By the Editor: Siddharth Sehgal

Vijay Mallya may be the first thief in Indian history who not only robbed the bank but also dared the law publicly, on twitter of course. He buys pent houses, expensive flats and properties all over the world with whose money, your money, my money and there isn’t a single red corner notice out for him. Who should we give credit for this?

 Accountability has often if not always been someone else’s problem when it came to loans in our banking system. One example I clearly remember of the top of my head is the corrupt practice of financing tractors in rural branches by having a piece of pie under the table. From clerk to manager everyone gets a cut, the loan is underwritten without much due diligence and party goes out with a check that it won’t pay back. Recovery you may ask, well it’s the other guy’s problem who will be transferred to that branch after our not so honest officials have filled their pockets. These corrupt bank officials sometime give a cut further up the chain to keep the suspension orders away. This is just one small example of corruption that goes on at a rural level, now change the setting to the corporate headquarters. Same tractor financing story goes on here but at a very big level. We can have all sorts of infrastructure, checks and balances for transparency but if people making the decisions can be bought or sold than no wonder taxpayers hard earned money went into booze, parties and kingfisher calendars. If you took the loan and failed in business its not a crime, its just an investment that didn’t worked out but if you took public money and diverted it to your own coffers, its obscenity. People like Mallya have built their fortune on other people’s sweat and blood and didn’t paid their dues. This should not go unpunished.

  No matter how much people like Narendra Modi or how much good work Narendra Modi will do, he cannot run each and every bank, he cannot look into each and every file. Every leader needs those secretaries, bureaucrats and clerks to implement their vision and if this cog in the wheel is weak the vehicle is not going to go too far. Government not only has to crack down on those who default willingly but also people who aid these willful runaways. These people sit in our secretariats, collectorates, branches, banks, hospitals everywhere. Law should be equal to everyone whether it’s the one who ran away with a tractor or the one who ran away with an airline.