People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No. 21
May 27, 2012
|
Vol. XXXVI
No. 21 May 27, 2012 |
Whitewashing
Black Money The
Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of THE
finance ministry’s white paper on black money, presented in parliament,
reflects a trite exercise devoid of any political will. Neither has any
credible estimate of black money stashed abroad been provided by the white
paper nor any concrete measures suggested to retrieve the illicit funds. The paper states that the total amount held in the
Indian deposits of Swiss banks fell from Rs 23,373 crore in 2006 to Rs 9,295 in
2010. The government seems to have no clue as to where this amount has gone.
There is no assessment of Indian deposits in other offshore financial centres.
The paper suggests that much of illicit financial outflows are round-tripped
into The paper cites the Global Financial Integrity study
which estimated the current value of illicit financial flows from India between
1948 and 2008 to be around 462 billion dollars (Rs 25 lakh crore
approximately). The fact that these are not gross overestimates can be seen
from the information provided by the white paper: over the last two financial
years (2010-2012) alone the Directorate of Transfer Pricing has detected
mispricing (such as over-invoicing and under-invoicing of imports and exports)
to the tune of a whopping Rs 67,768 crore in 1,343 cases. Rs 48,951 crore have
also been collected by the Directorate of International Taxation in just two
years, between 2010 and 2012. It is clear that these amounts detected or
collected over the past two years still comprise the tip of the iceberg. The white paper reveals that the amounts of
undisclosed income of Indians, who figure in the lists of secret bank account
holders received from the German and French governments respectively, are Rs 40
crore and Rs 565 crore only. These are minor parties. The Indian individuals
and entities who are holding bulk of the illicit wealth in offshore accounts,
are yet to be identified. The white paper disappointingly reiterates the myriad
technical difficulties involved in retrieving these huge amounts stashed
abroad. The lack of progress in this direction raises doubts
over the sincerity of the UPA government on this crucial issue. The Polit
Bureau of the CPI(M) demands that a serious effort be made to quantify illicit
funds stashed abroad by Indians and identify the culprits. Undisclosed assets
of Indians located abroad should be confiscated by the government as per the
provisions of the Income Tax Act. ‘Reconsider
Marriage Law Amendments’ On May 21, AIDWA general
secretary Sudha
Sundarraman, Brinda Karat and Kirti Singh sent
the following letter to the union law minister, Salman
Khursheed, regarding the
amendment of marriage law. WE
appreciate your initiative to take our opinion on the
official amendments to
the marriage law. We regret that we are unable to
support the proposed
amendment which does not adequately protect women in a
situation created due to
the liberalisation of divorce laws. We would like to
point out that in
countries where divorce laws are liberalised, as is now
proposed in The proposal to
give an equal share to women only in
residential property will not be sufficient. As you are
well aware, couples
often live in their in-laws’ home and therefore in a
large number of cases, if
the law is limited only to residential property, the
woman in such a situation
will be without any protection. The proposal also clubs
women’s share with the
share of the children, which means that the husband gets
a greater share. Further,
the proposal denies a woman a share in the moveable or
immoveable property of
her husband created during the subsistence of the
marriage as a right. Instead,
she will have to go to the court and it is left to the
discretion of the court
to decide the share, if any, which she will get only in
moveable property. As
we all know, legal and judicial procedures take a long
time and are expensive.
Thus a woman who has been divorced on grounds of
irretrievable breakdown will
have to run from court to court to get justice without
the necessary mandate
from the law. We had suggested in the earlier April 18
amendment that instead
of leaving it to the court, it should be decided in the
law itself that
moveable and immoveable property, during subsistence of
marriage, should be
equally shared. We had also given you our concrete
proposals on Clause 13 F,
which we reiterate. In page 3 after line 3, section 13F
to be amended as
follows: That at page 3 the inserted amendment clause
13F in the Bill after
line 3 be deleted and the following be inserted: “Without prejudice
to any custom or usage or any other
law for the time being in force, in any proceeding for a
divorce or separation,
the court may on a petition made by the wife, order that
the husband shall give
an equal share of the residential property, and also of
any other movable and
immovable property acquired during the subsistence of
marriage. Provided that
the court shall also take into account any disadvantage
suffered by the woman,
especially taking note of the presence of children, and
give her a further
share of the property.” The women’s
organisations are unable to appreciate why
the government has prioritised the passage of amendments
to liberalise divorce
laws when there are so many pending legislations
concerning women’s rights
which women in
