Been lazy for the a while now. Mainly because nothing to cause me to turn my head came around…till today.
This report in the popular Daily Star came out six months ago, amongst a host of others. My first reaction to reading this was “Wait…what? The government is going to allow criminality?” Even if the government does not allow criminality, why can anyone be able to “whiten” money by paying a lesser amount in tax? (10% flat vs. 10% – 25% based on income level, you can’t explain that!)
Now we have this, international organisations would have issued strict orders to have nothing to do with banks in Bangladesh after the government had a serious bout of myopia (when do they not have that?) and allowed money to be invested in stocks with no questions asked about the source of funds. So now the government will question where the money came from and, if necessary, pursue cases. We’re back to square one then. All those people with illegally earned money will stay out of investing in the stock market or infrastructure development projects (illegal money is being defined as money earned through illegal means, black money is being defined as money earned through legal means but not taxed as required by law…so you have a black market and an “illegal” market…you can’t explain that either!).
So let’s run this down from start to finish (as in all that has happened up until now):
- Government wants to let criminals run scot-free as they are mostly the “pets” of the ruling party.
- International pressure on the government causes the government to backtrack.
- Government announces a new policy.
How good will the new policy be? Limited. Criminals will take their money elsewhere (which might have been an ulterior motive of the international agency) and those who are having “black money” will make a partial declaration (rest of it will GTFO of here). Back where we were folks. Criminals (who should be shot) will take all that money away and decent people will do the decent thing anyways. Let’s get this straight – there is far more money being held by the criminals than those with “black money”. So making it a policy to ensure that money circulates by leaving out the bigger source is doing it wrong(ly).
Simply put, the policy should have been to put criminals behind bars. No ifs, buts or maybes. Most will ask, “But who is to do all this?” Answer, gimme a break. You’re the fucking citizen, you’re supposed to ensure the country’s fixed and functioning properly…too hard? If yes, stop giving me nonsense about “loving your country”.