Toll Plaza Pvt. Ltd.

Our media houses by their innate nature always highlight the reaction. They forget the genesis of a problem. Let us take the latest real life case study to prove our point. Toll plazas have become a preferred business vehicle for minting illegal money in least possible time and in the safest possible way. If some reports were to be believed than the Pune-Ahmednagar highway was upgraded by the government with a budget of 100 crores. And the modus operandi of our government is that they make/upgrade the road and sell it to the toll Sharks which can be seen operating under different names like UP toll plaza ltd, Eastern toll ways ltd etc.

Initially these companies will agree on ‘modest’ profits of 20-24 crores. The government gives them rights to collect toll for say a period of 10 years in the Pune-Ahmednagar highway case. In return the government recovers their cost which was 100 crores and says some 20 more crores adjusted for inflation.

Now let us do some math:

They assumed a maximum of 10 lacs collection per day (In fact it is 13-16 lacs). In 1 year it will be

1000000*30*12 = 360000000 or 36 crores

In 10 years it will be 360 crores. (We are not assuming any increase in traffic density)

And it does not end here.

The insatiable greed for riches among the pseudo literate toll owners is so high they start to make things real dirty. 

Toll is collected based on the expected vehicle density. Initially the toll agreed is based upon the vehicle density which is not fixed and can be calculated at a future point on the discretion of toll owners.

Suppose vehicle density decided was 25000 vehicles per day. Suddenly they will start showing the density as less than 10000 per day. This argument alone is enough for them to get the toll collection extension from 10 years to 30 years with inflation adjusted toll prices going north every year. For 30 years this collection will in fact cost (calculated at 15 lacs collection per day): 1500000*30*12*30 = 1620 crores

With hikes in tolls every now and then this will easily cross 2000 crores

So with investment of 120-140 crores the returns are humongous at

2000-120/120 * 100 = 1567 %.

Can you think of a better business plan than this one?

The numbers are just speculative and may be different from actual figures. There is no source available to verify that what was the total expenditure? What percent was funded by the government? What was the state’s contribution? Is the vehicle density figure correct? Is the eternal tax collection justified? Are we not paying double? Where the money from toll collection is going?

There is a great need of urgency from the citizen of India to unravel this mystical business. If everything is in order then both the government and the toll companies should not shy away in making their record books public.

The burden of this corrupt business is borne by the taxpayer. We all are tired of this but barring few NGO’s no one has stand up against these powerful toll companies. In most of the toll plazas they have employed the rotting, good for nothing and anti social minds from the 2^nd, 3 tier cities and also from some villages as toll plaza staff. With absolute zero training for customer service, these people create all sorts of havoc for the vehicle owners. They slang, intimidate and humiliate even the senior citizens and women passengers. They are trained for just exploiting money out of the pocket of the vehicle owner. They won’t allow slightest of the deviation in their collection plan when ironically they are allegedly doing all sort of scams as discussed above.

There might be very small percentage of good employees also but largely this whole toll collection company idea is a corruption juggernaut.

There is a high probability that the government has a hand in glove with them. Other wise why no action been taken against these errant companies which continue to hoodwink the taxpayers by these perennial tax collection regimes?

This ill practice is throughout the country, but neither the center nor any political party has spoken against it till now.

One political party has tried to reign in these toll plazas by asking people not to pay any more taxes on Mumbai-Pune expressway as well as to nearby toll plazas. Something grossly wrong was happening and MNS has tried to put an end to it. Its chief has even said that they will take the matter to the court. We should all appreciate the efforts this party in these directions and should make the use of every opportunity to highlight this on a national level so that this agitation against the evil permeates to the other toll plazas across the country as well.

For the information of the reader, it is the responsibility of the center to provide funds for the building Highways and roads. States also rope in to develop the center funded projects. We have already paid for those funds in the form of taxes. So why shall we pay these unreasonable toll taxes to warm the pockets of these selfish and greedy toll companies and their allies?

The case of Subjective Integrity and Propriety

Pt. Nehru had a very beautiful dream of a modern India. A socialist to the core, he never wanted India to turn into a country where the rich continue to be richer and poor the poorer. Thus he tried the mix of socialism and capitalism. He was inspired by the social principles of Russia but at the same time he was wary of a communist regime like China. He thus thought that the state will control the production and businesses to keep a check on the undesirable capitalism. His bureaucracy of Red tapes and licenses resulted in what he never wanted. Unknowingly his policies gave birth to some of the biggest business houses while the businesses of others with less influence within the political class were stillborn. This led to acute gaps among the rich and the poor and some of the agonized poor took shelter in the world of crime to reach their aspirations and to enjoy the pleasures of the materialistic world which they had done only in their fantasies lately.

In 1991, with some improvements in the policies in the name of reforms, other players also started to compete against the incumbents. The concentration of crony capitalism decreased but its scope increased manifolds. In every sort of business, one has two options – either go through the compliances honestly or be in hand in glove with the government officials to get the task done. There were some who always kept on cribbing with the policies while there were others like Dhirubhai Ambani who studied the policies and adapted to them in the best possible way.

To understand corruption in the strata of our society let us divide them into three classes – the upper class, the middle class and the lower class.

The upper class is either comfortably settled in the business houses or they are into dynasty politics. Politics and the big corporate houses are inseparable. Both of them want more of each other. The business family wants to put there representative in the Government to get the windfalls of various kinds. Many corrupt politicians wants to get into business to rule out any uncertainty over their political career. They are the least bothered about the problems like inflation, drought, and healthcare because they never face such issues. They are the parasites who thrive on the hard earned money of the other less privileged classes.

Middle class are those set of people who have anyhow kept themselves educated and values of hard work and submissiveness are ingrained into them. To classify them honest will be unfair to the privileged class we have discussed above. There may be honest people but unless they are into position from where their integrity can be judged, it will be incorrect to declare them morally clean. Honesty sometimes is the lack of opportunity and there are some evidences which testify that a middle class person if promoted to the condition of authority can be equally corrupt and will not leave any stone unturned to write letter of recommendations to allocate some natural resources to his ally/business friend.

Traditionally the children of middle classes have tried to become doctors, engineers, and they also fill the enormous government positions in clerical or administrative kind of jobs. Many doctors working in government hospitals exploit the patients. The timing of a government hospital is from 8 AM to 2 PM for regular duty. These doctors have their private properties but they never give away the government houses as it make their lives ultra-convenient. They wake up at 7:30 AM go to the Superintendent’s office to mark their presence, come back to their house get ready by 9:30 or 10 AM and go back to their respective departments. They complete the formality of seeing the jostling patients till 11:30 only and immediately after that they go to the tea room to do gossiping. After around 45 minutes of gossiping they come back to their offices and continue to see the patients for another 1 hour or so. In total they are doing the duty for 2-3 hours. Then where will the rest of the patients go? They will go to their houses and clinics. As they pay a monthly allowance to the superintendent, they are allowed to do private practice right under his nose even though they are strictly prohibited by law to do so. I can challenge an inquiry team to visit any government hospital and their residences; they will be caught red handed minting money.

Many engineers in government companies give away contracts to unqualified contractors. They also use substandard material in construction of bridges, buildings and other important civil structures. Some of them are honest but seldom do they find any courage to complain against the corrupt system in which they are operating.

And then there is the epitome of corruption the ‘Sarkari Babus’. Agreed their salaries are less but if they take it as a justification for corruption this is going to create a huge social divide among their peers. This is because they are in a position to use corruption in their favor while indiscriminately exploiting the rich and the poor. Whether it is the case of passport, RTO, Railways sometimes they become so much engrossed with the easy money that they forget their limits. When a peon in the office of a minster is found to have net worth of over 200 crores of rupees, it is bound to raise eyebrows.

Let us now take the example of a self-made corrupt and how he created a difference in the lives of his loved ones. Suraj (fictional name) lost his right hand at the age of 14 as a result of an accident. He lost interest in studies and was heading towards a state of total despair and depression. By the time he reached his 20’s he had decided to earn money without caring about the means of earning. Though uneducated and especially abled, he was gifted with focus and hard work. He had figured out that LPG gas is his ticket to the world of money and power. He studied the various policies of Government and figured out that he can easily get an LPG agency with the handicapped reservation. He applied and he got the agency. He started making modest income of 10 thousand initially and 30-50 thousand per month after some years. This was not enough to quench his thrust. He decided to take the plunge in the world of corruption and starting selling cylinders in ‘Black’ while exploiting every loop hole in the policies. The city was expanding and the demand was increasing with some 50-60 thousand cylinders per day. Initially he started with 20-30 cylinders which brought him a profit of 5000-8000 Rs per day. Slowly and steadily he was selling some 200 cylinders per day with the help of the wide network and he started realizing profits of around 30-40000 per day. He is earning around 100 lacs per annum. This is outrageous, even an engineer from the best engineering college and from the best MBA college cannot earn this much in salary even in the first 10 years of his career.

The story of Suraj and others in the middle classes tells us that when it comes to easy money corruption becomes subjective and being corrupt no longer is seen as wrong, it becomes just the right thing to do and the one who are not able to do it are classified as losers not in fact ‘honest’.

If for an instant you thought that people in private organization are hardworking and honest, you may be well wrong. The fact that the management and board of various companies is many times accused and convicted for crony capitalism rest the case if corruption is an anomaly for them.

If we talk about the employees who have no say in lobbying or manipulating account books, they have other mechanisms by which they time and again prove that corruption is not an alien term to them. Not voting at all year after year clears their stand on corruption.

Since corruption has become order of the day, it is next to impossible to obliterate it.
What is possible is Hope of a perfect world and whoever stands up against the corrupt should be supported irrespective of how inconsequential his intentions and actions may seem today.

The corrupt rate of growth

The growth rate of the socialist India before 1991 was termed as ‘The Hindu rate of growth’. This term was coined by Indian economist Raj Krishna but was widely used by many authors, journalists and critics all over the world. The Hindu growth rate was a symbol of stagnating growth. The growth was around 2-3.5% while many other ‘non Hindu’ countries in the South Asia were marching well ahead of India. One of the reasons for this was the contentment of the Indian society and the fatalism that their present actions have no bearing on the future.

Though India was able to come out of the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ with the help of easing of the economy, the growth which we saw till 2007 was the ‘Pseudo growth’ because merely by saying that we are witnessing a growth rate of 7-8% we do not become efficient and effective. Since there was a huge growth deficit in the past, the difference created this surge in growth.

Our real test was to be started with the receding of the 1^st wave of growth phase. We needed more reforms based on careful analysis of the Internal as well as external factors. Unfortunately no analysis took place and what we saw was financial terrorism of astronomical proportion. When corruption can bring the growth of a country from 8% to 4%, it should qualify as terrorism as a handful of people are responsible for playing with the tax payer’s fund.

Naturally the growth which we are currently seeing is the ‘corrupt rate of growth’. It does not ends here the inflation keeps on increasing because the sources of funds which can reduce it are diverted to the coffers of corrupt ministers, contractors and corporate who are agents of cronyism. If we continue to go with this corrupt rate of growth we will definitely witness a negative growth. There will be famines, droughts, epidemics etc. as we will not have any funds for the public use. All the money will be with the above mentioned people who will flee to other countries to make sure that they remain unaffected.

   

Why UPA 3 is Guaranteed

Recently the country is seeing some sort of protests and agitations against the our Honorable Government, Politicians, Bureaucrats and the System itself.

However these agitations cannot be called as the movement of the 'Aam Aadmi' as the actual common man of the country has not given its certificate of support to these movements. It may be surprising and disconcerting to some of the charged up young working classes of the country who have started taking deep interest in the Indian Politics albeit via the cozy comforts of virtual world of blogs, Facebook, twitter etc.

Just have a look at the results of 2009 General elections for Pune, Maharashtra:

General Election, 2009: Pune
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Congress	Suresh Kalmadi	2,79,973	38.12
	BJP	Anil Shirole	2,54,272	34.62
	MNS	Ranjeet Shirole	75,930	10.33
	BSP	D. S. Kulkarni	62,981	8.57
Majority			25,701

Pune had the population of around 28 lacs in 2009 and the voter turnout was 7,34,370.

Statistics prove that some of the tainted party have a assured vote bank, irrespective of the amount of negativity and exploitation they bring to their constituencies or to the country. This CVB (confirmed vote bank) will again try to do the same for the bribe of 5000 Rs (example) of which they receive 100 Rs as down payment from the political goons. The number of the currency note is noted down. Now if the corrupt party wins they can go to the party goons and reclaim their 4900 Rs. Needless to say that these CVB people will definitely vote for the most corrupt party to get their share of the looted booty.
The anti corruption activists are doing their part. can we not do ours and make sure that these CVB's become inconsequential. All it takes is some commitment to enroll ourselves in the electoral list keeping aside the excuses we have and vote for the candidate we feel is best.

If we cant do this, it is guaranteed that IAC or some other honest politician will only end up in diverting the votes of the best alternative we have to the most corrupt party of the country.

Let us put corruption first - A peek into the history

Corruption in India – Some parallels with the history

Now let us go back to history to understand the Psychology of a corrupt.  Though the story might sound mythological and lack evidence but still it draws parallel with the current monarchs and rulers who are ruling us albeit in the shield of democracy and constitution.  In the year 326 B.C. Alexander was marching towards India, the land of opulence and unexplored treasure. He first encountered King Ambi, who instead of showing resistance to the unwanted infiltrator chose to be submissive and became a vassal of him. His next encounter was at the Jhelum river with King Puru who declined his superiority and chose to be contumacious. Though he was defeated in the battle, he never ran or surrendered. Alexander was impressed by his tenacity and fearlessness.  When brought before Alexander, he was asked for his wishes and expectations. Puru told Alexander that he wanted to be treated like a King. Alexander asked him to be elaborate on this but he said that the one line he said is enough. Alexander was so impressed he actually treated him like a king. He gave back his kingdom along with some more land from his previous victories. This treatment melted Puru emotionally; he became the loyal partisan of Alexander. Many other people under his rule accepted the supremacy of the Greek Empire. An invader is an invader and supporting him when he is going to destroy and loot the country is a sin. But in this case Puru clearly demonstrated that a human being shows signs of detachment from the well accepted principles and ethics when huge personal gains are put into the equation.

Consider the current scenario. The Genesis of the ruling party is the dynasty politics. Dynasty politics, coupled with some of the most unfortunate events in the late 80’s resulted in an unintended enforced regime, which by the face of it is not an authoritarian one but it becomes one when democracy and its values are misused.  Today merit has no place in our ruling party or any party for that matter. Look at the obsequiousness of the politicians.  Irrespective of the gravity of the corruption, they will never call a spade a spade and will keep on repeating the concocted stories and irresponsible arguments to hide the shameful acts of their masters.  

 Who will guard the guards?

This question becomes all relevant when everything is in the hand of the politicians. They are the policymakers and it is all but natural for them to make the best policies for them and reject the one’s which might bring slightest of the inconvenience to them. Thus they will sing together in one tone and will show their exuberance by thumping tables in the parliament when bill for increase in the MP’s salary is announced. On the contrary they will tear apart the anti corruption bills like the Lokpal.

Becoming an MP is such a feast for the politician that he will not relinquish his position no matter if he gets a call from his age, conscience or most importantly the people who have sent him there with a selfless purpose to serve them.   Recently one of the highest ranking ministers of the country visited a college with his huge entourage. The college ground was destroyed to make a helipad for him. And if that was not enough, he denied walking from the helipad to the nearest exit which was just 30-50 meters. To accommodate his wishes a small road was dug from the helipad to the exit so that his high end Mercedes can reach the door of the chopper and he does not sweat or feel a pinch of heat. From there he was taken to the air conditioned hall where he was supposed to recite a speech. He had special commandos working for him like his servants. He could not settle in the chair, he could not pour water in his glass; he could not carry the piece of paper carrying his rehearsed speech to the microphone. For everything there was the servant or the commando or whatever you may call it.

This is just a page from their super luxurious lives which ends only with their demise and till then they continue to get themselves pampered on the tax payer’s money.

So when the question of parting with this lifestyle or to continue to serve their masters like a sycophant comes, they always chose the latter. One of the ministers of the ruling party admitted this in front of the camera.  When asked if he is the minister of the country or the minister of his party? He lost his cool and left the discussion midway. The sane thing for him from the political point of view was to recite some soft words for the country without compromising on his sycophant adrenaline gush.  Such was the level of catharsis and love for his political demi Gods, he chose to ignore the important question on the responsibility as a minister he has for his country and its citizen. He bluntly said, “We will do everything to teach lessons to the clunks who try to malign the name of the best people of this country.” He further added that he is ready to die for his Political masters because they are the reason for his existence and not the ordinary citizen. Sorry Mr. Minister but you have got it wrong. You are not there because of your leadership. You are there because the people of this country had voted for this party. You should be ready to die for the people of the country and not the deified mortals you have discovered in your leadership.

Let us put Corruption first

India Today – Has the threshold of patience being reached

Recently Union Home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, said in a function in Pune – “People of this country have a very weak memory.  They will forget the Coal scam very soon just like they forgot the Bofors scam”. Though after the media and public mew he clarified that whatever he said was just to prolong the vivacity of the evening. The reality on the other side is that he was dreadfully serious. Each and every word uttered out of his mouth was as serious as the condition of the country which is at the verge of a collapse. It was as serious as the condition of a young girl who had been gang raped and her identity is divulged to the media by the incorrigible police; It was as serious as the starving families of the farmers who have committed suicide because of the failure of rains and the unpardonable mismanagement by the Agriculture ministry; It was as serious as the expressionless face of a mother whose child has died in her arms because she does not have any money to buy the medicine which cost thousand of rupees; It was as serious as the meddlesome eyes of a child worker who gets lost in the imaginary world whenever he sees more fortunate children and the inequality in this world.

Many of us will agree that Shinde’s words were very serious and real.  It does not need any special attention of one to be aware of the catastrophic corruption we are seeing today. 2G scam, Coal scam, Thorium scam, Granite scam, Irrigation scam, fodder scam, NRHM scam, Aadarsh scam and the list is never ending. There is no point in discussing the scams again. People like to forget them and let them do that. Now it is time to focus on the way to either move away from corruption or whole heartily embrace it. The middle path of ‘chalta hai’ will be a strong disservice to the less fortunate people of this country.

Dream of a corruption free India – A Utopia?

Lately we have seen few individuals who have tried to give corrupt people a run for their money. Though they remained defiant in their efforts for some time, slowly they are losing steam because they were not able to figure out the cohesive which can keep them united. Their fight which was supposed to be a revolution is fizzling out in the form of an unsuccessful melee. On the other hand the corrupt have been able to up the ante of corruption with the help of unity of money, resources, windfalls etc. They have been instrumental in managing such a colossal Empire which is much more difficult to manage than a multinational company.

However the CEO’s of various companies can learn lessons from these crusaders of corruption. Just take the case of coal and irrigation scams. Let us not get into the details but it is irresistible to accentuate this interesting piece of parody – One of the minister is a director of one of the many companies he is having stakes in. He lobbies for the allocation of the country’s resources for his company. He gets the desired resource almost for free for his company.   The valuation of the company goes up he reaps the windfalls. This minister also helps to get contracts of Irrigation to his business partner and friend. When the contractor fails to complete the work, his payment is held back by the Government for some or the other reason. This minister again writes multiple letters to the Government to expedite the release of money for the contractor with no mention of the shoddy work if at all was done by the shoddy contractor. All these communications are preserved for future generations to consider them as precedence of The Great corruption the country has ever seen. The bottom-line is that if the government documents cannot be evidence of this humongous corruption, nothing else can.