Very useful link ! Do not miss it

Dear Sir,

A complete free and helpful website for all Indian Internet Users.

http://www.eazyhomepage.com/

Seetha Hariharan

 sudha said...

thanks for the share. A very useful link

March 3, 2012 4:56 PM

Many may love to hear this in the morning

Dear Sri Hariharan,

I am attaching few Original versions of Sri Venkatesa Suprabatham (Old Version) - (prior to M.S. Subbulakshmi) which was broadcasted 30 years back in Vijayawada Radio Station regularly on Saturdays early morning followed by Sri Venkatesa Aasirvadha Mantram & Sri Alarmelu Manga Slokam - (I don't know the exact name of these Mantras), which you may kindly verify with Vaishnavait Scholars.

Since file will be more than 25 MB, I will separately attaching balance files in three or more.

Please upload on my behalf, which I hope all the members will enjoy this rare collection.

A line in reply is highly appreciated.

With kind regards,

T.L. SUBRAMANIAM

 

• http://www.mediafire.com/?4e67diziyse1d16 Sri venkatesa suprabaadham original
• http://www.mediafire.com/?kem2o9y2k266dhh Venkatachalapathi Aasirvadha Manthram
• http://www.mediafire.com/?wrqbkk7cli4ev9h Om Namo venkatesaya - M.S. Subbalakshmi
• http://www.mediafire.com/?31nl5u7uqoapp66 Thirupathi chendru - Sirgazhi Govindarajan
• http://www.mediafire.com/?c45bzyxeha99zt1 Thirupathi malai vaazhum - Sirgazhi Govindarajan
• http://www.mediafire.com/?3iqhracheles79v Namo venkatesa - Ghantasala
• http://www.mediafire.com/?6p3xetaf6t54m6v Thirumalai girivasa - Ghantasala

 

For a new year resolution

from the face book of Mr. Bhaskaran

marvelous idea see Calcutta show

See this link sent by Mr. Balayogi without fail.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/ryFQFzN6AMk?hd=1

First Hindu Glass temple

Worlds' 1st Hindu Glass Temple in Johor Bahru, Malaysia...

Impressive Hindu Temple fully covered by glasswork,

in a class by itself - one of a kind!

View from Outside


Vishnu seated on Garud

Shri Ganesh and also showing Jivan-Chakra on top

Kamalasan Brahmaji

Dhyanasth Shiv on Vyghambar (Tiger Skin)

Jivan Chakra (Life Cycle)

Conch - Shankh

Ganeshji playing Dandiya Raas

Thank Mr. Shankarnarayana Balakirishnan

 Anonymous said...

temple architecture is being dragged to dirt nowadays. Old ones are so beautiful. ones like these have no meaning / effect. some nut of an artist.There is a rama temple near my home where the fools changed the tile roof of entrance to metal sheet ! There is a Hanuman temple here in a military camp which is ok by itself with the open sky above. the nuts are going to cover the whole of the temple in metal sheet! 99% people in India are twits.

November 2, 2011 1:13 PM

Human bridge

Only the Army can do this..... (the recent earthquake in Sikkim)

Sent By Mr. Bhaskaran

 Hemalatha said...

Great Job !!!!!!!!! Let us salute them.

October 16, 2011 5:41 PM

Who is govt shielding in HSBC, Liechtenstein tax-haven lists?

Barack Obama is concerned about it, Angela Merkel is furious about it and Nicholas Sarkozy wants to regulate it. But the leaders of one of the countries most affected by the phenomenon of tax evasion and black money in safe havens – India – don’t want to do much about it.


Tax havens and offshore financial centres are where tax evaders and criminal elements hoard their ill-gotten wealth. In the midst of the Anna movement, one important thing – namely, black money abroad – has been pushed to the background. But this is really the Gangotri of corruption and we are doing little about it. Consider the following two examples:


The Liechtenstein affair: Liechtenstein is a tiny country and a convenient “letter box” for moneyed people all over the world to hide their illegal wealth. Germany’s intelligence agency seems to have paid an unnamed informer more than US$ 6 million for confidential and secret data about the clients of LGT group, a bank owned by the Liechtenstein Prince’s family.


The German government has announced that it will share information on accounts held in the tax haven with any government that asks for it. Finland, Sweden, Norway, UK, France, the US and Australia have expressed interest in the data obtained by Germany.


Now, the interesting and intriguing part is this: the Indian government was initially very reluctant to get that data from Germany. It finally got the data under public pressure in 2009. More than 100 names are presumably in that list. But the results have not been shared with Indian citizens, though some newspapers and TV channels have it.

Headquarters of the Liechtensteinische Landesbank bank Reuters

It is common knowledge that billions of dollars of Indian money is in various tax heavens like Antigua, Switzerland, Bahamas, Liechtenstein, Isle of Man, and St Kitts. But all our leaders – be they in  business, politics, films, sports or bureaucracy – are keen on keeping a conspiratorial silence.

The government is not releasing the names obtained from Germany and claims it is due to the double taxation treaty with that country. The data stolen by Germany from its neighbour is nowhere linked to our treaty since it does not pertain to any misdemeanor by Indians vis-vis Germany. But the government is intransigent. Who is it trying to protect?


Illegal money with HSBC: A few months ago, the Indian government got data on nearly a thousand accounts of Indians allegedly holding illegal wealth with HSBC Bank in Switzerland. This data was obtained by France from people who had stolen the data – more than 15,000 accounts – from HSBC’s data files. The French have given the full data set to us. The government of India is not telling the citizens what action it is taking. It does not want to share the names.


When quizzed about it, the finance minister chants the same mantra about double taxation treaties when those treaties take only prospective effect. What is needed is the political will to bring back the illegal funds accumulated abroad. From Bofors to CWG to 2G to Hasan Ali – all illegal money takes us to tax havens. The size of the illegal stash abroad by Indians is estimated anywhere between half a trillion ($500 billion) and one-and-a-half trillion ($1,500 billion).


Why black money held abroad is dangerous for India: The issue of black money held abroad is of paramount importance for four reasons.


Every two-bit expert on the Indian stock markets knows that our markets are moved by external flows – both inflows and outflows. Such flows may be the ill-gotten wealth of Indians kept abroad in tax havens or domestic funds sent out and brought back to facilitate these activities.


In other words, the destabilisation of our stock markets can be done using the black money in tax havens. The movement of the Sensex may not be related to the performance of our economy but to the actions of these black money holders.


The second concern is: are we adequately sterilised in terms of know your customer (KYC)? This is in the context of the concern expressed by our former National Security Advisor (MK Narayanan) regarding the possibility of terror funds coming through the financial markets.


Third, there is a question-mark about our ability to formulate policies without being blackmailed by foreign governments. For instance, many may not know that De La Rue Giori – the owner of more than 90 percent of the world’s currency printing business  in Switzerland – was one of the passengers in the Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Kandahar. (Time magazine, 17 January 2000). It is easy to imagine the type of pressure that could have been applied by the Swiss on our government at the time of the hijack.


If a large number of our elites hold illegal money in foreign countries like Switzerland, then we will be prone to manipulation in terms of policy formulation. It is not clear what role was played by various foreign agencies in the Kandahar hijack. Even now it is not clear if our foreign minister handed over dollars or Swiss currency to the hijackers. The true history may come out sometime in the future.


The same is the case with the Bofors funds. The Swedish authorities knew the names of beneficiaries and accounts since the bribe originated there. The Swiss government also knows the identities, since the money went into Swiss banks. The British government also has some idea, since some money was kept with Barclays by Ottavio Quattrochi and defrozen by our government from London.


The fourth issue is about getting arm-twisted in our economic and foreign policy formulations. It is pertinent to note that if the CIA knows about our leaders holding black money in tax havens, then there is a strong possibility that the ISI can also have that data. This is the danger faced by our republic. Our national policies may not be formulated in Delhi, but in Washington or Islamabad – if they have the data and can use it to pressure our leaders.


To protect and  preserve our republic we need to insist on exposing and bringing back this black money. Is there political will among India’s ruling class to put the issue of tax havens on the global agenda and compel other developed countries to facilitate the closure of these accounts? If not, we are doomed to be indirectly ruled by western spy agencies who have enough information to blackmail our policy-makers.


The tiny island absurdities had their place in the sun in the 20^th century. But in the 21^st century, integrity is the motto and transparency the mantra. India should pass a law making all the illegal wealth held abroad as part of a new national trust. We should, along with other emerging markets, arm-twist these tiny islands to give back our money.


India should bring sanity to the global financial markets and joy to millions of pauperised persons in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Let us be proactive and not be ruled by outsiders by cleaning up the global financial system.

_______________________________________

R.VAIDYANATHAN                                                         

PROFESSOR OF FINANCE                                             

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT  

BANNERGHATTA ROAD

BANGALORE

INDIA_560076

TEL: 91-80-2699-3086

FAX:91-80-2658-4050

E mail:vaidya@iimb.ernet.in

Hands off the treasures that belong to Lord Vishnu

 

The news has been splashed from Auckland to Alaska. The temples of India contain several billion dollars worth of treasures. The opening of the vaults in the Sri Padnamanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, according to a court order comes at a dangerous time for our polity.

The mainstream media continues to sensationalize the size of the treasure. One of them gushes that “treasures tumble out of the temple” — as though this is illegal money stashed in the Cayman Islands. Let’s be clear: these treasures were donated by the temple’s devotees over centuries, and rightfully belong to Lord Vishnu, who cannot even be fully seen from any angle by devotees. He  is the true owner of this wealth and this truth should be internalized.

It is unfortunate that this discovery should take place in Kerala, where the percentage of idol-worshippers is a minority – if one excluded Muslims, Christians and Marxists from the fold. The mere act of opening up the vaults and tunnels is thus fraught with significant dangers for Hindu society and our ancient civilization.

The present times are most inappropriate to try to list the billions of rupees worth of diamonds and rubies and sapphires owned by our temples. We all know that a significant portion of our politicians have a criminal background and even parts of the judiciary are corrupt. The bureaucracy is compromised by a saga of loot and plunder.

In this context, where government finances are completely out of alignment with revenue realities, the temptation will be to use these invaluable treasures to fulfill the insatiable personal and political greed of our politicians to fund populist schemes like “food security” for all with resources belonging to Lord Vishnu. Already more than 80% of the incomes of major temples is used for “secular” causes rather than for “sacred” purposes.

The opening of the vaults in the Sri Padnamanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, according to a court order comes at a dangerous time for our polity. 

It is not improbable that some jholawala economist will calculate — by dividing his mobile number with the pin code — that more than 70% of the people below poverty line can be lifted out of poverty if only this money is available to the government. The unaccountable civil society group under Sonia Gandhi – also called the National Advisory Council —  might formulate a bill (since they are the law framers in the present dispensation) to open up all vaults from the Amarnath to Ayappa temples and from Somnath to Kamakhya.

There will be half-baked debates about using it for “social justice”. The only people who can have some say on this wealth are those who visit the temple on a daily basis and who can chant, in this case, the Vishnu Sahasranamam. I am not even sure if those who are counting these treasures are eligible to deal with the “sacred” on the orders of the “secular”. One can say that this is the last battle waged by Nehruvian secularists against the ‘sacred” even though, in this particular case, it might appear to be a simple case of counting.

Actually counting, enumerating and documenting are secular ways of dealing with sacred treasures in our temples, since the sacred is never documented but just observed and meditated upon.

Some imported white or brown non-resident Indian expert will suggest a way of leveraging these billions and even propose investing a part of it in our stock markets to propel second generation reforms.

Wall Street bankers, with colorful ties and multiple lies, should be tremendously interested. The wealth seen in temples becomes a target for jehadi terrorists and Wall Street bankers – who are no different except for the kind of killing they go for. The memories of the plunder of Somnath are embedded in the brain cells of every citizen of this country.

Let us be clear. The town and the temple are already marked by global terrorists. The Kerala home minister says he will increase the number of pot-bellied constables to protect the treasures, as if the global jehadis can be handled by them.

Quite clearly, this is the most inappropriate time to be listing the Lord’s wealth. When a street is full of thugs and dacoits, no woman would venture out wearing her jewels and finery. One wonders why the courts have got into this, when they should have been focusing on the Hasan Alis, Rajas and Kalmadis of the world.

It is puzzling why the acharya sabhas or Hindu organisations are silent on this issue. They may not have understood the full import of what is happening.

For the sake of Dharma and for God’s sake, our courts and powers should stop digging for treasures in our temples.

R.Vaidyanathan

Anonymous said...

Dear Sor, if available please put some ragavendra tamil devotional songs

July 9, 2011 6:48 AM

BHASKARAN19 said...

Super well written. Yes we are need to worry in the current dangerous time for our polity. Electronic media has become pain now a days. All sorts rumours floating now in the media saying -similar treasure could be in Thiruvur, Srirangam, Thiruvannamali,etc.etc. which will lead to the corrupt politicans to swindle and run a way with it

July 9, 2011 6:53 AM

Anonymous said...

Dear Sir Sri Vaithinathan Hariharan How many Kings, benevolent rich people might have contributed for a long period, even centuries, to the temples for their love and faith in God. Nobody should make a claim on their riches. It is nothing but robbery. For that matter great saints of Saiva, Vaishnava and Madhva expressed their love and bhakti through their songs and they never wrote them thnking there will be many who will recite them and give meaning to thier liking. It is pure for their joy and their closeness to God made them great composers or writers. Puranas, Naalayiram, Thiruvarutpa, Thiruppugaz are to be seen only in that angle and anyone who happen to read them must keep himself or herself in their position and visualise the omnipotent and omnipresence in the same way they visualised. They did not present their works thinking that there will be people in the 21st Century to read their works, in fact for mundane reading. This we fail to understand. In the same way nobody has any right to make a claim on the rich contributions of those who were so large hearted and were having full bhakti and made ornaments to God to beautify the God as they wished and with tears in eyes enjoyed the fully clad God. The very idea that the ornaments are to be utilised for social purpose is nasty. If you have, you give it and do not try to take away from the contributions of emancipated and pure hearted souls. With warm regards ravi

July 9, 2011 9:05 AM

Varadarajan.R said...

Perumaal southu perumaalukke. these are scary times indeed. people do not realize the enormity of the situation. i also heard talks about looking for gold in TN temples.

July 9, 2011 2:09 PM

Anonymous said...

What about the treasure trove in Swiss banks. The Government and looters are conveniently silent and turning a Nelson,s eye to this subject while they want to lay their hands on the God's wealth. People who know only to take and not to give must shut their .... and keep quite. Earlier rulers and kings gave to the temple and were keeping the praja happy. Now the rulers are plundering the wealth of the nation and surreptetiously depositing elsewhere. And Malayasian Axis proves it.

July 10, 2011 11:46 AM

Anonymous said...

It shows that till date nobody has appropriated that wealth. Now the rulers .... what they want to do?

July 10, 2011 12:18 PM

 Anonymous said...

Strangely I saw some posters in Chennai claiming the wealth to T.N. as it was the property of rulers of earlier Rajas. Strange enough?

August 9, 2011 8:52 PM

Why now is the right time to bring home the black money from tax havens abroad

Thanks to Baba Ramdev, concern about vast quantities of black  money and illegal wealth of Indians stashed in tax havens abroad  has spread far and wide among the public in our country.  Suddenly Switzerland has become a suspect destination and tax  authorities have said they will monitor Indians travelling to that  country and other tax havens. The current rulers claim that they have done more than any  previous regime to deal with the issue of black money and  tax havens. They question the credibility of earlier governments  of V.P. Singh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and others, and say that  they did not do anything. However, to set the record straight, there has been a sea  change in the international attitudes to the role of tax havens  prior to global financial meltdown of 2008 and after. While  earlier, there was a certain global indulgence towards them  as “innovative” financial centers, they have since 2008 come  under pressure from powerful Western countries such as USA  and Germany to cooperate in the investigation of money  laundering, tax evasion, and recovery of illegal wealth earned  through criminal and corrupt dealings. There is no more a climate  of tolerance towards illegal financial transactions, and due to  pressure from OECD and international agreements such as the  UN Convention Against Corruption, Switzerland and other tax  havens stand ready to share information and cooperate in the  repatriation of illegal wealth; this has already happened in the  case of Philippines, Peru and Nigeria, and only recently Swiss  banks froze the wealth in the accounts of Tunisia’s ousted  president and forty leading figures in his government. Also, we need to remember that whatever action being taken  by the present Government is due to prodding by the Supreme  Court based on a case filed by Ram Jethmalani and other  senior citizens and not out of its own volition. What has happened now? After the twin towers attack on 9/11 in the USA in 2001,  attention turned to the financing of international terrorism.  Around 2006 many countries in the West realized that  terrorists are using the tax havens for funding of arms  smuggling and terror financing. Because of the secrecy  provided by the banking system in these off-shore  jurisdictions, the terrorists were finding it easier to route  their funds through these locations.  Hence the functioning of the tax havens came under the radar  screen of the US and other Western countries. Then came the financial meltdown in US and Europe in the year  2008, from which these countries are yet to fully recover. The  meltdown impacted US after their sub-prime crisis wherein a  significant number of banks and other financial institutions had to  be saved by the Government. Later it spread to Europe with one  country after another facing severe economic crisis. This is  primarily due to lack of savings by households and consumption  in excess of savings. Crisis of such magnitude with significant  unemployment, made these countries look closely at the tax havens  since their rich citizens were evading taxes by stashing funds in  these locations. It is like a severe crisis in a family wherein members  desperately try to find some money under the rice box or inside  some old books! France and Germany were in the forefront of the fight against tax  havens. UK is a reluctant follower since UK has good number of  tax havens under its own protection. USA is also against its citizens  hiding money in these tax havens. Around late 2007 Germany obtained from an informant data stolen  from the LGT Bank of Liechtenstein and got information about  thousands of names having illegal money in that bank. The chief of  German Post had to resign since his name was there in that list.  The German foreign minister announced that he would share the  data with any other country interested. US, UK, Australia, and  many other countries showed interest and collected the data.  India was not interested. After much prodding by the leader  of opposition in Parliament that time namely, L.K. Advani, the  government approached German authorities and has been able  to obtain data on accounts held by Indians. Even after getting it the Government has not shown interest in  releasing the names. Presumably there are nearly 100 Indian  names. Government hides behind the double taxation treaty with  Germany when this data has nothing to do with that treaty since  it is about Indians illegally holding money in a third country bank  namely that of Liechtenstein. Thus, the global situation is conducive now compared to ten or  twenty years ago to deal with these tax havens. The main reasons  are concern about terror financing in USA and Europe and the  economic meltdown in developed economies which have made  these countries decide not to show any forbearance towards illegal  money stashed in these jurisdictions. So the contention that nothing was done by V.P. Singh, or by  P.V. Narasimha Rao or by Vajpayee is not meaningful since  in those days the global situation was not conducive to raise  issues about tax havens. Actually USA and Europe were praising  these tax havens and even calling them “innovative” financial  centers. Post 2008 the entire situation has changed. Hence the present is the most appropriate time to deal with this  issue and India should take a lead in the campaign to close all  these tax havens and create a new global financial architecture  based on transparency and integrity rather than on privacy and  secrecy R. Vaidyanathan is Professor of Finance in IIM-Bangalore

 

Baba, here’s a Dummy’s Guide to black money & tax havens

Baba Ramdev wants it back, or else…. The government claims it is on the trail, but…. Anti-corruption crusader Prashant Bhushan works up a lather over it and even lambasted a former Supreme Court judge recently for upholding a law that enabled businessmen to save taxes by registering themselves with post-office addresses abroad. Business tycoons are mum on the subject.
Yes, we are talking about tax havens abroad, the place where businessmen allegedly stash away their illegal wealth.
But what are tax havens really? Why do postage-stamp countries like Liechtenstien or the Cayman Islands host them? And why do businessmen and politicians keep their slush money there instead of equally unholy – but handy – places back home? Here’s a Dummy’s Guide to tax havens.
What are tax havens?
Tax havens are countries or principalities or near-sovereign territories that allow you to pay little or no tax and also guarantee you secrecy about the funds you hold in their banks. They are called by other names, too, like offshore financial centres, innovative financial centres, etc, depending on your inclination. One man’s innovations are another man’s black money.

More than half of world trade passes, at least on paper, through tax havens. Getty Images

What is black money? How do I know if the money I get from the shopkeeper is black or white?
It’s not the colour. Black money is simply income on which taxes have not been paid. If you pay your builder cash for booking a flat, you are generating black money for him. Every time you buy something without a bill, you may be facilitating black money generation.
How are tax havens defined?
Nicholas Shaxson in his book Treasure Islands suggests that a tax haven is a place “that seeks to attract business by offering politically stable facilities to help people or entities get around the rules, laws and regulations of jurisdictions elsewhere.”
It is similar to the definition offered by Richard Murphy of Tax Justice Network. Shaxon also suggests that more than half of world trade passes, at least on paper, through tax havens. Over half of all banking assets and a third of foreign direct investment by multinationals corporations are routed off shore.
How many tax havens exist currently?
There are presumably more than 70 tax havens in the world. At least 40 countries/territories market themselves aggressively as tax havens
(Source: Internal Revenue Service, USA, on Abusive Offshore Tax Avoidance schemes –Talking Points, January 2008)
The well-known tax havens are Switzerland,  Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Channel Islands, and Cayman Islands, among others.
Who uses these tax havens?
Of course, tax dodgers and other assorted varieties of crooks helped by institutions and entities like banks.
Raymond W Baker, in his pioneering work on tax havens, says: “I have lost count of the number of anonymous entities existing in these jurisdictions. Several years ago, the British Virgin Islands alone reportedly had 180,000 and the Caribbean as a whole had 500,000. More were being formed at a reported rate of nearly 200,000 a year. The total is certainly well over a million by now, and some experts put the number as high as three million. According to various estimates, half of cross-border trade and investment passes through a tax haven or a secrecy jurisdiction at some point along the way”.
(Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and how to renew the free market system, page 36, John Wiley & Sons Inc, NJ 2005I).
The US Government Accountability Office reported in 2008 that 83 of the USA’s biggest 100 corporations had subsidiaries in tax havens. Tax Justice Network discovered that 99 of Europe’s 100 largest companies used offshore subsidiaries. In each country the largest users by far were banks.
How much money is stored in these havens?
This is a tricky issue since we are talking about unaccounted or black money. There are estimates, but each one comes with an assumption. There are three interesting questions: How much global money is there in all these tax havens? How much Indian money is stashed away illegally here? How much Indian money is, specifically, in Swiss accounts?
First, let us look at the volume of the untaxed black money that is estimated to circulate in and dominate the global financial markets unquestioned and unsupervised. These monies, which have no declared or known owners, are laundered into the official financial markets of the world through the intervention of tax havens, which are countries that levy no tax or levy what is an apology for a tax, so as to attract capital. These tax havens are largely tiny-tots in the global geography and demography but they hold the rest of the world to ransom, as explained in detail later. These are currently called “secretive jurisdictions”.

Now, let us see the latest estimate of the volume of the black money that traverses through the financial system of the world.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated in 2010 that the balance-sheets of small island financial centres alone added up to $18 trillion — a sum equivalent to about a third of world GDP (Shaxon). The IMF estimates the size of global black money — excluding Switzerland, China, Taiwan and the oil-exporting economies — at US$ $18 trillion. But that’s still an underestimate, says the IMF!
Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, an economist for the IMF in Washington, said statistical information on Luxembourg, one of the largest offshore financial centres in Europe, illustrated the extent of the problem. He said: “Luxembourg is one of the few offshore centres that disclose detailed statistics on assets and liabilities held in the financial sector, which makes it invaluable to understand cross-border money flows.” (Just to recollect our school maths, one trillion is 1,000 billion and 100 crore make a billion; GDP is Gross Domestic Product, which is a nation’s income in a year.)
The latest available IMF figures show portfolio assets held by foreigners in Luxembourg to be worth $1.5 trillion at the end of 2008. But looking at statistics provided by the Luxembourg government on portfolio investment liabilities for the country – the mirror image of the asset information held by the IMF – there is a big discrepancy. The investment liabilities in Luxembourg were $2.5 trillion – $1 trillion (€726 billion) more than the assets reported.
Milesi-Ferretti said: “This is a huge difference, almost 40%, and is unlikely to be entirely accounted for by the fact that some countries do not report their portfolio investments or their destination to the fund.”
How much Indian money is kept abroad?
Global Financial Integrity (GFI) — a non-profit research organisation working in the area of tax havens —  has estimated that the present value of illegal financial flows held abroad is nearly $500 billions. Our GDP at the time the report was made was nearly US$ 1,200 billon. This means nearly 40% of our national income is held outside the country. Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare are on the right track, but whether a fast will get the money back is anyone’s guess.
Here are some numbers in rupees: At Rs 45 to the dollar, the money stashed abroad comes to Rs 22.5 lakh crore (Rs 2,250,000 crore. At the time of the general elections in 2009, experts of the Congress party had disputed the very existence of large volumes of black Indian wealth held abroad.
But there can really be no dispute about the broad size of Indian wealth stashed away abroad. GFI says that more than two-thirds of this amount has been stashed away after the liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1990s. It means that those aspects of liberalisation which facilitated this process must be scrutinised as part of the preventive efforts needed to tackle the accumulation of Indian black wealth abroad on an ongoing basis. (Even Prashant Bhushan has a point).
Now let us look at what kind of black money from elsewhere is lodged in secret Swiss bank accounts. Nearly 1 trillion out of 2.8 trillion Swiss francs (CHR) is black money, says Konrad Hummler, Chairman of the Swiss Private Bankers Association. (See August 2009 Swiss Review, “Atlantic hurricane hits Switzerland in full force”). Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame has told an Indian TV channel that Indians are the largest investors through Swiss banks. This means out of US$ 1 trillion (the Swiss currency is actually a bit costlier than the US dollar, but we are looking at ballpark figures here). more than half could be owned by Indians. This alone comes to US$ 500 billion. And this is only bank deposits.
Is money kept in instruments other than deposits?
There are other exotic financial products offered by Swiss banks — offshore also — where Indians are invested. Plus there are funds accumulated directly abroad through commissions in defence contracts (remember Bofors?), which is not going out of the country. It just doesn’t come in.
The International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Money Laundering and Financial Crimes, March 2009, by the US Department of State suggests that 30-40% of the inflows may be sent there by hawala (Couriers take money in rupees, convert it to dollars abroad, and then deliver it where it is needed. They also do the reverse: take dollars abroad, convert it to rupees, and being it back during election time).
During 2007-2008, according that report, formal inflows were US$ 42.6 bn (and so 40 percent of this, $18 bn, could be reflected as illegal “flows” not captured by the law). This sum could be paid for in rupees here but stored in tax havens abroad. These hawala deals are for only one year.
Hence one can conclude that GFI’s estimate of US$ 500 billion is a conservative one and $1.5 trillion could be the outer limit. This means the volume of black money held abroad could be anywhere between Rs 22.5 lakh crore and Rs 67.5 lakh crore at current exchange rates of Rs 45 to the US dollar.)
That’s nothing to sneeze at. We will see in our next instalment how it went and how to bring it back.

R Vaidyanathan is Professor of Finance at IIM, Bangalore

Anonymous said...

money = power. nothing can stand in front of it. no bird will fly over it. the plight of india is self inflicted. politicians come from indian families, homes, schools, elected by indians again and again. as george carlin says "Garbage In Garbage Out"

June 7, 2011 12:41 AM