DRDA: Mother of all corruption in Assam

Government of India has numerous schemes for development of our rural areas and for poverty alleviation.
District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) serves as the nodal agency for managing these various programs at the district levels. A complete definition of DRDA, its roles and structures etc are available at Ministry of Rural Development website. Some of these schemes are: MGNREGA, PMGSY, IAY, Bharat Nirman, SGSY etc. These are conceptually very good schemes and should help transforming the rural landscape of India. More than half of India still live in villages. Unless our rural areas are developed and poverty removed, any slogan of India Shining is meaningless. I strongly believe in the theory and implementation of inclusive growth.

So you can see that DRDAs have a great role to play in India's development. They are the people who can really make India a developed country. It is indeed a great job. They can create history. They can uplift the lives of aam-aadmi, the common men.

But are our DRDAs doing their job honestly? I know one Junior Engineer working in DRDA in Assam who is worth multiples of crores (a US $ millionaire) of rupees. His annual salary would be around Rs 1,50,000/- (about US $3300)!  Let us call him Mr T.

Let us look at Mr T from a closer look. He possesses three big houses in the heart of Guwahati city worth more than one crore rupees, all of which he bought by paying cash. He bought some 80 bighas  (1 bigha in Assam = 14,400 sq feet) of  land near the airport. He also possesses a few bighas of land in Sonapur area in the outskirts of Guwahati. He owns three cars. Recently, he has opened a General Motors car showroom. He also has a rice shop where he sells rice that was intended for daily labourers working in Government jobs!

Mr T is a very junior level official in the DRDA setup. He has engineers, executive engineers, Project Directors, and many other officials, elected representatives on top of him. Again, DRDAs work very closely with Zilla Parishad (District Level Panchayat). Unfortunately, most of them are involved in this great loot. Mr T is just one of them.

What is the source of their money? It is all my money, your money that we pay through various direct and indirect taxes to the government. I am very proud that I am able to contribute some amount to the nation-building. But the bitter truth is that most of our hard-earned money is not going for the development of our country; rather going to the pockets of Mr T and his co-looters.

You cannot complain against Mr T under the current draft of Government Lokpal bill (the Jokepal as it has been called by Anna hazare). He is a junior officer; but important one as he works in the actual implementation of Bharat Nirman.

My grandpa's neighbor and Anna's opponents

I remember my grand-father telling me the story of his neighbor. My grandpa was a freedom fighter and went to jail for supporting the freedom movement. His neighbor didn't support the freedom movement led by Mahatma Gandhi. His neighbor believed that British rule was better and he always doubted if at all Gandhi's movement would lead to India being free. He used to scoff at the idea of India being free.

I asked my grand-pa: what happened after that. Grand-pa told me that on the day India became Independence, his neighbor was one of the first to burst crackers in celebrations. Later that person somehow managed to get freedom-fighter-pension also! That person towards the later half of his life used to tell untrue stories of his involvement in freedom struggle to his grand-children.

I see some similarities between my grand-father's neighbor and opponents of Anna Hazare led struggle against corruption. I'm pretty sure that when we enter the new corruption-free India, these very people will also celebrate and later tell untrue stories of their support for the movement to their grand-children.

If you really want to proudly and honestly tell your stories about your involvement in this struggle against corruption to your children and grand-children, come and join the movement. We are definitely at the dawn  of a new India. 

Let's cure the disease; not just the symptoms

When we feel severe pain in some part of our body, we usually have two options:

1. Investigate the cause of the pain and fix it.
2. Continue to take pain-killer tablets.

Some people have been complaining that why Anna has not raised crusades against issues like hunger, poverty, lack of healthcare & education etc. Let me tell you what I think on this.

Yes, these are indeed big issues suffered by a large chunk of population of India. But these are symptoms of a disease and the root cause of all is corruption. Late Rajiv Gandhi, India's former Prime Minister, said that out of every rupee spent on development projects, only 17 paise reaches the common people (aam-aadmi) and rest 83 paise end up being sucked by corruption. We need to make sure that the remaining 83 paise reaches the intended target. 


What is the source of Government money? We pay various taxes, direct and indirect, at various times to Government. We feel very proud to contribute to nation-building. But we expect that this money is properly used and not become part of someone's Swiss bank account.


I sincerely believe that all our severe pains like hunger, poverty, lack of healthcare & education etc will go away in a corruption-free India. It's high time that we issue a Quit India notice to corruption right now.

CAGR of 527% ! What business is this?

I was reading a Times of India news article this morning on Jaganmohan Reddy. He is the son of former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh late YSR Reddy. As per the news, Jagan's wealth rose from Rs 11 lakh in 2002 to Rs 42,000 crore in 2009 in a span of 7 years.

I used a CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate) calculator to find out what is his CAGR for this phenomenal growth rate. The result is an astoundingly high CAGR of 527.2% !!!

How big is 527.2% CAGR? If you would have invested Rs 100/- with Jagan in 2002, this investment would  have turned into Rs 3.8 crore in 2009! This is unbelievable. What magic is this?

Well, the magic here is nothing but corruption. No business can give you this growth. This money well-spent could have been used in healthcare, education, infrastructure growth etc of my country.

This is just one example. There are hundreds of thousands of other Jagans in our country. The time has come for us to say: enough is enough.

The Selfish Life

Recently I was reading about Arvind Kejriwal, one of the leading social activists leading the fight against corruption. Arvind Kejriwal was one of the leading guys behind the Right to Information (RTI) Act too.

Arvind is an IIT Kharagpur B.Tech and then he joined civil services in 1992 as Indian Revenue Services (IRS) officer. While working with the Income Tax department, he saw the widespread corruption prevalent there. He started Parivartan, an NGO for bringing in transparency in Government.

I am also an engineer and went to one of the IITs (for my masters). But our similarities end there. After reading about Arvin Kejriwal, I have realized what a selfish life that I am living! Our lives are too materialistic nowadays. We are busy buying a house, a car and then paying mortgages (EMI) for these in remaining of our lives. We are busy thinking how to get the next salary hike and how good will be this year's bonus. We are busy replacing the our old (CRT) TVs with a LCD/LED ones. We are just busy with ourselves and no time to think about the society. We feel we live a comfortable and happy (?) life. One day we will die and no one will remember us.

Arvind Kejriwal could have led a life like ours. He was an IRS officer and could have accumulated tons of wealth like other IRS folks. But he opted for a different path. He left his own comforts so that he can make  the lives of millions of his fellow country men less miserable.

Do you also lead a selfish life? Are you happy with it?

The Great Awakening

I was born during the Emergency Period of 25th June 1975 to 21st March 1977. I never saw what emergency was; only heard about it later from others. On the morning of August 16th, we experienced some emergency like situation in India when Delhi police arrested Anna Hazare from his apartment. He wanted to go on a fast against the widespread corruption prevalent in our country. The government didn't want him to go on the fast. So they came up with numerous restrictions against his agitation.


How widespread is the corruption? Let me summarize it in one sentence. In every step from our birth to death, we face corruption. We need to bribe government officials to get the birth certificate. I heard the same is true when we try to get the death certificate!

I am an engineer working with a multi-national IT company and belong to the so-called middle class. Usually, the middle class in India have a general apathy to the direct involvement in affairs of the state.

Corruption affects everyone - middle-class or economically lower class. The poor class suffers more as corruption affects them directly in their day-to-day life.Government of India has lots of development schemes for the economically downtrodden class. But thanks to the leakage in these schemes, the real benefits never reach them! Public Distribution System (PDS) supplies subsidized food items to the poor; but it is diverted and sold in black market. NREGA gives some employment guarantee scheme to the poor; but fake identities are created who suck the benefits. (The examples of pilferage are just too many and I don't want to list them all here). On the other hand, middle class have some economic cushion that probably don't affect them so harshly like the poor people.

Let me give you my recent experience with corruption. I paid Rs 30,000/- to register my property at sub-registrar office in Bangalore. Then I again paid Rs 7,000/- to get the Khata (property ownership document) in BBMP office. I heard that there is a big nexus of builder, sub-registrar and politicians in these. (I'll write a separate blogs on these later). I knew paying bribe is bad. But then why did I choose to pay bribe? Because I knew that if I don't pay bribe, I have to make several rounds to the offices, argue with officials, my inability to speak the local language Kannada etc. I thought that time is also money. If I spend too much time visiting these offices, it will put stress on my work-life. I believe I represent the mentality of many of middle-class. We all felt bad and agitated about it; but we felt helpless.

In 2011, we have seen some big corruption cases - like CWG, 2G etc. Then came Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and their India Against Corruption campaign. Anna Hazare has awakened the sleeping middle class. Middle class is on the street these days. I have already seen that the agitation is gradually percolating down to the poorer classes. (Yesterday the Delhi auto-rickshraws joined the protest.)

I'm joining the protest for a better India, a corruption free India. Are you?