The way we are going about it, this whole black money affair seems utterly strange. It seems to confirm our status as a declamatory — or denunciatory — democracy in which political parties call each other vile names and hold out outlandish prospects before the people of extraordinary revelations about political rivals, in this case of hoarding “national wealth” abroad.
This is reminiscent in some ways of the time of the late V.P. Singh who, before he became Prime Minister, used to hold aloft his electronic diary and declare that the names of Bofors bribe-takers were locked in it and would be revealed in due course.
The aim of exercises such as these is to tantalise, and not offer constructive ways to solve a problem which has many dimensions and whose solution has eluded us for decades. Oddly enough, the Supreme Court does not seem above striking a populist stance.
After being berated by it, the Narendra Modi government submitted to it in a sealed cover on Wednesday a list of 627 persons who have foreign accounts. This list had been obtained through the good offices of foreign governments like Germany and France. What does the apex court plan to do with this?
If it will merely hand it over to a SIT (which it will monitor) for a probe, that had already been done by the government. The names have been obtained through some diligence and good work under UPA which was later followed up by the present regime. All those who own foreign accounts may not be holding illicit or criminal money. This is why the countries that helped us with the names have placed a condition — that only those will be made public against whom the government has begun prosecution proceedings for tax evasion or a criminal activity.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday gave little indication that it understood the complexity and the sensitivity involved in conduct of relations between nations, and appeared to mock Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi out of season when he pointed to treaty obligations. The top court failed to appreciate that the violation of certain obligations could bring under pressure financial relations with leading countries even in the sphere of routine remittances.
The apex court would have appeared more sophisticated in its overall handling of the matter if it had called upon the guidance of international law and international relations experts, and also given us a clearer understanding of how it proposed to proceed in the black money case in a way that would distinguish its approach from that of the government. Outside the court room, the government side would do well not to sound politically partisan in its observations on so serious an issue.
