A curious paradox of the Indian establishment is that a growing number of its children are choosing to desert this democracy and live abroad, especially in the US. This strange phenomenon came into sharp focus on February 5 when the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative released an exhaustive 214-page report, exposing  54 countries that helped to facilitate the US Central Intelligence Agency’s secret detention, rendition, and interrogation programme in the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York.  The principal author of the report is Amrit Singh, daughter of prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, and a senior legal officer of the society.

For the page 3 and occident obsessed Indian media, the success in any field of endeavour of members of the Indian diaspora is cause for celebration and wonderment. But amid the celebrations, the larger question of why the offspring of politicians and leading lights of the establishment — who one would presume have everything going for them in this country — choose to live and make their careers abroad, tends to be obfuscated.

Surprisingly, children of several Presidents of India including the late Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and R. Venkatraman and of a huge number of influential politicians and bureaucrats prefer to live in Western nations, rather than in the republic being shaped by their parents. According to an immigration officer in the US embassy in New Delhi, no sooner is a politician elected to any high office in the country, she begins “plotting and planning to get a green card” for one or more of her  progeny. Ditto Indian diplomats posted abroad — in the UN, World Bank, IMF etc. They obviously have little faith in the outcomes of policies they impose upon the people of India.

The tragedy of post-independent India is that its political class has so thoroughly beggared the economy that even its own children want to quit and run. Obviously they have inside information about the future of this country, which the rest of us don’t.  

Unwarranted entitlements

If ever there was any doubt in the collective public mind about the probity and bona fides of the Congress-led UPA-II government which has misruled the country from the Delhi durbar for four years, it should be removed by the Agusta Westland helicopter purchase deal. Right from the start after it was fortuitously re-elected in 2009, the Congress party has been involved in one financial scandal after another, with the sums getting ever larger. The Rs.10,000 crore Commonwealth Games scam was followed by the Rs.86,000 crore 2G telecom spectrum allotment scandal, the Rs.185,591 crore coal blocks allocation rip-off, besides sundry land acquisition and allocation rackets. And hard on the heels of the above comes the scandalous Rs.3,600 crore Westland helicopter purchase contract. Kickbacks estimated at Rs.362 crore are reported to have been paid as bribes to a clutch of government officials, a former chief of the Indian Air Force and defence minister Pranab Mukherjee (now the President of India, no less), for manipulation of the tender to suit the Italian corporate Finemeccanica, the holding company of Agusta Westland.

But even as this latest scandal has opened up a new can of worms with allegations of payments to “the family” and its legion of courtiers, the larger question of why 12 helicopters priced at Rs.300 crore each, needed to be purchased for the use of the prime minister and government VVIPs, seems to have escaped public notice. The irony of  MPs and state legislators who by neglecting their parliamentary duties, and through other acts of omission and commission have ruined the nation’s cities, road traffic, law and order, Indian Railways, Air India etc, benefitting from their follies and insulating themselves from sins of their own making by voting themselves extraordinary privileges, seems to be lost not only upon the punch-drunk public, but upon the media as well.

Within the Delhi imperium (and state capitals) there’s an exaggerated and unwarranted sense of entitlement. It’s high time the public (and the incrementally co-opted media) wised up to the reality that our legislators and ministers are just doing a job — and not a very good one at that — and remind them that they have a moral obligation to share the thousand unnatural shocks and pain they inflict upon the public. And to start with, it’s a good idea to auction away the entire 100-strong VIP fleet of jets and helicopters purchased and maintained for the prime minister and his cabinet. Austerity must begin at the top.          

Distant admiration

Life is full of surprises and there’s a piquant irony in the news that Bangalore-based IT billionaire Azim Premji has become the first Indian to sign the Giving Pledge, an initiative of America’s most successful business tycoons Bill Gates and Warren Buffet under which billionaires and HNW (high net worth) individuals pledge to donate more than half their wealth to charitable and philanthropic causes. On March 24, 2011, 50 Indian magnates held a ‘giving discussion’ with Gates and Buffet in Delhi. Of them only Premji — after considerable prevarication — transferred 2.13 million equity shares of Wipro Ltd, valued at Rs.8,846 crore to the Azim Premji Foundation (APF), which is in the process of constructing the Rs.500 crore (first phase) Azim Premji University (APU) in suburban Bangalore. By signing the Giving Pledge, Premji has committed himself to multiplying his grant to APF/APU by a factor of five to a massive Rs.40,000 plus crore. The personal shareholding of this IT czar in Wipro is valued at Rs.87,000 crore.

Although to his credit Premji was one of the first business champions of primary education, small good causes didn’t — and still don’t — receive his helping hand. When this publication, also committed to universal primary education, was floundering in shallows and misery, Premji turned a deaf ear to modest advertising support pleas. This despite my previous acquaintance with him and his wife Yasmin (in my capacity as editor of Business India) in Mumbai, and the latter working in an associate publication.

However despite this contumely, there’s no denying that by being the first Indian to sign the Giving Pledge, Premji has provided an object lesson in committed philanthropy. As such, he deserves the respect and gratitude of all right-thinking people, your editor included. Nevertheless I prefer to admire him long distance.