It was a cloudy Saturday morning with chill breeze striking my face and I was in 29c bus to reach chetpet for a speech addressed by Mr. Arun Shourie, Journalist, author and former union minister and Mr. Vittal former central vigilance commissioner on the topic ‘Real Significance of Scams’ at chinmaya heritage centre organised by Nani Palkhivala foundation. I knew the speech is going to be amazing and most interesting. Since my company is doing PR for Nani Palkhivala foundation i was the PR executive assigned for this event. This is my first political event. i was under the impression that very young guns would be seen in the crowd, but to my surprise i saw so many old grandfathers and grandmothers walking up to floors to listen to the speech. The crowd had gathering of retired IAS, IPS, Advocates etc, mostly above 60’s. Their involvement in this speech made me listen to the speech. As so many people came via lift I saw Mr. Arun Shourie climbing the stairs with a beaming smile at me in reception and proceeded to the hall...
People were still coming in groups; never i have heard any political speech, i was so anxious to know what he is going to speak. Usually for any event media would reach little late or sometimes never turn up, but this time i saw herds of media people specially TV channels and almost all the publications signing the media registration. My curiosity went sky high.
After all the registrations i finally entered the hall. Mr.VIttal was speaking about the scams. I am no great in understanding politics ever. For that fact i used to sulk in college to study politics and write an exam for 100 marks (which was totally a disaster) one good thing about my college days is that i got the habit of taking running notes whenever someone addresses the gathering. The same thing happened here also.
The main topic discussed here was the 2G spectrum scam. (1.76 crore scam by RAJA)
Well coming to the point Mr. Vittal made few statements which was very much informative... i would like to jot them as points.
- He said time has come to expose those who give bribe rather than those who receive them.
- 1961 of dowry act says both the giver and the taker are found guilty; the same thing could be done for scams also. Or take actions like the outcomes of chandrawadhana commission.
- Today the conviction rate of punishment in court is only 6% which means 94% of people get escaped.
- In our country we make laws with huge loopholes.
- When there can be law breakers? And why not law makers?
- Why should we have tainted ministers?
- This topic of ‘Real Significance of Scams ‘shows how systematically we are fooled by our constitution.
- In Hong Kong when they had corruption they had ICAC – Independent commission against corruption, which was aimed to clean up endemic corruption in the many departments of the Hong Kong Government through law enforcement, prevention and community education. The ICAC is headed by the Commissioner. Due to which the corruption rate got reduced.
- To see a change in our country there are two T’s important to fight corruption
1. TINA factor (There is no other alternative) – This would ensure guilty and punishment is given.
2.Transparency – this would ensure prevention of corruption
- CVC, CAG, Election commission and Judiciary should bring the TINA factor.
- Mr. Vittal said there are huge loopholes in our constitution but I don’t see any Loops I see huge holes instead.
- Corruption is like a cancer in our country it should be killed soon else it would spread so much.
- He mentioned that if ministers are corrupt their assistants would do paper work for the ministers and later for them too, this would develop and corruption level goes high.
- He said Nira Radia is a great contribution to the society where there is an interlocking web of mutual complexity which is exposed through the record conversations
- Today reforms are becoming impossible and PM is operating in a system where he is unable to improve reforms. Also added that PM knew about these scams before but did nothing for about 2years.
- Further he said we should be very active else a corrupt person will rely on our laziness by not looking into the facts.
- There should not be any adjournments by court for any scams else they would keep piling and over a period of time people would forget it and new scam would come up.
- Two punishments should be given
1.Physical incarnation – should be put in jail
2.Barred from public life for life.
- He said not to believe everyone is a crook and do not get deflected by facts
- Today most honest people are being under investigation for scams, advice to those people would be, don’t feel bad because it is your duty to help the country
- Advice to Raja – stop following my footsteps and become a approver, even your leaders have said that a single person is not involved in any scam.
Well there the speech ends. These are the few important points i could make note of. Once the speech got over every television media circled Mr. Shourie and asked zillion questions like are you ready to face the CBI, was your ministry clean when you were union minister and all that. He had answered positively for those questions.
What i was amazed was i had seen media being gathered to one person only in TV.. When I saw so many of them climbing up to the stage and asking question i was amazed. I was standing much interested in knowing what Mr. Shourie is speaking rather than the media crowd, so i was rounding that small speech trying to listen sharp. I felt happy sharing the same stage of Mr. Arun Shourie.
That day event was so damn educative. I had zero knowledge in politics before now it has grown a little; I hope I would follow about this spectrum scam if not other scams...
