Strange phenomenon

A curious paradox of the Indian establishment is that a growing number of its children are choosing to desert this democracy and live abroad, especially in the US. This strange phenomenon came into sharp focus on February 5 when the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative released an exhaustive 214-page report, exposing  54 countries that helped to facilitate the US Central Intelligence Agency’s secret detention, rendition, and interrogation programme in the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York.  The principal author of the report is Amrit Singh, daughter of prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, and a senior legal officer of the society. For the page 3 and occident obsessed Indian media, the success in any field of endeavour of members of the Indian diaspora is cause for celebration and wonderment. But amid the celebrations, the larger question of why the offspring of politicians and leading lights of the establishment — who one would presume have everything going for them in this country — choose to live and make their careers abroad, tends to be obfuscated. Surprisingly, children of several Presidents of India including the late Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and R. Venkatraman and of a huge number of influential politicians and bureaucrats prefer to live in Western nations, rather than in the republic being shaped by their parents. According to an immigration officer in the US embassy in New Delhi, no sooner is a politician elected to any high office in the country, she begins “plotting and planning to get a green card” for one or more of her  progeny. Ditto Indian diplomats posted abroad — in the UN, World Bank, IMF etc. They obviously have little faith in the outcomes of policies they impose upon the people of India. The tragedy of post-independent India is that its political class has so thoroughly beggared the economy that even its own children want to quit and run. Obviously they have inside information about the future of this country, which the rest of us don’t.   Unwarranted entitlements If ever there was any doubt in the collective public mind about the probity and bona fides of the Congress-led UPA-II government which has misruled the country from the Delhi durbar for four years, it should be removed by the Agusta Westland helicopter purchase deal. Right from the start after it was fortuitously re-elected in 2009, the Congress party has been involved in one financial scandal after another, with the sums getting ever larger. The Rs.10,000 crore Commonwealth Games scam was followed by the Rs.86,000 crore 2G telecom spectrum allotment scandal, the Rs.185,591 crore coal blocks allocation rip-off, besides sundry land acquisition and allocation rackets. And hard on the heels of the above comes the scandalous Rs.3,600 crore Westland helicopter purchase contract. Kickbacks estimated at Rs.362 crore are reported to have been paid as bribes to a clutch of government officials, a former chief of the Indian Air Force and defence minister Pranab Mukherjee (now the President of India, no less), for manipulation of…