How to be a thief and police at the same time.

Show great feeling for the poor, talk about " inclusive growth ", start social schemes, loot the money, stash it abroad and stop any investigation if it starts to become uncomfortable. A few easy steps on how politicians are able to maintain their wealth and power. The MNREGA scheme was started to help the rural poor by dishing out taxpayer money for fictitious work. A study by the NGO, RLEK of SC/ST in Uttarakhand has shown that money is not reaching the intended people. " Bureaucrats in connivance with contractors and politicians are trying their best to sabotage the MNREGA programme in Uttarakhand. Rs 348.81 crores ( Rs 3.49 billion ) received by the state under the flagship scheme are being misappropriated," said Avadash Kaushal, Chairman of RLEK. ET, 20 April. Once looted the money has to be stashed somewhere. One avenue is to invest in properties, the reason why property prices have jumped 800% since 2002. The other is to transfer it to a numbered account abroad. After being alerted by France about deposits by Indians in the HSBC Bank in Geneva, Switzerland the then Finance Minister assured Parliament in January 2012 that the government would set up requisite institutions to root out the problem of black money. A Directorate of Criminal Investigation was set up inside the income tax department but after it started to probe industrialists, cabinet ministers and other politicians its investigation was taken away and distributed to units in different cities thus fragmenting the process and making it toothless. TOI, 30 April. The last raid carried out by the DCI was on 30 March, 2012 on United Stock Exchange and unearthed fictitious transactions worth Rs 4 billion for allegedly money laundering activities. Everything is so fictitious in India. Fictitious MNREGA money looted by fictitious politicians and civil servants, fictitious accounts in Geneva, fictitious assurance to the Parliament and fictitious investigations to hoodwink the public. Its a fairy tale. Apparently the probe is now being supervised by Finance Ministry officials, the most ideal fellows to supervise investigation of cabinet ministers. The government has denied that the initial probe had found any black MPs with black money. We sympathise with the government. Rs 3 billion is just loose change. Trillions have been looted from the telecom license scam, from the coal mine allotment scam, from the Commonwealth Games scam, from illegal mining of iron ore and a myriad other scams that we do not know about. All supervised by the Honest Man who may also be called the Ignorant Man because he continually denies any knowledge of anything, including the desperate state of the economy, but refuses to give up his chair. The Congress should open a university of misappropriation and investigation. Teach Harvard and MIT something useful.