Time for a change?

2010 has been the year of scams for India. From the IPL scam to the LIC housing finance loan bribery scam, just when we thought that India has seen it all,and possibly can not take any more, we are again affronted with a new scam namely the PDS food scam of bihar.India is no stranger to scams, be it the Bofors scam,Satyam scam, the Harshad Mehta-Ketan Parekh stock market scam or the Telgi scam. But never has our country been riddled with so many major scams alone in a single year as has been the case of 2010.The collective figures of the scams in 2010 alone are well beyond Rs 2,00,000 crore – a 13-digit figure. And this is not counting the recent PDS scam of Uttar Pradesh, whose value is yet to be properly evaluated by the authorities but is estimated to be 200,000 plus crores alone! Below is a list of the scams that hit our country in 2010 and their estimated values:

2G Spectrum scam - Rs 1,76L crore

CWG scam - Rs 8,000 crore

IPL scam - Rs 1,200-1,500 crore

LIC Housing Finance (LICHF) scam - Rs 1,000 crore

Adarsh society scam - Rs 1000 crore

PDS (wheat and other food grain) scam - Rs 200,000-plus crore

Though mind you all, these figures are just an estimated value and how many more zeroes the ongoing probes will add to these approximate values is yet to be seen.

This makes us wonder what the government is doing while all this is going on right? Well let me tell you, they are doing NOTHING! Yeah well nothing of use anyways. In fact many major politicians are being held accountable for these very scams.

A. Raja, the cabinet minister for communications and information technology, is the criminal mastermind behind the 2G spectrum scam. Criminal I say, though he still holds his cabinet post and proudly gives speeches on the idiot box as though he's a freedom fighter. Lobbyist Nira Radia proved just how her kind of species can use their reach and position to influence events and public opinions and even decide who can or cannot become a cabinet minister. Then there's Suresh Kalmadi,the 'Sports Mafia' of India, who while organizing the 2010 CWG became richer while the country had to face verbal blasts from the world all over for the sham that was the CWG. Lalit Modi, the 'Big Boss' of IPL, the businessman who made Indian 20-20 legendary (not all in the right sense), is now himself legendarily known for the scam that rocked the Indian sports scene (I say sports since cricket very much accounts for what passes as sports in our country). Not just Lalit Modi but many political bigwigs and well known Bollywood actors are also caught up in this huge money laundering scam which is a shameful excuse in the name of entertainment. We have to wonder whether Sharad Pawar deserves a clean chit for his inaction in exposing this scam (whether deliberate or unintentional is yet to be known).The very recent LIC housing finance scam saw top brass executives like LIC Housing Finance chief executive Ramachandran Nair, Life Insurance Corporation secretary for investments Naresh K Chopta, Bank of India general manager RN Tayal, and Central Bank of India director Maninder Singh Johar being arrested for this multi-crore fake housing loans scam, the likes of which haven't been seen since the Unit Trust of India corruption scandal a decade ago and the 1992 securities scam. And how can we forget the Adarsh Society scam, where political bigwigs like Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan duped our nation's war widows out of their rightfully deserved homes. Chief Minister Ashok Chavan's kith and kin aren't the only beneficiaries of this scandal though. Three former CMs — Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sushilkumar Shinde and Narayan Rane — all of whom have been, ironically enough, potential contenders for Chavan’s post also stand accused of owning flats under ‘benami’ names in Adarsh. Though Chavan had to give up his post as the CM (hardly any kind of justice in it I feel), the myriad others who partook in this political sham are still being probed by the various 'government agencies' and will undoubtedly remain scot free. And now the most recent PDS (public distribution system) food scam of Uttar Pradesh, where food grains meant for those under the below poverty line were snatched from their mouth and sold off to the open markets and even to the neighbouring countries, is possibly the biggest and the most shameful scam to ever hit India. Even though the scam was exposed recently it actually took place during the period of 2003-2007 under the Mulayam Singh regime. Apparently the Allahabad High Court has observed that a scam of such proportions could not have occurred without support from top officials and politicians. Well that's news! If you notice the major parties involved in all these scams have been cabinet ministers and brass officials of the ruling government party. Well FYI, while all this is going on, the opposition party isn't so far behind. Karnataka CM BS Yeddyurappa is in deep trouble over the alleged land scam involving him and his family. Yeddyurappa is accused of granting prime land in and around Bangalore to his sons and sons in law at throw away prices. And yet we see him still holding his post as the CM and crying his innocence for the world to see. The CBI on the other hand, being directly controlled by the government can hardly be trusted to 'actually' probe all these scams and put the culprits behind bars. I wonder whether that isn't a scam in itself?

How can these people even think of participating in such scams? Is the greed of money so great that they are able to smother their conscience enough to steal from the poorest of poor? To steal from the wives of those brave soldiers who gave their lives to protect us? Really, do they even have a conscience at all, or are they some new breed of mutant beings who don't even have an iota of humanity left in them? And all in the name of money. But these criminals shamelessly disguised as the government cant escape the increasing dissatisfaction and the urgency for unfulfilled justice among the common people for long. It would do them good to remember that it is we who made them and we who can destroy them just as easily.

So now since neither the ruling nor the opposition parties of the government are innocent, what do we do? Whom do we use our precious votes on? All these political scandals are enough to discourage any sane human being from voting. But then that's accepting defeat and we'd be accomplices in these criminal activities if we just give up. So while these political parties steal, scandalize and play the blame game, its left to us common citizens to wield our power over them and right the wrong. And how we can do that is a subject we direly need to think upon. Nothing is impossible, all we need to do is think and act. And if the ultimate solution is a new form of government, then so be it!