone in India loots with impunity and without any fear. What is even more depressing in that this ill-gotten wealth of ours has been stashed away abroad into secret bank accounts located in some of the world's best known tax havens. And to that extent the Indian economy has been stripped of its wealth. Ordinary Indians may not be exactly aware of how such secret accounts operate and what are the rules and regulations that go on to govern such tax havens. However, one may well be aware of 'Swiss bank accounts,' the shorthand for murky dealings, secrecy and of course pilferage from developing countries into rich developed ones.In fact, some finance experts and economists believe tax havens to be a conspiracy of the western world against the poor countries. By allowing the proliferation of tax havens in the twentieth century, the western world explicitly encourages the movement of scarce capital from the developing countries to the rich.

In March 2005, the Tax Justice Network (TJN) published a research finding demonstrating that $11.5 trillion of personal wealth was held offshore by rich individuals across the globe. The findings estimated that a large proportion of this wealth was managed from some 70 tax havens. Further,augmenting these studies of TJN, Raymond Baker — in his widely celebrated book titled ‘Capitalism’s Achilles Heel : Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free Market System’ — estimates that at least $5 trillion have been shifted out of poorer countries to the West since the mid-1970.

It is further estimated by experts that 1 % of the world’s population holds more than 57 % of total global wealth, routing it invariably through these tax havens. How much of this is from India is anybody’s guess. What is to be noted here is that most of the wealth of Indians parked in these tax havens is illegitimate money acquired through corrupt means.

Naturally, the secrecy associated with the bank accounts in such places is central to the issue, not their low tax rates as the term ‘tax havens’ suggests. Remember Bofors and how India could not trace the ultimate beneficiary of those transactions because of the secrecy associated with these bank accounts? God save us all ... Amen !

Source:

Nehru Dynasty ...

I found it stunning and in fact i really don't know as to how true this thing is. I found this piece written by Dr.V.S.Gopalakrishnan Ph.D., IAS Retd. in what seems to be his blog. I found this unpleasent and actually shocking. Nonetheless I love Nehru and i truly respect his patriotism. Here it goes ...

I dislike Nehru-baiting, if not Nehru-baiters. The baiting could be in respect of his socialistic policies and massive State sponsored projects, or in respect of his personal character. Do you remember what Buddha said to a grieving woman: “Bring me a fistful of mustard from a house where no one has died”? Similarly, no human being could be perfect. We should assess a person in an over-all context. Considering how colossal were his stature, sacrifices, leadership qualities, scholarship etc his minor peccadilloes deserve to be simply brushed off. Secondly, as regards the Nehruvian policies, the criticisms arise usually from ignorance or misunderstanding. When India attained Independence , the private sector was too emaciated to undertake big infrastructure projects.

Let me say that Jawaharlal Nehru was a person that I always adored and still adore. I was surprised to receive an email forward a few days back that carried excerpts from a book called “Nehru Dynasty” allegedly written by K.N.Rao. Many unflattering “facts” have been given therein about Motilal down to Sanjay. I was amazed at these “facts” of which I was ignorant. So I went into a frenzy of internet browsing for hours and hours. It looks like we should find impartial historians to sift pure truths including “inconvenient” truths for the benefit of posterity. Hiding “inconvenient” truths or facts will be an anti-historical action.

What does K.N.Rao have to say and who is he? Well, he is known as a great Vedic astrologer. Why should he slander the Nehru family which is not an astrologer’s business? Well, the real title of his book is, “The Nehru Dynasty – Astropolitical portraits of Nehru, Indira, Sanjay and Rajiv” (published in 1993 by Windows Publication; 276 pages). I should like to get a copy and read it, if available. I may not understand the jyotish part of it. (I have read the works of Nehru and not the books on Nehru (by Stanley Wolpert, M.J.Akbar, M.O.Mathai and others).

What are the rarely known “facts” that K.N.Rao brings out? I shall briefly render them as follows.

Indira Gandhi’s husband was actually a Muslim called Feroze Khan. Feroze Khan’s father named Nawab Khan was a grocer in Allahabad and supplied wines etc to the Motilal household. Nawab Khan’s wife was a Parsi with the surname Gandhy and she converted to Islam before marriage. Indira was lonely and Feroze Khan came close to her in England . Indira became a Muslim and married Feroze in a London mosque. Jawahar and wife Kamala did not approve of this. At Mahatma Gandhi’s suggestion, Feroze Khan changed his name to Feroze Gandhi (Gandhy was mother’s first surname). [Some other authors say that Gandhi adopted Feroze as a son and gave him his own surname, but this is generally not accepted]. The married couple came to India and had an arranged “Vedic” marriage (1942).

Rajiv was born in 1944 and Sanjay in 1946. As per K.N.Rao, Sanjay was really the son of Mohammad Yunus and not Feroze Gandhi. (Wikipedia also mentions this.) My extensive browsing revealed that there could be truth in this. Sanjay’s name was really Sanjiv. It seems that he was caught stealing a car and the British police took away his passport. The kindly Krishna Menon, India ’s High Commissioner, got a new passport issued in the name of “Sanjay”! Sanjay’s marriage to Maneka Anand took place in Mohammad Yunus’s house! When Sanjay died in an aircrash, it seems that Yunus was the person to weep the most.

It is alleged that Rajiv became a Catholic before marriage to Sonia Maino. Rajiv became Roberto. The children Rahul and Priyanka are really Raul and Bianca! Well, our K.N.Rao's revelations are ended here.

A google search throws more interesting lights on the Nehrus. It seems that Jawaharlal’s father’s father “Ganga Dhar” was a kotwal in Bahadur Shah’s court when the British took over Delhi in 1857. Even the Delhi Police website (
www.delhipolice.nic.in) says it. It appears from the Moghul records that there was no Hindu Kotwal then but a Muslim Kotwal called Ghiyasuddin Ghasi who had to flee to Agra to save himself from the British who were after the lives of the Delhi Muslims. This Muslim Kotwal, while fleeing, changed his name/identity to the Hindu name Ganga Dhar, the father of Motilal. (The word/surname Nehru was invented by Motilal later). Another interesting “fact” is that Motilal allowed his wife to stay with his employer called Mobarak Ali, who owned the bungalow “Irshad Manzil” which was renamed “Anand Bhavan” later on when Motilal bought it from him. Jawahar was born not in Anand Bhavan but at 77, Mirganj, where Motilal lived in a small rented house initially in the middle of a red-light area. Now you know why there is no touristic visit to the house where Jawahar, the first PM of India , was born. J.Nehru in his book recalls seeing “a picture of his grand father Ganga Dhar which portrayed him as a Moghul Nobleman”. Is this corroborative of something? Again, in that picture it appears that Ganga Dhar was having a long and very thick beard and was wearing a muslim topee and was having two swords in his hands!

Well, I stop here. My admiration for Nehru has not diminished one bit. I agree with many of my friends who say "how does it matter if ancestry was intermingled with Christianity, the Zoroastrian religion, Islam or Sikhism?" Indeed, I say, any of us may have, in different degrees and permutations and combinations, a part of the blood and genes of the original Aryans, Greeks, Sakas, Parthians, Hunas, and many other categories of foreigners who made India their home and intermixed freely in the Indian society.Let the text books on Nehru stay as such. Nehru is a nation builder, and a great motivator for all. But history is history and for posterity the “full and real facts” could be properly established by impartial historians. I believe like many others believe, that it would be much more fascinating if Nehru really had had the widest religious ancestry !

Monday, May 4, 2009

When Do You Know That You Are In Love ???

Well this is one answer that I’ve always wanted to know. I’ve asked a lot of them, some ridicule it, some are really confused jus like me and some are clueless. I bet this piece of writing is going to sound so much like the forward mails that one tends to get once in a while.

There’s this dialogue in the film Matrix, where Oracle tells Neo; “Being the one is just like being in love. No one can tell you that you're in love; you just know it, through and through”. When you are actually in love with someone, no else but you will know. One way to know: It'll be a feeling you have never felt before, but again no one can precisely tell you what that feeling will be. Saying that, I stumbled over a very nice definition about love; “Love is the emotional experience of wanting nothing but good for someone. Love is a feeling that slightly varies from person to person. For that one reason no one can precisely tell you if you're in love”. Actually speaking, there is no way to explain love; people say about it's your heart. The only way possible or at least, the least likely way to explain love is just to be in perfect cohesion with someone.

You are in love, when; Even if she changes, you know that you will still love her with everything that you have. You care about him more than you care about yourself. Sometimes you know that you can't fulfill all her needs, but she is one of the top priorities in your life. She means so much to you. You love and appreciate her for who she is. You don't even want to change her at all. You enjoy her company and you like talking to her, too. Some of the things that she likes to do and you don't like doing, but it's worth the sacrifice. It's worth letting her be happy and enjoying her past-times.

When the feeling she gives you is one that you will sacrifice any part of yourself. When imagining its loss causes you physical pain, when you must lie to yourself and all around you to keep from facing a reality that is plain to see, this might be love. When being around with her makes you so acutely aware of yourself, your ego, appearance, shortcomings, strengths, weaknesses - to the point it controls every thought in your mind and everyone else appears in two - dimensions. Sitting next to her, silently cursing her faults for hours till you hear her scream :)

When you love someone you can't stand to be apart from them for a very long period of time. You heart begins to yearn for them from almost the moment you say goodbye. But it is more than just missing them. When you love someone and I mean truly love them no sacrifice is too great to make for them. You go out of your way to make them feel loved and do all those little things that mean so much to them. You put their needs on equal and sometimes greater footing than your own.

I’ve also picked up these from the web: Your heart beats faster when you hear her name; she is the only person that you want to be with; no one else is even worth looking at; you would walk/travel miles just to see her; you will do everything in your power to make her happy; when every small thing makes you think of her; when you know that you won't see each other for a while, you end up crying; you go to sleep thinking about her and u wake up doing the same; you prefer to spend every moment with her; silence doesn't bother you anymore; she is not only your lover, but also your best friend; you can share anything with her; she is there when times are rough; when you say I love you and you really mean it.

I must say that these are few things that I believe will make us skip a beat or two, telling us that its got to be love – Can’t be universal for sure.