Why Baba Ramdev's quest for eradication of Black Money may fail?

Don't treat me as a pessimist or a supporter of Black Money. However in my opinion this fast of Baba Ramdev may not succeed though it may show some promise like the earlier quest Mr Anna Hazare's fast for brining in ministers and prime minister under the purview of Jan Lokpal Bill. This bill is now mired in the political double speak and unless Mr Hazare has the power to fight again will have a natural death or will not be introduced in the parliament in the coming few years.

Coming back to the quest of Baba Ramdev, last night the Delhi police arrested him. Now the reasons according to me why this quest will fail unless concrete steps are taken by people and the government.

First of all let us recall the famous words of Mr Jawaharlal Nehru around 60 years back stating that the corrupt people should be hanged from the nearest lamp post. Corruption is the first step for amassing the black money. The government has created several organisations like anti corruption bureau, vigilance departments in all government departments etc. There is even a central vigilance commissioner now. But still we see so many scams like Commonwealth Games, 2G etc. There was a time when the opposition parties made a hue and cry about kickbacks in Bofors guns deal of the size of Rs 164 Crores. Now nobody is talking less than a Rs 1000 Crore figure. Does it not mean that black money quantums have gone up by leaps and bounds?

It is not possible to eradicate the black money completely from the system. The reasons are systemic. The creation starts from time we wakeup in the morning. Take for example the tooth paste you use immediately you wake up. Where do we buy it? May be from a street corner shop or a departmental store. Does he gives a bill for these? Most us even does not bother to ask for one. Even if you ask, the shop keeper will give you a bill written on a scrap of paper which does not get into his annual official accounts (Almost all of them keep two or even more sets of books). We do not have a system to trace a product from the factory to the end user. Even though the commercial taxes department maintain posts in the factory compounds of many factories still truck load of goods will go out without any payment of taxes - reason the tax officials get some thing underhand. I have seen with my own eyes this kind of a thing happening in case of stone quarries. The government gives a licence for quarrying and after payment of royalty /cess they receive a release for getting out a number of truck loads of stone. The quarrying companies pay royalty for 2 truck loads per day and on the same receipt transport nearly 100 truck loads during the day. Where the money from the remaining 98 going ? There instances like the sand quarrying happened during the previous government regime in Tamil Nadu where not even the royalty for the few truck loads is paid. Or even take the case where a traffic constable stops one for not wearing helmet or some traffic violation. Our first impulse will be to pay something to the constable to avoid the hassle of going to the court or getting into violations list. There are several instances like this in every day life in India which shows that the creation of black money is a daily phenomenon.

Now any number of disclose schemes (like the one by Mr V P Singh when he was the Finance Minister) can only bring out whatever was disclosed and taxed at the particular moment. Has any body kept tabs on the wealth of atleast those people who disclosed and paid the tax during the disclosure scheme? Yes, few people from the Internal Revenue (taxes) might have kept because they will be getting their annual mamools / gifts.

There is an estimate of Rs 100,000 crores of unaccounted money from India is in banks in tax heavens. This estimate is by the political parties and I don't know how they came with that estimate. However please note that even more than this is in the Indian Financial system itself in the form of benami deposits (yes even after some much stress on KYC guidelines by Banks, it is still happening), lands in benami names, palatial houses owned by people who we might have seen some years back has difficulty in supporting the families. Where from all this money is coming? It is us who pay this. We need some work to be done, we go to a broker (honourably called mediators or arrangers / lobbyists in even more dignified language) who takes some money, passes on a part to some official and get the work done. We do not want buy goods with proper receipts / bills. If some shop is selling goods at 20% below the maximum retail price there will be serpentine queues in front of those shops. Nobody think how they can sell at those rates and still gain profits. Even one thinks about these things, we do not care about them. Hence it is us who are part of this issue.

May be I have written some disjointed thoughts, but because of all these reasons the quest for eradication of Black Money will fail. Also just think that you can bring back all the Rs 100,000 crores back into India from the tax heavens, what is the guarantee that most of the money vanishes again and go back into possibly accounts of same persons with different names this time?