Is India Poor ?

Client confidentiality is one of the unique selling points of the Swiss banking system. But not when the world’s only superpower is in no mood to tolerate financial thievery. As per the International Herald Tribune, Switzerland provided the UBS bank account details of hundreds of clients to the US government in connection with tax evasion charges. UBS is Switzerland’s largest bank. It is expected that more bank accounts will be brought under review. In fact, a US court might expand it to 52,000 clients with assets of US$ 14.8 bn. We wonder if the Indian government would ever ask for such disclosures. As per April 2008 report by Mr. Naman Sood, the top 5 countries whose Nationals have the highest deposits in Swiss Accounts are - India - $1456 billion, Russia - $470 billion, UK - $390 billion, Ukraine - $100 billion & China - $96 billion. India with $1456 billion or $1.4 trillion has more money in Swiss banks than rest of the world COMBINED. It is one of the biggest loots witnessed by mankind. This amount is about 13 times larger than the country's foreign debt. If this surplus amount is invested in earning interest, the amount of interest will be more than the annual budget of the Central Government. So even if all the taxes are totally abolished, then also Central Government will be able to maintain the country, very comfortably. some finance experts and economists believe tax havens to be a conspiracy of the western world against the poor countries. By allowing the proliferation of tax havens in the twentieth century, the western world explicitly encourages the movement of scarce capital from the developing countries to the rich. In March 2005, the Tax Justice Network (TJN) published a research finding demonstrating that $11.5 trillion of personal wealth was held offshore by rich individuals across the globe. The findings estimated that a large proportion of this wealth was managed from some 70 tax havens. Further, augmenting these studies of TJN, Raymond Baker -- in his widely celebrated book titled Capitalism's Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free Market System -- estimates that at least $5 trillion have been shifted out of poorer countries to the West since the mid-1970s. It is further estimated by experts that one per cent of the world's population holds more than 57 per cent of total global wealth, routing it invariably through these tax havens.
As you would notice USA is nowhere in the list of top 5 nations having highest deposits in such secret accounts. However the Obama administration has earnestly started making enquiry in view of the dire economic situation in which the country finds itself now. But we the Indians, our political class (ruling & opposition) as well as our great pillars of justice the media & its several news channels are all silent on this subject. Will we ever get our Obama ?