N Ram: Ban corporate funding of parties

Hyderabad: Former Editor of The Hindu N Ram said that the scams were here to stay unless there was a serious effort to ban corporate funding of political parties.

Speaking at a discussion during the launch of his book titled ‘Why Scams are Here to Stay’, which was released by Minister for IT and Municipal Administration K T Rama Rao here on Monday. Ram said that the Centre was proposing to bring electoral bonds, where the idea was to protect the identity of big donors.

“There would be a designated branch of RBI and the political parties will be given an account. Nobody knows from where the money comes in. Rather than making it transparent, it is made opaque. You are unable to ban corporate funding and therefore, scams are here to stay,” said Ram.

Participating in the discussion, IT Minister K T Rama Rao said that things were changing now and added that the author wanted to provoke the collective conscience of the society and hence he had selected such a title of the book. He said that political funding was a global phenomenon

KTR said that the oldest democracy in the world United States of America has witnessed massive spending during the recent presidential elections and large business houses and oil companies had spent billions of dollars and they coined the term lobbying. He said that there was need to take more practical view on this issue.

Referring to the TS-IPASS of the Telangana government, KTR said the same officials who were there in the Undivided Andhra Pradesh were there now also but there has been a sea change in their functioning. The officials have been asked to give clearance to industries in 15 days and on the 16th day, if the official concerned does fails to clear it, it is deemed that the permission was given and even there was a provision for penalty for the delay, KTR said.

Reacting to KTR’s comment on lobbying in the US elections, Ram said that lobbying was more harmful than corruption. The stubborn media and compromised journalism contributes to corruption, he said. He pointed out that paid news was for propaganda and was meant to deceive the readers. This happens not only during the elections but throughout the year, he lamented.

Replying to a question, Ram said that liberalisation has led to increase in corruption. To another question, he said that demonetisation did not deliver anything to the common man but had paid rich political dividends to the authors of demonetisation.

Asked if a reporter should follow up the breaking story on corruption given by him, Ram said the journalist should not to be too obsessed with the story, which he broke as he would be demoralised with the outcome. Author Sriram Karri served as moderator of the event.

Hyderabad Mayor B Ram Mohan Rao was also present on the occasion.