Information of Swiss accounts with govt should be made public
Your front page article ‘India Gets Info on Swiss Accounts‘ made for interesting reading. What good is information if they remain on paper and not acted upon by the authorities. The government one understands already has details of several account holders in Swiss banks but nothing has so far emerged out of them. One has to pay certain fees for people to keep money in Swiss banks while you actually earn interest keeping it in Indian banks which clearly is an indication that Swiss deposits are unaccounted money used for terror funding or siphoned out of one’s country by way of illegal trade.
Indian economy is in a mess and it is on account of corruption where people have avoided taxes here and transferred money to Swiss accounts. Government should show teeth and act on such deposits even if they happen to be of men with money and power. Make all such accounts public and the law of the land should deal with offenders. The money trail could unearth several scams running into trillions and most of our country’s fiscal deficit can be taken care of if this money is brought back to the country of its origin.
S.N. Kabra.
Flights at public-expense be allowed only in economy class
It is quite usual that top bureaucrats in governments and Public-Sector-Undertakings usually travel in costly business-class of flights. It should be made compulsory that all those travelling at public-expense including even ministers and legislatures must travel only in economy-class of flights. However exemption may be made for President, Vice President and Prime Minister who otherwise also are entitled and rightly too for special exclusive planes for security-reasons.
Since those in higher judiciary are required to be isolated from masses, all judges of Supreme Court and High Courts can be entitled for exclusive Business Class. But same facility should not be extended for Election Commissioners who are presently entitled for service-conditions and benefits equivalent to those of Supreme Court judges.
It is significant that largest domestic airliner Indigo has only one class namely economy class, and top officers travelling through Indigo have no other option than to travel in economy class. There is no reason that they may not travel in economy class in other flights. Rather planes imported for domestic flights should be allowed to have only economy class like in Indigo.
Frequent-Flyer-Points given by different airlines should be accumulated in accounts of public-authorities paying for tickets to be compensated in cash to respective public-authorities.
Madhu Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
