SIT on black money has a long way to go

The Narendra Modi government would have accumulated goodwill with its very first Cabinet decision on Tuesday to set up a special investigating team (SIT) on the question of black money. This issue has agitated political and public discourse since the late Sixties. Opponents of the government of the day have frequently accused it of permitting an atmosphere in which the growth of tainted money can flourish, and of colluding with its operators.

It is hard to think that the proposition is entirely without merit. At the very least, poor governance which leads widespread tax evasion, and fosters a culture of getting round laws by paying bribes over many decades, and the air of impunity that goes with it (the rich and the powerful getting away easily), is responsible both for the creation and circulation of unaccounted money.

However, it must be said that in the absence of reliable estimates (although scholars have worked on the theme), alarmist figures suggesting astronomical sums of money being parked abroad have taken hold of the Indian psyche.

When the UPA-2 regime began to come under fire, and anyone could make bold to challenge the government to get the “country’s looted wealth” back, the Supreme Court responded positively to a writ petition by eminent lawyer Ram Jethmalani and others who sought a direction to the government to find ways for the return of the money from accounts held illegally abroad. It asked the government to set up an SIT. This was in 2011.

Politically, the UPA failed to read the mood, and instead of appointing an SIT, it made executive efforts to get details from the Swiss, the Germans and others. It also urged the apex court to amend its order to form an SIT. The top court refused the plea. The new BJP government, by smartly taking up the matter as the first item on its agenda and appointing the high-powered Justice M.B. Shah panel, has not only speedily abided by the highest court’s order, it has scored a major political point.

But for all that, it is natural to be cynical about what the SIT can achieve. A good deal of the ground work has been done by earlier governments and not much of value has emerged. As the M.C. Joshi Committee indicated two years ago, the two big parties (presumably Congress and BJP) spend between them about $7 billion in election expenses alone every year. The conspicuous sums spent in the recent Parliament poll by the present ruling party is a case in point. Can a satisfactory account be given of where such monies come from, and where they are parked, if leading parties are under suspicion?