Indians are good at patting themselves in the back. If you have any doubts all you have to do is type out a mail listing all our achievements from the beginning of time and send it to your friends. (The number zero, Ayurveda, Yoga – you get the gist) Before you know it, not only will twenty different people have forwarded the list to you, but there will also be fervent appeals asking you to prove your patriotism by setting it as your Facebook status for an hour.
What is appealing to me about us as a race is our resilience. We wash down scams with gusto and reach for higher and higher levels with each subsequent scam. When the Bofors scandal came about, drawing room conversations erupted in fury about how this amount is unheard of and doomsday prophecies were made about how difficult it is for a country to bounce back from a financial blow like that. Rs. 400 million is no joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_scandal
Hardly less than 5 years later, we found that Harshad Mehta had swindled banks to the tune of Rs. 4000 crore. Crippling to the economy was the verdict.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harshad_Mehta
Now, we are dealing with a staggering 2G scam that leaves me fumbling for the number of zeroes. (176K crore i.e. approximately $33 billion )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G_scam
We even hold the honor of having a wiki page listing the scams by year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India_by_year
For all the brainpower exerted in pulling off the scams and the bribes on a grand scale or as a matter of life, it is indeed sad that these same people do not even think of applying their mental faculties towards anything constructive.
I tried searching for “Scams in <Country name> “ and not one of the countries I searched for had an organized listing by year. There. Our achievement.
The scams are getting bigger and bigger and India can definitely do better. Trillion dollars .. here we come.. 😦
The good part is the court system is working better now and these guys are in Jail. (unheard of in the previous scams)
Small consolation though
Glad to know somewhere at least we are making progress. 😀 We are a country of intelligent beings and know how to work around the rules to make bigger profits by the year.
Bigger numbers every year. Wonder if we should ask the world to recognize us as the “Land of scams”
Land of elephants image replaced by land of scams – so sad 😦
Hmmm. What can I say?? Less said the better..
In case if you didnt know, the 2G scam came in second (in the worst-scams in the world). They didnt do the job properly and lost the first place to watergate.. too sad!
Whether we go in for gold medals in the Olympics or not, for this we will surely compete!
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