No Parliamentary Discussion on India's new criminal laws

 

Hinduism, Hindu Law & Similarities with Islamic Law

 

The Police, NIA, ED Have Gone On To Become Huge Organised Criminal Gangs

 

Why landlords should pass a fitting person test and criminal record checks

Penny Anderson in The Guardian


Being a landlord is a privilege, and it shouldn’t be available to everybody: with the power they have over their tenants should come a sense of responsibility

 

‘Owners misunderstand, ignore or forget legal requirement to issue proper notices to quit, or the need for prior warning of inspection visits.’ Photograph: Alamy


There are more private landlords than ever. Many are reasonable. Some are even excellent, but letting property is largely unrestricted.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has highlighted the failure of his predecessor Boris Johnson to sign up 100,000 landlords to his much vaunted London Rental Standard, which aims to help landlords with things such as having a gas safety check every year, and the laws around deposits and fire safety. After two years in operation, the scheme had attracted fewer than 2,000 landlords in addition to the 13,300 it inherited.

The files reveal that officials warned the mayor at the outset that his target was unattainable and that it would take “more than 50 years to accredit a sufficient number of landlords to meet the target”. Another note read: “We simply don’t have the resources to proactively enforce the London Rental Standard, which leaves us with an unacceptable reputational risk.” Johnson’s betrayal of renters in the capital after all the promises made is embarrassing for him, but a disaster for tenants. There is no doubt that the job needs doing.

Dilettante amateur property investors often know little about basic good practice, the law or simply what’s best for everyone when it comes to running their business in a civilised, humane fashion – and yes, it is a business, with the potential for profit and loss. They might be reluctant or “forced” rentiers (a term I prefer to landlord), with the family home in negative equity, compelled to rent it out if they want to move on. Outside London this is still a reality, and with the predicted house-price crash on Brexit, that practice may become more widespread.

This situation fuels the likelihood that tenants will be turfed out as soon as possible when the building increases in value. Remember that all tenants live under the threat of just two months’ notice when their initial assured shorthold tenancy rolls over. There is no security for renters.

There are recurring issues, such as owners who do not understand the concept of reasonable wear and tear expecting their properties to remain pristine and unmarked, even when the low-quality carpets and sofas they chose were threadbare to begin with. This in turn propagates the now traditional unlawful deposit retention/deduction battle, which can see mundane events – the simple act of using the sofa perhaps – cited as justification for the retention of hundreds of pounds, obliging tenants to fight for, and rarely succeed in getting, the return of hard-earned money paid up-front.

‘There are recurring issues, such as owners not understanding the concept of reasonable wear and tear, even when the low-quality carpets and sofas they chose were threadbare to begin with.’ Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

There are the problems of legal management. Owners misunderstand, ignore or forget the legal requirement to issue proper notices to quit, or the need for prior warning of inspection visits, using the power of thought or suggestion instead. Some owners I have rented from imagine they can let themselves in whenever they see fit.

Let’s be reasonable. We know that property doesn’t manage itself, and can be costly to maintain. The obligation to repair causes tension once owners, even the best-intentioned ones, grow acquainted with the expense of emergency out-of-hours plumbing.

Some owners – through indolence or meanness – would rather let the place rot; a friend’s landlord knowingly allows water from the leaky tiles to be absorbed by cavity wall insulation. Ultimately, his roof will cave in, but he doesn’t seem to care – either about the tenant or the ultimate expense. Other owners issue “revenge” notices – where tenants are forced out for insisting on damage being made good. Tenants who stand up for their rights are frequently viewed as troublemakers.

Tenants are not angelic. Some give as good as they get in the owner-tenant relationship. But the balance of power between the two is clearly in the landlord’s favour. Isn’t it time for power with more responsibility?

A requirement for landlord training would allow neophyte property moguls to escape being bogged down in pointless, petty battles with tenants. They also would learn about both the availability (and wisdom) of landlord insurance and the pros and cons of letting agents, who charge up to 15% of income and often do very little to earn it.

Being a landlord is a profitable privilege, but it isn’t one that should be automatically available to everybody. It should be earned by those who prove themselves knowledgeable and capable, having passed both a “fitting person” test and a criminal records check. Don’t forget: landlords possess keys to their tenants’ homes, and need to understand obligations. Owners would also benefit from better safeguards and more clarity because both would improve their relationships with tenants, and contented tenants stay longer in their properties.

The rentier economy marches on and will continue to do so, because set against the decline in pensions and increasing job insecurity, property is regarded as a solid guarantee against poverty. The fact that people make money from renting isn’t a problem. Nor is the fact that these transactions occur in the private sector. What’s missing and badly needed is the idea of responsibility.

Don’t force us to join the India Loyalty Programme

Shobha De in The Times of India


One of my all-time favourite anthems is A R Rahman’s stirring tribute to his motherland — India. Each time I hear his voice soar as he sings ‘Maa tujhe salaam…Vande Mataram’, I get goosebumps and a lump in my throat. I had the same intensely emotional response earlier this week when I watched Amitabh Bachchan fervently singing ‘Jana Gana Mana’ at the start of the India-Pakistan cricket match in Eden Garden.(Editor's comment - I think the singing of the national anthem at entertainment events should be banned!) Feeling the way I did, I figured I was experiencing genuine love for my beloved country. As definitions and tests of patriotism go, I had certainly passed mine… in my own eyes, of course. If I’d felt deeply moved, if I had moist eyes, if I was getting mushy and sentimental, clearly something wonderful was happening within. I didn’t have to deconstruct it… I felt it. That was good enough. Gut feelings say it all. If you tune in to the many nationalistic songs your heart remembers, you will instinctively recognize the extraordinary frisson they generate — some would call it patriotic fervour. This is the only truth you need to identify. Why should anyone be asked to produce arbitrary ‘proof’ of patriotism?

It’s such a pity that random netas are subjecting citizens to these ‘tests’ and questioning their commitment to the country. If such a test does exist, why not make it public and let people decide whether or not to appear for it? Pass or fail — please identify the examiners. Who appoints them? Is there a panel of experts drawing up exam papers? May we ask for the listed criteria? Will raising flag poles on top of each school, college, government building, convert Indians into overnight patriots? Assuming that does indeed happen, will there be a jury that has the final vote on the subject? Who frames the ultimate laws of patriotism and what will these be? Singing the national anthem twice a day? Shouting slogans in public places every week? Placing the right hand over the heart each time the flag is spotted? Wearing the tricolour on the sleeve? Organizing workshops on proper patriotic behaviour? Perhaps, designing appropriate uniforms which will have to be sported by one and all on national days and important holidays. There is safety in conformity, say those who conform!



ROUSING RAHMAN: If a nationalistic song gives you goosebumps, then you must love your country

That was the upside. Now, let’s look at the downside: What happens to those who refuse to adhere to the rule book and choose to demonstrate their love for the country in their own singular way? Will that be ‘allowed’ by authorities and their designated troops? Is a special cell going to be (officially) created to keep an eye on the un-patriots, pseudo-patriots, self-confessed ‘traitors’, suspected deshdrohis? How will their crimes be identified, tabulated, judged and punished? Special courts? Judges with extra powers? Along with a few kangaroos jumping around inside court premises, just in case the judge misses a key point during the trial?

Why are we doing this? Are we not confident enough of our identity as Indians? And who are these hyper-patriots trying to browbeat citizens into complying with new-fangled ‘India Loyalty Programmes’? The ugly truth is several netas strutting their patriotic plumes and baying for the blood of those not joining the chorus, have criminal records and serious charges pending in courts. Do lusty cries of ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ absolve them of all the muck? If for any reason, rational or irrational, someone does not raise a politically approved slogan, does it suddenly debilitate the state? Does India totter because a few citizens refuse to mouth salutations on demand? Let’s get a few things clear: hoisting flags, singing anthems, shouting slogans do not make a nation great. Progress does.

Patriotism is pretty hard to define. It is nuanced and complex. It is about loyalty to one’s country, above all else. Which is why it is dangerous and juvenile to label anybody a ‘deshdrohi’ for not participating in political posturing. Anybody can chant ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ mechanically, and not feel a thing about the country. A hardcore traitor could shamelessly chant ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ and win applause. Words like mata and pita are invested with a great deal of emotional weight. Which country earns the right to be defined as a mata or pita? The country that wins the hearts and trust of its citizens and inspires them to invest the same level of love, respect and reverence towards it. These feelings cannot be artificially manufactured. A nation that generates these emotions organically, devoid of manipulation and pressure, automatically creates generations of proud patriots. India has always been such a country. We really don’t need minders and monitors to tell us how to be patriotic. Do us all a favour, you bullies — just vamoose, will you?

Britain’s criminally stupid attitudes to race and immigration are beyond parody

Frankie Boyle in The Guardian

The anti-immigration election rhetoric is perverse – we fear the arrival of people that we have drawn here with the wealth we stole from them



‘Let’s not forget where coffee and tea come from: this mug is bitterly opposed to its own contents’


I sometimes wonder if satire has reached a nadir in Britain because British society has itself become a parody of itself. The Chipping Norton Set: the prime minister, a tabloid editor and a Roger Mellie-ish TV icon all conveniently living in the same little town and taking turns at being the centre of scandal, feels like a novel Martin Amis bashed out because his conservatory was leaking. Likewise there has been an element of tragic irony this week as the growing drumbeat of anti-immigration election rhetoric has been punctuated by the mass drowning of migrants.

The SNP’s growing popularity has prompted a little low-level press racism of the kilts-and-porridge variety, as an English electorate struggles with the idea that there will be Scottish people holding the reins of power for the first time since the last government. Nicola Sturgeon has been called “the most dangerous woman in Britain”, by someone who hasn’t met any other Scottish women. Of course, it’s difficult to explain to English people that we have always had their best interests at heart – if we hadn’t invented penicillin they would have all died in a Greek airport departure lounge. There have already been a couple of amusing moments in the campaign when leaders standing in front of union jacks expounding on the need for a £100bn missile system have taken time out to warn us about the dangers of nationalism. Personally, I think it might be invigorating to have a hung parliament where, before any law was passed, the government had to have an argument with a Scottish person.

“Gosh, you seem awfully good at this. Have you had some practice?”

“I’m not actually part of the Scottish negotiating team, I’m just here to take your drinks order …”

“Ah, right, could I have a cup of tea?”

“NO.”

Ed Miliband’s anti-immigration stance is odd: it’s hard to vote for a man who doesn’t have the confidence to defend his own existence. It seems that his main argument against immigrants is that his dad raised a befuddled fuckwit. Could you hand Labour’s “controls on immigration” mug to a guest? There’s nothing like jollying up a Macmillan Cancer Support coffee morning by making your neighbours feel like the pakoras were a little unwelcome. Let’s not forget where coffee and tea come from: this mug is bitterly opposed to its own contents. Unless you drink hot Tizer from a coffee cup, the drink inside that mug will be an immigrant. The logic of a receptacle for hot beverages provided by slavery and colonisation being anti-immigrant bears no more examination than a pair of homophobic Speedos.

Then there’s Ukip, like someone made a heavy-handed version of The Thick of It for ITV. They don’t want Britain to be ruled by foreigners – with the notable exception of the royal family. They want an Australian-style points system for immigration. Who knows what this will look like, but my suspicion is “being white” will be like catching the snitch in Quidditch. If we have become a self-satirising society, Ukip are just the broader end, the easy slapstick laughs. They even have a porn-star candidate. Of course, he isn’t the first MP to have filmed himself having sex. But he is the first to do so with an adult, whom he allowed to live.

Even our charity is essentially patronising. Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. Give him a fishing rod and he can feed himself. Alternatively, don’t poison the fishing waters, abduct his great-grandparents into slavery, then turn up 400 years later on your gap year talking a lot of shite about fish.

In a further nod to satire, Comic Relief this year focused on Malawi and Uganda. I didn’t see any acknowledgement that Britain had been the colonial power in those countries. “Thanks for the gold, lads, thanks for the diamonds. We had a whip-round and got you a fishing rod.”

A lot of racism comes from projection. White Americans have a stereotype of black people being criminals purely because they can’t acknowledge that it was actually white people that stole them from Africa in the first place. Today, you have the spectacle of black men being gunned down by cops who, by way of mitigation, release footage to show that the victims were running away. This is what happens when you don’t understand or even acknowledge history. You end up in a situation where, when slavery is the elephant in the room in your relationship with African Americans, you think it’s OK to say that you killed one of them because he was trying to escape.

Britain is in a similar place with colonialism. We have streets named after slave owners. We profited from a vile crime and feel no shame. We fear the arrival of immigrants that we have drawn here with the wealth we stole from them. For much of the rest of the world we must be the focus of bitter amusement, characters in a satire we don’t understand. It is British people that don’t learn languages, or British history. Britain is the true scrounger, the true criminal.

The Shocking Extent Of Crony Capitalism in India

Aam Aadmi Party

The Supreme Court has ordered a court monitored CBI investigation in 14 cases of criminality and corruption which are apparent from the corporate Broker/fixer Niira Radia's phone conversations recorded by the Income Tax department, some of which got leaked into the public domain. In these conversations, Radia, who was the paid lobbyist employed by Mukesh Ambani and Ratan Tata among others, is talking about fixing cabinet berths, influencing important policy and other decisions of the government, fixing the appointment of regulators, bribing regulators, corruptly influencing the judiciary, planting stories in the media, and even influencing discussions on bills in Parliament. 

The Radia Tapes provide a unique glimpse to the people of India on how the entire ruling establishment of the country has virtually become a puppet in the hands of large corporates like Ambani and Tata who are being able to control appointments of the cabinet, senior officials, regulators, and are able to control important decisions of the government, including laws and policies. The tapes also show how the mainstream parties like the Congress and the BJP have also become puppets in the hands of these corrupt corporates. In one conversation with Radia, Vajpayee's son in law Ranjan Bhattacharya narrates how Mukesh Ambani tells him that the Congress party has now become Ambani's shop. There is another conversation between Radia and former Finance Secretary N.K. Singh, where they successfully conspire to prevail on the BJP leadership to replace Arun Shourie with former BJP president Venkaiah Naidu in a Rajya Sabha debate to ensure the passage of a huge retrospective tax concession to Reliance Industries. All this not only shows the serious threat that corruption poses to democracy, but also why the Congress and the BJP conspired to thwart the Jan Lokpal Bill and have also ensured there are no proper Lokayuktas in the States, including in Gujarat and Delhi.

The dust that has been kicked up by the political class and the so called captains of Industry about the latest FIR against K.M. Birla and the former coal secretary in the coal mine allotment scam, and the targeting of the judiciary for pursuing this investigation, and for putting the brakes on various other mining scams in Goa and Karnataka, is indicative of the panic among this class, as they begin to feel the initial stings of accountability for this loot.

The Aam Aadmi Party wishes to make it clear that it is committed to putting an end to this loot and crony capitalism that has brought the country to economic, social and environmental ruin and has put democracy itself under threat. We believe that the bulk of the industry has been strangulated by this crony capitalism and loot and would like to be liberated from this corruption. It is only some corporates who have grown big on this loot and corruption and who currently control substantial sections of the establishment who are crying foul about the laudable actions of the judiciary to check this corruption. They must realize that this loot cannot and will not be allowed to go on. A political revolution is in the offing which will sweep away not just these corrupt political parties but also these crony capitalist if they do not mend their ways.

Britain is far more corrupt than we think

Mary Dejevsky in The Independent

Within Britain, there is a widespread view – seriously dented neither by the MPs’ expenses saga nor by the newspaper phone-hacking scandal – that this is not a corrupt country. It might not be quite as squeaky clean as Scandinavia, but it is nothing like – let’s see, who shall we offend? – Italy or Spain. As for Russia or China, well, we can strut the moral high ground – can’t we? – certain of our superiority.

Incorruptibility is part of our national self-image. But we flatter and deceive ourselves. Over the past few weeks, The Independent has exposed private investigators who routinely break the law, digging for dirt on behalf of commercial clients. The techniques – phone hacking and “blagging” – are the same as those for which journalists have been hauled before the courts and pilloried by public opinion.

If there seems to be a slight edge to our reports, how could there not be? On present evidence, law enforcers would appear to take a dimmer view of journalists applying these illegal methods, or buying them in, than it does of business people and lawyers who do the same. That, at least, was the message from the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which initially instructed MPs not to name the companies commissioning such services on the grounds that it could “undermine their financial viability” by “tainting them with… criminality”.  Yesterday, however, there was a change of heart and Soca supplied the Home Affairs Select Committee with a list of a list of 101 names of people and organisations who have hired private investigators. The committee’s chairman, Keith Vaz, is now deciding whether to publish them.

Strictly speaking, blagging – obtaining information by deceit – can succeed without a partner. The offence is all on one side: no money or favour changes hands. But this is not the only way in which information is obtained. As with journalists and the police or others who hold  sensitive information, it is now known that money or favours have changed hands. And in these cases, those who sell are as culpable as those who buy. There has to be a market for the transaction to work.

The sellers might not see themselves as corrupt, merely as individuals exploiting an opportunity, or enjoying a perk of the job. That such practices may not always have been recognised as corrupt does not make them less so. It just means we are more adept than some of our neighbours at not calling things by their proper names. A gift for euphemism is something else that defines our national character.

If journalists and private investigators were the only ones under investigation, and the only commodity changing hands was information, we might just be able to file it away and argue that Britain has a very limited and very specific corruption problem. But this is not true, either.  In banking, we have had the rigging of Libor, the key lending rate, by individual bank employees for personal gain. As corruption goes, this comes close to the top of any list because  greed compromised a major pillar of the financial system – in a global financial centre which was built largely on its word being its bond.

A few steps further down we have claims of corrupt behaviour by British companies abroad. Only last week accusations were made against employees of a British company in China, GlaxoSmithKline. According to the Chinese, other pharmaceutical firms are also in the frame – for allegedly bribing doctors to prescribe their products. It is not, of course, that paying backhanders, or “doing as the natives do”, was unheard of in the operations of UK companies outside Britain. But the Bribery Act of 2010 made it expressly illegal, and it comes to something when it is the Chinese authorities doing the exposing and British companies that find themselves in the dock. The reputational damage flows only one way.

Again, it might be just possible to winkle out a “British” exception and claim that this sort of corruption reflects the malign influence of “foreigners” rather than any home-grown proclivity. But such complacency is challenged by the latest “global corruption barometer” compiled by Transparency International. Published earlier this month, its findings show not only that the perception of corruption in Britain has increased markedly over the past two years – not surprising, giving the prominence of the phone-hacking scandal – but that in the same period one person in 20 claims to have paid a bribe to a public official for services as diverse as health, justice and education.

A first instinct is, naturally, to question these conclusions. A second would be to surmise that those who admitted paying a bribe were at the margins – newcomers, perhaps or illegal migrants. But that would be too easy an escape. As with journalists and police, corruption is a transaction. There must be takers as well as givers. But I find it credible, too, because of a mini-brush of my own. When posted abroad more than 10 years ago, I checked that my husband, if he became non-resident, would have to pay privately for his (expensive) Parkinson’s medicine. The doctor, a locum, said yes, that was so. Then he paused, and – as I read it – implied, no more, that a deal could be struck. I left, but a possibility was there. 

And this is where corruption begins. Not with GSK in China, but with crimes left unpunished, names left unnamed and the prosaic minutiae of daily needs debased. If the Serious Organised Crime Agency is telling MPs – our representatives – what we the public may and may not know for national commercial reasons, the UK is on a slipperly slope indeed.

Reputed firms employ criminals to steal rivals' information

Some of Britain’s most respected industries routinely employ criminals to hack, blag and steal personal information on business rivals and members of the public, according to a secret report leaked to The Independent.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) knew six years ago that law firms, telecoms giants and insurance were hiring private investigators to break the law and further their commercial interests, the report reveals, yet the agency did next to nothing to disrupt the unlawful trade.

It is understood that one of the key hackers mentioned in the confidential Soca report admitted that 80 per cent of his client list was taken up by law firms, wealthy individuals and insurance companies. Only 20 per cent was attributed to the media, which was investigated by the Leveson Inquiry after widespread public revulsion following the phone-hacking scandal.

Soca, dubbed “Britain’s FBI”, knew six years ago that blue-chip institutions were hiring private investigators to obtain sensitive data – yet did next to nothing to disrupt the unlawful trade.

The report was privately supplied to the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics in 2012 yet the corruption in other identified industries, including the law, insurance and debt collectors, and among high-net worth individuals, was not mentioned during the public sessions or included in the final report.

---------------

Also read 

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Sreesanth - Another Modern Day Valmiki

----------------

Tom Watson, the campaigning Labour MP, said: “What is astonishing about this whole murky affair is that Soca had knowledge of massive illegal invasions of privacy in the newspaper industry – but also in the supply chains of so-called blue-chip companies.

“I believe they are sitting on physical evidence that has still not been disclosed fully to forensic investigators at the Metropolitan Police. The law should also be rigorously applied to other sectors that have got away with it.”

One of five police investigations reviewed by Soca found private detectives listening in to targets’ phone calls in real-time. The report said a “telephone interception specialist manufactured several devices which were physically attached to the target’s landline at the relevant signal box by a British Telecom-trained telecommunications engineer.”

During another police inquiry, the Soca report said officers found a document entitled “The Blagger’s Manual”, which outlined methods of accessing personal information by calling companies, banks, HM Revenue and Customs, councils, utility providers and the NHS.

“It is probably a good idea to overcome any moral hang-ups you might have about ‘snooping’ or ‘dishonesty’,” it read. “The fact is that through learning acts of technical deception, you will be performing a task which is not only of value to us or our client, but to industry as a whole.”

The Independent understands that one of the key hackers mentioned in the report has admitted that 80 per cent of his client list was taken up by law firms, wealthy individuals and insurance firms while only 20 per cent of clients were from the media.

A security source with knowledge of the report – codenamed Project Riverside – said clients who hired corrupt private investigators included:

* a major telecoms company;

* a celebrity who broadcasts to millions of people every week;

* a well-known media personality, who hired a private investigator to hack his employee’s computer as he suspected she was selling confidential information to business rivals;

* a businessman who hired hackers to obtain intelligence on rivals involved in an ultimately unsuccessful £500m corporate takeover.

A company which was owed money by property developers also hired private detectives to track down the firm’s family information, detailed transactions from four bank accounts, information from credit card statements and an itemised mobile phone bill. The company paid £14,000 for the information.

However, the most common industry employing criminal private detectives is understood to be law firms, including some of those involved in high-end matrimonial proceedings and litigators investigating fraud on behalf of private clients.

Illegal practices identified by Soca investigators went well beyond the relatively simple crime of voicemail hacking and included live phone interceptions, police corruption, computer hacking and perverting the course of justice.

Despite the widespread criminality uncovered by Project Riverside between 2006 and 2007, none of the suspects identified in the report was charged with criminal offences until after the phone-hacking scandal four years later.

Police were finally forced to act after the scandal that caused the closure of Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper, the resignation of two Scotland Yard police chiefs and the establishment of the Leveson Inquiry.

The Labour MP Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: “I am deeply concerned about these revelations. I will be seeking an explanation from Soca as to why this was not told to the Committee when we took evidence from them about the issue of private investigators.

“It is important that we establish how widespread this practice was and why no action was taken to stop what amounted to criminal activity of the worst kind.”

The former News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis added: “Until The Independent told me about this, I had not the slightest clue of the scale of illegal information theft going on among our supposedly respectable professions. Did Lord Justice Leveson only conduct his inquiry into 20 per cent of the problem?”

The Soca report, which contains “sensitive material” that may be subject to “public-interest immunity” tests – effectively banning it from ever being published even if it were disclosed during legal proceedings – found private investigators to be experts at “developing and cultivating useful relationships” through “socialising with law enforcement personnel”. One particular method identified was to become a member of the Freemasons, which has been repeatedly linked to corruption in the police and judiciary.

Victims of computer hacking identified by Soca – who suffered eBlaster Trojan attacks which allowed private  investigators to monitor their computer usage remotely – include the former British Army intelligence officer Ian Hurst. He was hacked by private investigators working for News of the World journalists who wanted to locate Freddie Scappaticci, a member of the IRA who worked as a double-agent codenamed “Stakeknife”.

Another victim was Derek Haslam, a former Metropolitan Police officer who was persuaded by Scotland Yard to go undercover and infiltrate Southern Investigations, a private detective firm, as a “covert human intelligence source”.

A Soca spokesman said: “Soca produced a confidential report in 2008 on the issue of licensing the private investigation industry. This report remains confidential and Soca does not comment on leaked documents or specific criminal investigations. Information is shared with other partners as required.” Scotland Yard declined to comment.

When did being lowly paid become a criminal offence?

Increasingly, corporations and politicians treat the poor with distrust. That's why this week's ruling on workfare was important

• 
• • Zoe Williams
  • The Guardian, Thursday 14 February 2013

‘In the ruling in favour of Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson the judges were clear: these people were treated dishonestly.' Illustration by Matt Kenyon

Inside Amazon's flagship factory in Rugeley, Staffordshire, a new way of working is evolving. There is a strong topnote of distrust, evinced by the full-body scanners that workers have to pass, every time they leave, to prove they haven't stolen anything. The profound insecurity built into the employment model is dressed up as discipline – which is to say, Amazon expects huge seasonal fluctuations in the number of people it needs, yet likes to mask their dismissals behind a misdeameanour, so a lot of people get axed for crimes like being ill. There's a lifesized blonde lady made of cardboard at the entrance, with a think bubble coming out of her head that says, "This is the best job I've ever had!" If that detail alone is enough to make your blood run cold, marry it to the testimony of the chairman of nearby Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club: "The feedback we're getting is that it's like being in a slave camp."

Of all the details revealed by the Financial Times, the one that sank my spirits was the electronic tagging – workers have a handheld device directing them to goods. But these devices also measure their productivity in real time. If they lag behind, the machine bugs them. They are issued with constant warnings not to talk to one another or tarry for any reason. A lot of people find it quite stressful. Call them crazy. (Amazon counters: "Like most companies, we have performance expectations for every Amazon employee, and we measure actual performance against those expectations.")

Meanwhile, in Tesco's Donabate distribution centre in Dublin, workers wearing these tags are awarded percentages for their speediness (100% if they perform a task in the time estimated, 200% if they're twice as fast, and so on), but claim they are docked if they take a loo break; afterwards, they find they have to work much faster – to get back up to their 100%. To put it in context, workers routinely scoring 110% are reported to be sweating quite hard for most of the day. So making up your targets is no walk in the park. Tesco insists that their tag is turned off while workers are in the toilet.

Anybody who's ever worked in a very repetitive, menial job will recognise this suspicious atmosphere – the less enjoyable a job is, the more people there are who suspect you of trying to get out of it. That's reasonable, I suppose, though if people were treated less like robots to begin with, they might not need so much surveillance. But the fabled "innovation" of the private sector never seems to be able to extend itself towards making jobs more self-determining and satisfying. Presumably this is because there's always a danger that self-determining, satisfied people might distinguish themselves in some way, might cease to be interchangeable and might want – indeed, deserve – more than the paltry wage they might be being paid.

But there is innovation here, in a new shamelessness. Let's be honest, tagging is what you do to criminals. Criminals often don't mind this, because the alternative for them is prison. The understanding, however, is that there's already been a significant breakdown of respect between the authority and the person before anybody's movements are electronically monitored. It used to be taken as read that you wouldn't do that to a person until you already had good reason to suspect that they wouldn't tell you the truth.

I am reminded here of the Conservative MP Alec Shelbrooke calling for people's benefits to be delivered on a card, rather than cash, for the easier prohibition of the purchase of booze, fags, Sky+ and trips to Tenerife. Again, the government has form with this idea –certain categories of asylum seeker are given their sustenance on a card, with which they are banned from buying condoms and (obscurely) sanitary products.

A friend of mine stood behind an asylum seeker once while she was turned down for the purchase of some crayons. It's not a system I'd want on my conscience, but its development has some deterrence rationale to it: that is, to make conditions so unpleasant that the bogus claimant gives up of his or her own accord. So when did that become OK – to exclude benefit claimants from the mainstream economy, to humiliate them? Does Shelbrooke hope to deter them all from living here? Where does he propose they go?

What I cannot help noticing is a failure of normal human respect for the people at the bottom of the heap – Tuesday's ruling in favour of Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson has had its bones picked over for what it does or doesn't say about slavery, and yet the judges were clear: these people were treated dishonestly. They were treated as though, being unemployed, they could be parcelled about at the whim of the secretary of state.

A similar belief pervades the suggestion that those on benefits need to be ritually humiliated every time they go into a shop; or those on low wages, by dint of their low status, need to be monitored like criminals. Across the piece, having a low financial status is now elided, by politicians and by corporations, with being untrustworthy.

They may have different motives; Shelbrooke is hoping to make political capital out of the contempt in which he holds the poor; Tesco and Amazon's contempt is just a byproduct of their drive for profit. But the wellspring doesn't matter; what matters is that this is a frighteningly divisive worldview.

Global Banks are the Financial Services wing of the Drug Cartels

As HSBC executives apologise to the US Senate for laundering drugs money, the fact is that nothing changes

• 
• • Ed Vulliamy
  • guardian.co.uk, Saturday 21 July 2012 13.01 BST

A Colombian soldier inspects the harvest of a 50-acre coca plantation: fines for laundering drugs money may seem huge, but banks pay them out of petty cash. Photograph: Efrain Patino/AP

"Steal a little," wrote Bob Dylan, "they throw you in jail; steal a lot and they make you a king." These days, he might recraft the line to read: deal a little dope, they throw you in jail; launder the narco billions, they'll make you apologise to the US Senate.

Two months ago in Washington DC, a poor black man called Edward Dorsey Sr was convicted of peddling 5.5 grams of crack cocaine. Because he was charged before a recent relative amelioration in sentencing, he was given a mandatory 10 years in jail.

Last week, managers from Britain's biggest bank, HSBC, lined up before the Senate's permanent sub-committee on investigations – just across the Potomac river from the scene of Dorsey's crime – to be asked questions such as: "It took three or four years to close a suspicious account. Is there any way that should be allowed to happen?"

The "suspicious account" was that of a "casa de cambio", a currency exchange house operated in Mexico on behalf of the largest criminal syndicate in the world and one of the most savage, the Sinaloa drug-trafficking cartel. The dealings had been flagged up toHSBC bosses by an anti-money laundering officer, but to no avail – the dirty business continued. "No, senator," came the reply from a bespectacled Brit called Paul Thurston, chief executive, retail banking and wealth management, HSBC Holdings plc.

The same casa de cambio, called Puebla, was known to be under investigation in another case involving the Wachovia bank during the time HSBC was entertaining its money. US authorities had seized $11m from Wachovia's Miami office, on the way to securing the biggest settlement in banking history with Wachovia in March 2010, detailed in this newspaper last year.

Wachovia was fined $50m and made to surrender $110m in proven drug profits, but was shown to have inadequately monitored a staggering $376bn through the casa de cambio over four years, of which $10bn was in cash. The whistleblower in the case, an Englishman working as an anti-money laundering officer in the bank's London office, Martin Woods, was disciplined for trying to alert his superiors, and won a settlement after bringing a claim for unfair dismissal.

No one from Wachovia went to jail – and, said Woods at the time of the settlement: "These are the proceeds of murder and misery in Mexico, and of drugs sold around the world. But no one goes to jail. What does the settlement do to fight the cartels? Nothing. It encourages the cartels and anyone who wants to make money by laundering their blood dollars."

HSBC has been found to have handled $7bn in narco cash, "and this is the starter for 10", Woods now says. "We'll get the full picture over time. But what's the sanction on these banks? What's their risk? The cartels should renegotiate their charges with the banks. They're being priced for a risk element that isn't there."

Wachovia was not the first, neither will HSBC be the last. Six years ago, a subsidiary of Barclays – Barclays Private Bank – was exposed as having been used to launder drug money from Colombia through five accounts linked to the infamous Medellín cartel. By an ironic twist, Barclays continued to entertain the funds after British police had become involved after a tip-off, from HSBC.

And the issue is wider than drug-money. It is about where banks, law enforcement officers and the regulators – and politics and society generally – want to draw the line between the criminal and supposed "legal" economies, if there is one.

Take the top-drawer bank to the elite and Her Majesty the Queen, Coutts, part of the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland. On 23 March, the UK Financial Services Authority issued a final notice to Coutts, fixing a penalty of £8.75m for breach of its money-laundering code.

The FSA reviewed 103 "high-risk customer files" and "identified deficiencies in 73 files", showing "failure to conduct appropriate ongoing monitoring" over three years. In two cases, private bankers involved had "failed to identify serious criminal allegations against those customers". Rory Tapner, chief executive of the wealth division of RBS said that "since concerns were first identified by the FSA, Coutts & Co has enhanced its client relationship management process". The refrain was the same from HSBC last week, and every other bank after every other shameful revelation: we went awry, but we've fixed it.

Wouldn't it be interesting, though, to know Coutts's private view of Wachovia's case – or, at least of people such as Woods who do root out criminal laundering?

As it happens, through a rare glimpse, we do. Last year, the Wachovia whistleblower was offered a job at Coutts. But the bank suddenly withdrew its job offer. An internal email sent by the interviewer to a director of Coutts's wealth management programme explained the bank had "a very generic reason for our decision, citing the fact that we had become aware of an incident at Wachovia, one of Martin Woods's previous employers, and that Coutts was keen to avoid any risk of reputational damage that might relate to the incident".

The thought occurs to Woods, who is taking legal action against Coutts for mistreatment of a whistleblower, that he was too tenacious at Wachovia. Coutts declined to comment.

No one at Coutts was called to account for the FSA's alarming findings. No one was sanctioned under criminal law last month when the ING bank was fined $619m for illegally moving billions of dollars into the US banking system, in breach of sanctions – as HSBC has done with money from North Korea and Iran. Neither were they in 2009, when Lloyds TSB – 43% owned by the British taxpayer – was fined $350m for whitewashing Iranian money into the US. The fines seem huge to us, but banks pay them from petty cash.

If there is a prosecution, it is always "deferred", as with Wachovia, and a Californian bank called Sigue used by HSBC to receive the Mexican drug money. Be good for a year, and we'll forget about it. Since when did the likes of Edward Dorsey of Washington enjoy that kind of leniency?

A foremost trainer of anti-money laundering officers in the US is Robert Mazur, who infiltrated the Medellín cartel during the prosecution and collapse of the BCCI bank in 1991, and who tells the Observer that "the only thing that will make the banks properly vigilant to what is happening is when they hear the rattle of handcuffs in the boardroom".

It remains to be seen whether HSBC's barons will, like Wachovia's, avoid Dorsey's fate.

"People don't like to ask how close the banker's finger is to the trigger of the killer's gun," says Woods.

But in this newspaper – when we revealed the original "cease and desist" order against HSBC – the former head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, posited that four pillars of the international banking system are: drug-money laundering, sanctions busting, tax evasion and arms trafficking.

The response of politicians is to cower from any serious legal assault on this reality, for the simple reasons that the money is too big (plus consultancies to be had after leaving office). The British government recruits a former chairman of HSBC as trade secretary just as the drug-laundering scandal breaks.

Herein, along with Dylan's dictum, lies the problem. We don't think of those banking barons as the financial services wing of the Sinaloa cartel.

The stark truth is that the cartels' best friends are those people in pin-stripes who, after a rap on the knuckles, return to their golf in Connecticut and drinks parties in Holland Park.

The notion of any dichotomy between the global criminal economy and the "legal" one is fantasy. Worse, it is a lie. They are seamless, mutually interdependent – one and the same.

Stiglitz - Bankers must go to jail

Joseph Stiglitz tells Ben Chu that rogue financiers have proven that regulation must get
tougher

Ben Chu
Monday, 2 July 2012

The Barclays Libor scandal may have shocked the British public, but Joseph Stiglitz saw it
coming decades ago. And he's convinced that jailing bankers is the best way to curb market
abuses. A towering genius of economics, Stiglitz wrote a series of papers in the 1970s and
1980s explaining how when some individuals have access to privileged knowledge that others
don't, free markets yield bad outcomes for wider society. That insight (known as the theory
of "asymmetric information") won Stiglitz the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001.

And he has leveraged those credentials relentlessly ever since to batter at the walls of "free
market fundamentalism".

It is a crusade that has taken Stiglitz from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to the
Clinton White House, to the World Bank, to the Occupy Wall Street camp and now, to
London, to promote his new book The Price of Inequality.

And kind fortune has engineered it so that Stiglitz's UK trip has coincided with a perfect
example of the repellent consequences of asymmetric information.

When traders working for Barclays rigged the Libor interest rate and flogged toxic financial
derivatives – using their privileged position in the financial system to make profits at the
expense of their customers – they were unwittingly proving Stiglitz right.

"It's a textbook illustration," Stiglitz said. "Where there are these asymmetries a lot of these
activities are directed at rent seeking [appropriating resources from someone else rather than
creating new wealth]. That was one of my original points. It wasn't about productivity, it
was taking advantage."

Yet Stiglitz's interest in the abuses of banks extends beyond the academic. He argues that
breaking the economic and political power that has been amassed by the financial sector in
recent decades, especially in the US and the UK, is essential if we are to build a more just
and prosperous society. The first step, he says, is sending some bankers to jail. " That ought
to change. That means legislation. Banks and others have engaged in rent seeking, creating
inequality, ripping off other people, and none of them have gone to jail."

Next, politicians need to stop spending so much time listening to the financial lobby, which,
according to Stiglitz, demonstrates its spectacular economic ignorance whenever it claims
that curbs on banks' activities will damage the broader economy.

This talk of economic ignorance brings us to the eurozone crisis and the extreme austerity
policies being pursued. Stiglitz is depressed. In 2000 he resigned from the World Bank and
launched an excoriating attack on the way it and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, handled the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. He condemned the IMF
for imposing brutal and inappropriate adjustment policies on bailed out nations – medicine
which, he argued, merely pushed nations further into crisis. "For me there's some nostalgia
here," he says.

Does he see any hope for the eurozone, I ask, or is it now heading, inevitably, for a breakup?
"It is a train that can still be stopped" he says. "But the relevant question is the politics in
Germany. Have they created in their rhetoric a dynamic that makes it difficult to stop? In
particular [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel's rhetoric that the crisis was caused by
profligacy. She's framed the issue as profligacy, rather than framing it as 'the European
system is fundamentally flawed' ".

The central argument of his latest oeuvre is that the huge inequalities of income and wealth
that have developed in the US and elsewhere in the West over recent decades are not only
unjust in themselves but are retarding growth.

"Every economy needs lots of public investments – roads, technology, education," he says.
"In a democracy you're going to get more of those investments if you have more equity.
Because as societies get divided, the rich worry that you will use the power of the state to
redistribute. They therefore want to restrict the power of the state so you wind up with
weaker states, weaker public investments and weaker growth."

It's an elegantly simple proposition. And one that logically points to a radical manifesto of
redistribution and higher taxation in the name of the general public good. Time will tell
whether this comes to be regarded as another manifestation of towering economic genius.
But, for now, crusading Stiglitz has one more weapon in his hands with which to batter down
those walls of folly

The first politician to face charges over 2008 financial crisis

• Rupert Neate and agencies
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 March 2012 18.30 GMT

Former Icelandic prime minister Geir Haarde (right), and his lawyer Andri Arnason, appear at his trial in Reykjavik. Photograph: S Olafs/EPA

 

The former prime minister of Iceland has become the first politician in the world to stand trial over the 2008 financial crisis.

Geir Haarde, who was ousted after Iceland's three biggest banks collapsed and the country's economy went into meltdown, could be jailed for two years if found guilty of gross negligence in failing to prepare for the impending disaster. He denied the charges and claimed that "only in hindsight is it evident that not everything was as it should have been".

Haarde was instrumental in transforming Iceland from a fishing and whaling backwater into an international financial powerhouse before the credit crunch caused the economy to crash almost overnight.

The Icelandic parliament's "truth report" into the causes of the crisis that forced the country to borrow $10bn (£6.3bn) to prop up its economy, accused him of "gross negligence". He is also accused of failing to rein in the country's fast-growing banks, whose paper value before the crash had ballooned to 10 times the gross domestic product of the island state of 320,000 people. And he is alleged to have withheld information that indicated the state was headed for financial disaster.

The country's three biggest banks – Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki – went bust within weeks of each other after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the US sparked the credit crunch in 2008.
"None of us realised at the time that there was something fishy within the banking system itself, as now appears to have been the case," Haarde told the court in the capital of Reykjavik on Monday. "I think it's illogical to think that I or anyone else in the government could have reduced the size of the
banks to a greater extent than was done at the time."

He is accused of failing to prevent the contagion from spreading to the UK by not insisting that Icelandic banks ringfence their overseas operations. The crisis sparked a diplomatic row with the UK as the demise of Landsbanki brought down its British internet banking arm, Icesave, leaving British councils, universities and hospitals more than £1bn out of pocket.

Gordon Brown, who was British prime minister at the time of the collapse, accused Haarde of "unacceptable" and illegal" behaviour over its failure to guarantee to reimburse UK customers of the bank. The British government stepped in to protect most savers, at a cost of £3.2bn but it is continuing to demand compensation from Iceland to cover the cost.

The crisis also led to the demise of Baugur, the British retail investor which owned stakes in House of Fraser, Debenhams and Woolworths.

Haarde, who led the right-leaning Independence party and was prime minister from 2006 to 2009, rejected all the charges as "political persecution" from the country's left-leaning government, and said he would be vindicated by the trial. He said Icelanders' interests were his "guiding light" and insisted that his conscience was clear.

The trial is expected to last until mid-March, with the court taking another four to six weeks to deliver its verdict.

Haarde has become the first person to ever stand trial at the country's Landsdómur criminal court, which was created in 1905 to hear charges brought against ministers. He was one of four former Icelandic ministers blamed by the "truth report" for causing the crisis, but parliament voted last year that he should be the only person to stand trial.

The others named in the report were the former finance minister Árni Mathiesen and former minister of commerce Björgvin Sigurdsson, and Davíd Oddsson, a former prime minister who was running the country's central bank at the time.

For all Anna supporters - do you have answers to these questions?

Arundhati Roy

The Hindu Arundhati Roy. File photo

While his means maybe Gandhian, his demands are certainly not.

If what we're watching on TV is indeed a revolution, then it has to be one of the more embarrassing and unintelligible ones of recent times. For now, whatever questions you may have about the Jan Lokpal Bill, here are the answers you're likely to get: tick the box — (a) Vande Mataram (b) Bharat Mata ki Jai (c) India is Anna, Anna is India (d) Jai Hind.

For completely different reasons, and in completely different ways, you could say that the Maoists and the Jan Lokpal Bill have one thing in common — they both seek the overthrow of the Indian State. One working from the bottom up, by means of an armed struggle, waged by a largely adivasi army, made up of the poorest of the poor. The other, from the top down, by means of a bloodless Gandhian coup, led by a freshly minted saint, and an army of largely urban, and certainly better off people. (In this one, the Government collaborates by doing everything it possibly can to overthrow itself.)

In April 2011, a few days into Anna Hazare's first “fast unto death,” searching for some way of distracting attention from the massive corruption scams which had battered its credibility, the Government invited Team Anna, the brand name chosen by this “civil society” group, to be part of a joint drafting committee for a new anti-corruption law. A few months down the line it abandoned that effort and tabled its own bill in Parliament, a bill so flawed that it was impossible to take seriously.

Then, on August 16th, the morning of his second “fast unto death,” before he had begun his fast or committed any legal offence, Anna Hazare was arrested and jailed. The struggle for the implementation of the Jan Lokpal Bill now coalesced into a struggle for the right to protest, the struggle for democracy itself. Within hours of this ‘Second Freedom Struggle,' Anna was released. Cannily, he refused to leave prison, but remained in Tihar jail as an honoured guest, where he began a fast, demanding the right to fast in a public place. For three days, while crowds and television vans gathered outside, members of Team Anna whizzed in and out of the high security prison, carrying out his video messages, to be broadcast on national TV on all channels. (Which other person would be granted this luxury?) Meanwhile 250 employees of the Municipal Commission of Delhi, 15 trucks, and six earth movers worked around the clock to ready the slushy Ramlila grounds for the grand weekend spectacle. Now, waited upon hand and foot, watched over by chanting crowds and crane-mounted cameras, attended to by India's most expensive doctors, the third phase of Anna's fast to the death has begun. “From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, India is One,” the TV anchors tell us.

While his means may be Gandhian, Anna Hazare's demands are certainly not. Contrary to Gandhiji's ideas about the decentralisation of power, the Jan Lokpal Bill is a draconian, anti-corruption law, in which a panel of carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy, with thousands of employees, with the power to police everybody from the Prime Minister, the judiciary, members of Parliament, and all of the bureaucracy, down to the lowest government official. The Lokpal will have the powers of investigation, surveillance, and prosecution. Except for the fact that it won't have its own prisons, it will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies, instead of just one.

Whether it works or not depends on how we view corruption. Is corruption just a matter of legality, of financial irregularity and bribery, or is it the currency of a social transaction in an egregiously unequal society, in which power continues to be concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority? Imagine, for example, a city of shopping malls, on whose streets hawking has been banned. A hawker pays the local beat cop and the man from the municipality a small bribe to break the law and sell her wares to those who cannot afford the prices in the malls. Is that such a terrible thing? In future will she have to pay the Lokpal representative too? Does the solution to the problems faced by ordinary people lie in addressing the structural inequality, or in creating yet another power structure that people will have to defer to?

Meanwhile the props and the choreography, the aggressive nationalism and flag waving of Anna's Revolution are all borrowed, from the anti-reservation protests, the world-cup victory parade, and the celebration of the nuclear tests. They signal to us that if we do not support The Fast, we are not ‘true Indians.' The 24-hour channels have decided that there is no other news in the country worth reporting.

‘The Fast' of course doesn't mean Irom Sharmila's fast that has lasted for more than ten years (she's being force fed now) against the AFSPA, which allows soldiers in Manipur to kill merely on suspicion. It does not mean the relay hunger fast that is going on right now by ten thousand villagers in Koodankulam protesting against the nuclear power plant. ‘The People' does not mean the Manipuris who support Irom Sharmila's fast. Nor does it mean the thousands who are facing down armed policemen and mining mafias in Jagatsinghpur, or Kalinganagar, or Niyamgiri, or Bastar, or Jaitapur. Nor do we mean the victims of the Bhopal gas leak, or the people displaced by dams in the Narmada Valley. Nor do we mean the farmers in NOIDA, or Pune or Haryana or elsewhere in the country, resisting the takeover of the land.

‘The People' only means the audience that has gathered to watch the spectacle of a 74-year-old man threatening to starve himself to death if his Jan Lokpal Bill is not tabled and passed by Parliament. ‘The People' are the tens of thousands who have been miraculously multiplied into millions by our TV channels, like Christ multiplied the fishes and loaves to feed the hungry. “A billion voices have spoken,” we're told. “India is Anna.”

Who is he really, this new saint, this Voice of the People? Oddly enough we've heard him say nothing about things of urgent concern. Nothing about the farmer's suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt further away. Nothing about Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, nothing about Posco, about farmer's agitations or the blight of SEZs. He doesn't seem to have a view about the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India.

He does however support Raj Thackeray's Marathi Manoos xenophobia and has praised the ‘development model' of Gujarat's Chief Minister who oversaw the 2002 pogrom against Muslims. (Anna withdrew that statement after a public outcry, but presumably not his admiration.)

Despite the din, sober journalists have gone about doing what journalists do. We now have the back-story about Anna's old relationship with the RSS. We have heard from Mukul Sharma who has studied Anna's village community in Ralegan Siddhi, where there have been no Gram Panchayat or Co-operative society elections in the last 25 years. We know about Anna's attitude to ‘harijans': “It was Mahatma Gandhi's vision that every village should have one chamar, one sunar, one kumhar and so on. They should all do their work according to their role and occupation, and in this way, a village will be self-dependant. This is what we are practicing in Ralegan Siddhi.” Is it surprising that members of Team Anna have also been associated with Youth for Equality, the anti-reservation (pro-“merit”) movement? The campaign is being handled by people who run a clutch of generously funded NGOs whose donors include Coca-Cola and the Lehman Brothers. Kabir, run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, key figures in Team Anna, has received $400,000 from the Ford Foundation in the last three years. Among contributors to the India Against Corruption campaign there are Indian companies and foundations that own aluminum plants, build ports and SEZs, and run Real Estate businesses and are closely connected to politicians who run financial empires that run into thousands of crores of rupees. Some of them are currently being investigated for corruption and other crimes. Why are they all so enthusiastic?

Remember the campaign for the Jan Lokpal Bill gathered steam around the same time as embarrassing revelations by Wikileaks and a series of scams, including the 2G spectrum scam, broke, in which major corporations, senior journalists, and government ministers and politicians from the Congress as well as the BJP seem to have colluded in various ways as hundreds of thousands of crores of rupees were being siphoned off from the public exchequer. For the first time in years, journalist-lobbyists were disgraced and it seemed as if some major Captains of Corporate India could actually end up in prison. Perfect timing for a people's anti-corruption agitation. Or was it?

At a time when the State is withdrawing from its traditional duties and Corporations and NGOs are taking over government functions (water supply, electricity, transport, telecommunication, mining, health, education); at a time when the terrifying power and reach of the corporate owned media is trying to control the public imagination, one would think that these institutions — the corporations, the media, and NGOs — would be included in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill. Instead, the proposed bill leaves them out completely.

Now, by shouting louder than everyone else, by pushing a campaign that is hammering away at the theme of evil politicians and government corruption, they have very cleverly let themselves off the hook. Worse, by demonising only the Government they have built themselves a pulpit from which to call for the further withdrawal of the State from the public sphere and for a second round of reforms — more privatisation, more access to public infrastructure and India's natural resources. It may not be long before Corporate Corruption is made legal and renamed a Lobbying Fee.

Will the 830 million people living on Rs.20 a day really benefit from the strengthening of a set of policies that is impoverishing them and driving this country to civil war?

This awful crisis has been forged out of the utter failure of India's representative democracy, in which the legislatures are made up of criminals and millionaire politicians who have ceased to represent its people. In which not a single democratic institution is accessible to ordinary people. Do not be fooled by the flag waving. We're watching India being carved up in war for suzerainty that is as deadly as any battle being waged by the warlords of Afghanistan, only with much, much more at stake.