More than a year has passed since Prime Minister’s Modi’s sudden announcement on demonetisation took the country by a pleasant surprise. Even though most citizens were inconvenienced with the decision, everybody took it in their stride hoping that the Prime Minister had fired the first salvo in the war against corruption. While many other measures were expected to follow, unfortunately none of it has materialised yet, putting serious doubts on the demonetisation exercise itself.
It’s naïve to think that crooks smart enough to cheat the system and rob the taxpayers of their money, are going to be left behind in diversifying their ill gotten wealth. In their diversification strategy, cash will always be the least component in their financial management. So what demonetisation has done is addressed a very small portion of the dishonest resources, while the rest of the crooked assets have found their way into real estate in the country, and in Goa’s case, money being parked in the form of real estate out of the country, taking advantage of the NRI route and the more recent Portuguese passport path.
Many citizens san their own property and in the hope of making some extra dough have unwittingly allowed some of their crooked fellow citizens to park their ill-gotten wealth, which is now filled to the brim and anymore of it, will only make them sitting ducks in front of the authorities. Win-Win situation to both parties; the crook gets to hoodwink the system and the willing perennial poor chap gets his share for the risk he takes. While it is not so difficult to hold on to somebody’s untraceable cash or gold on a temporary basis, many citizens are brash enough, with scant respect for the law to allow crooked real estate being bought in their name which does not belong to them. Of course the holding period is years and sometimes even spill on to the next generations, and the commission could be more than a packet.
To offset this crooked wealth parking arrangement the government had to be seen doing something, so they come up with a Benami Transaction Act, a rule which is supposed to corner both parties that are into this crooked deal. One wonders if they are really serious with this act, because the name itself suggests a very cute word ‘benami’, in Hindi only means ‘nameless’. The word could have been ‘behmani’ which in English means ‘cheating’, and even that word qualifies as a mild word for the offence they are willing to commit. Apparently this act has been in existence for years and the word ‘benami’ was used because of the fictitious names being used for dubious purchases, but that seems quite difficult now. The current situation is such that there is a physical person ready to lend his name in the purchase and that makes the word ‘benami’ all the more outdated.
To be fair, let’s not completely write of this Act, just because it does not have an apt name. According to the Finance Ministry they have unearthed 900 cases of benami properties recently amounting to Rs 3,500 crores and the authorities are promising more intensified efforts. Good luck to them, because the initial numbers are just too small for sincere citizens to feel that it has managed to trap everybody in the net.
Since it’s an ongoing investigation, the finance ministry is excused not to release the names of people involved in these transactions, but eventually the plan should be to release every beneficiary involved in the transaction alongwith the list of properties. Otherwise India’s image will take a beating despite the monotonous hard sell our Prime Minister does at summits such as the recent World Economic Forum. It will also create a level playing field where the hardworking sincere rich are treated with respect and adulation, while the hoodwinking dishonest moneyed are automatically shunned by society.
Shunning from society is not an easy task given the short public memory and lack of sincere and honest information. Take for example in Goa, a crook will swindle or cheat very few days of his life. The rest of his days he is involved in image building, through charity, visible in public places doing all the right things, speaking the right words, infiltrating every possible social circle, hoping people take the bait. Goans, gullible humans that we are, easily fall for it and inadvertently allow ourselves to be taken for a jolly good ride.
A timely release of this crooked property list with the people involved in these twisted transactions will put an end to the debate of ‘Who’s Who’ in Goa. It should also settle all the phony successful people that are already on the top of social ladder with the sheer power of their crooked wealth and behave like Pied Pipers swaying public opinion the way they would like it to be. If we want genuine successes to be part of our legacy then we need get rid of the spurious ones.
Goa for too long has been at the mercy of the specious species, who by the way manage a well-oiled gossip machinery that is capable of spreading lies and deceit so as to target the genuine, honest and hardworking Goans. A crooked property holder list will not only discredit the crooks, but will clear suspicion on Goans unfortunately on the wrong side of the gossip machinery with questions being raised about their genuine wealth sometimes even their inherited properties. Lack of proper data always confuses society and a list of this sort will bring about some sort of normality.
Prime Minister Modi’s intentions are not to be doubted, but his circle of influence has kept him totally behind the curve. In the recent World Economic Summit many high networth Indians were seen making enquiries of new type of havens to park their assets. Some of them were Cryptocurrencies and cash vaults big enough to store gold, paintings, sculptures and buried deep inside the Swiss snow with multiple layers of security. How will the government figure out such sophisticated arrangements, when they are unable to figure out simple ‘behmani’ properties, openly purchased in the country and openly visible, for all to see?
(The author is a Business Consultant).
