| inbluevt | Date: Monday, 2013/10/07, 11:44 AM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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NEW DELHI, Oct 4 2013 (IPS) - As India grapples with rising prices and a rapidly sinking rupee, attention has turned to the country’s massive parallel economy that siphons wealth away from development programmes and into the pockets of a corrupt ruling elite.
On Monday, a special court declared Lalu Prasad Yadav, one of India’s leading politicians, guilty of
diverting millions of dollars meant for the purchase of animal fodder while he was chief minister of the eastern state of Bihar in the 1990s.He has been sentenced to five years in prison. Because he was given more than two years, he will lose the seat he currently holds in Parliament and will be barred from contesting elections, according to a Supreme Court ruling handed down in July, which the government has sought to overturn through an ordinance.
Last week, however, Rahul Gandhi, a scion of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty who is tipped to be prime minister if the ruling Congress party is returned to power in elections due next year,
announced personal opposition to the ordinance, sealing Yadav’s political fate and that of other legislators convicted for corruption.
“If you want to fight corruption in the country, whether it is the Congress or the [main opposition] Bharatiya Janata Party, we cannot continue making these small compromises. Because if we make these small compromises, we compromise everything,” said Gandhi.
Analysts see Gandhi’s opposition to his own party’s policy as a response to rising public anger against corruption. His father Rajiv Gandhi, who served as prime minister from 1984 to 1989, had also been critical of “power brokers” in the Congress party who siphon off development funds.
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Message edited by inbluevt - Monday, 2013/10/07, 11:56 AM |
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