Black Money: How it is Generated in India? How Can it Be Eliminated?

Black money is essentially that money which is set aside and transacted without proper documentation or account book entries for purposes other than for normal day-to-day living of individuals. Most often such transactions are of high amounts.Since the transaction is unaccounted, the money goes out of the taxation system and the government loses tax revenue due to it.

Very often black money transactions take place in hard cash and such cash is stacked in the custody of individuals, instead of the place where it should genuinely be lying-the banking system.Black money transactions drain out the currency circulation and place greater stress on the government to print and issue more and more currency notes than actually required.

Black money is often generated in transactions that are illegal, such as gambling, bribes, smuggling, drug trafficking, human trafficking and by a variety of other such acts. Large scale black money transactions also take place in commodity trades, labor contracts, election campaigns, mining, scrap trades, used vehicle trades, gems and jewelry trade, etc.

Money which one gains by illegal means without proper accounting is, therefore, black money. Money paid and received for unfair benefits is also black money, which is sometimes called corruption money.

Black money generates black wealth and black economy which runs parallel to the legal economy monitored by the government. The high presence of black economy transactions cause the formal economy weak and ineffective. It causes a few individuals to have enormous purchasing power as compared to the majority citizens which creates higher levels of economic inequality.

Now let us consider some manner in which black money is generated. Let us take the case of a school or a college which has some good reputation. The reputation causes more and more parents aspiring to have their wards admitted in such schools or colleges. A very glaring example is the private medical colleges in India. Now there is a big demand for their courses and seats. Suppose that the government has fixed a small percentage of seats to be allotted at the discretion of the management or the persons who are in the decision making positions even while having a publicly known fee structure. This causes some seats to be allotted to some students on the basis of corruption money that they pay to influence the decision makers. Since this money cannot be accounted by the legally accepted accounting system, the money, the moment it is paid becomes illegal or black. It is common knowledge that some private medical colleges in India allots some seats by taking a couple of million rupees in black. Since, it is not normally possible for people who have legitimate incomes to pay such huge amounts for just getting their not-so-bright wards admitted for a medical degree course or a reputed school such black money payments are often made by those who have black money cash stacked with them. This black money in hard cash then get transacted and moved from one custodian to another in return for a small favor. If the money is not so large, the person who got it slowly pumps it in to the main economy and make it white. Usually, he or she spends such easy money  lavishly for parties, purchase of expensive white goods such as cameras, mobiles, i-pads, ornaments, gems and during luxury travels. He or she may use it for lavishly furnishing or constructing expensive homes. 

Contractors who are dealing with large numbers of daily wagers have to transact huge cash on a daily basis. They may show individuals payments higher in the books while making lower payments to the individuals. This way they create large sums of cash which is unaccounted which they use for illegal transactions later.

When large scale purchases take place, many companies are willing to pay some percentage of the transaction as commissions to the people who have helped them to settle the deals. While such commissions are legal for private-to-private transactions, for governmental or public transactions they are illegal. If in the latter case commissions are paid, it has to be illegal and therefore out of corruption. It becomes then black money.

There are hundreds of such methods by which black money transactions routinely take place. While black money is common through out the world, its impact and quantum is more in under developed or developing countries like India.

It is almost impossible to eliminate corruption and black money in a country, so long as there are people who are dishonest, greedy or unscrupulous with lower maturity levels. Yet, its impact and prevalence could be controlled to a greater extent by better methods of governance. However, better governance is not always possible when the people in key positions of governance are themselves are without competency, character, courage and compassion. 

One of the easiest method to control black money is the strict imposition of restrictions on hard cash transactions. It is not very difficult with banking becoming almost computerized and online. I have written about some aspects of it earlier.

Black money economy has to be curtailed if India wants to have progress and development that is beneficial to everyone. If greed and insecurity feelings are removed from the minds of the people, this social evil might start declining of its own.

Every right thinking Indian should give a serious thought about it.

Suicide of Robin Williams and the Jet Pilots Sleeping: Connecting Two Unrelated Events!

Today morning it began to rain in Ranchi. Something good. But that caused our newspaper man delaying his delivery by two hours and I could not spend time reading the paper in the morning as usual.

I was thinking of writing some thing about Cain, son of Eve. I did not say Adam, purposefully. You would know it when I write about it later!

My idea changed when I got the newspaper when I was about to get into my car to go to office. I just had a cursory look at the headlines of the front page.

No doubt, the headlines have been all about politics and political gimmicks. I have nothing to write about those as there are several opinion makers and media intellectuals to analyze those and make us politically enlightened.

What got my attention were two short news: the first was about the suicide of Academy award winning American actor, Robin Williams. The second was about the miraculous escape of international air passengers travelling to Brussels from India on Indian private carrier-Jet Airways. The report said both the pilots slept nicely in the cock pit while the plane was cruising at 33000 feet above Turkey causing the unattended aircraft to plunge 5000 feet. The passengers were fortunate that their sleeping captains woke up in time to regain controls before another possible air accident of the year! 

While I was thinking of the possible causes of mishaps involving the so-called celebrities (actors and pilots are worshipful heroes for many!), I myself was saved from a possible car-crash on a blind turn with another car on the way. The other car was driven by a teenager boy driving carelessly while talking over his cell-phone. Perhaps he even did not have a driving licence! Holding his mobile phone pressed to his ears with his right hand, he could not make the steering turn properly with his other hand. But we both applied the brakes just in time to stop our cars within a few inches from each other! Perhaps he realized his mistake, perhaps not. But accidents by immature drivers are on the rise. Whose fault is it, anyway? We would not be able to make any one answer!

The american actor was a successful man in the eyes of the general public. He, perhaps had everything in life-fame, money, recognition, pleasure and what not? But the reports says that he was a drug user and an alcohol enthusiast. But more than that, he had some causes of worry, anxiety, or unhappiness arising from some deep rooted and unfulfilled desires which he was not able to express or share. He perhaps had only formal friends and relatives with whom he was unable to share his problems freely. How can a materially successful person be unhappy? How can a person who caused others to laugh always remained tensed from within? How could he be in the grip of depression, even at an age when he was supposed to be matured by worldly experience? 

Human body and mind are indeed complex. There are biological, endocrinal and electrical signals controlling our body in a very complicated manner. We would never be in a position to get to a simple answer to the varied problems of human body and mind. Nevertheless, humans have free will and in-built systems that provide guidance for appropriate living. Unfortunately, many of them, especially those of the celebrity kinds, have no time to put their free thought faculties to guide them. No wonder then that Jesus reportedly told about the difficulty of the rich and famous to enter the kingdom of God!

When money, wealth and power are lavish, the thought faculties of humans go behind the bars!

What perhaps happened to our Indian pilots yesterday was also nothing different. Airline pilots are paid heftily than they can possibly spend in some sane manner. While they are not allowed to board the plane's cockpit with alcohol testing positive as per their service rules, there is nothing preventing them to spend a whole night partying, without taking rest. They are trained professionals who are supposed to use their brains mostly for the purpose for which they are trained. Effectively, such stringent rules make them robotic and they are likely to lose their humanistic part of the brains working effectively. Here too their free thought faculties go behind the bars! When they are freed of their robotic work programs, the immature among them are likely to cross their limits in meaning less pleasures making their bodies and minds weak!

It happens with most of the humans and it is not something special to the actors or the pilots. But a human being really becomes a human being when he or she learns to overcome and streamline the inherent animal instincts. Otherwise, there is not much difference between the animals and the humans!

What humans really need to learn in this short life in this earth is the art of living like a human and not as an animal.

And it is not so difficult!

The Relationship Between Your Zodiac and Your Personality Traits: Knowing These Could be Beneficial!

It took me decades to understand the possible reasons why I am quite different from the majority people around me, whether they are in my own family, classmates, professional colleagues,bosses, subordinates, friends or mere acquaintances. 

Right from my childhood, I used to wonder why people around me did not often agree to my ideas! 

I have been always with a vague feeling that many people around me are not so comfortable with me, even when there are no logical or explainable reasons for such a thing. 

At the same time, I have also found some people, though a very small number, are very fond of being around me always.

When my logic analyzes something as true, I have found the majority others finding it the other way.

My ideas and attitudes, I found as not in synchronicity with many others. 

I had been wondering all throughout my life about this phenomena. I have been an odd-man in this world full of people who are fully absorbed in things that are not so interesting to me. There are very few people around who are at least having some interests in those things which I am interested with. Indeed, I was an odd child, an odd youth, an odd adult and now an odd old man!

I have been wondering about this for decades. When many others are able to find many companions and friends who are comfortable among themselves, why the hell I am finding difficulty to find others who have similar thoughts as mine?

I had no idea. I had no teachers to teach me about the intricate details of life and the manner in which the secrets of life are woven up.

There was no other choice than to become a lonely explorer of truths my self. I could not discuss these with any one because there have been none who possibly had any interest in these issues which kept my mind in an unexplained melancholy always, while outwardly I looked normal and happy.

Then began my search for the meanings and purpose of life. I was not a man of spirituality or religion. Though I believed in God, my incomplete rational thoughts always used to convince me otherwise. I was rather confused. I had written about the beginning of my search for mystical realities , an year ago.

Soon I have found two things that perhaps made me different from others. 

The first possible difference was my blood group. My blood group, AB- was perhaps the rarest in this world.  While I am Rh negative, 99% of the people around me have been Rh positive! Is it a possible reason for the problems that I mentioned above?

Later I tried to study this and got much insights. I had written about my Rh negative blood group and the alienating situations that I have faced in life, earlier. 

Secondly, I found that I my zodiac sign is Sagittarius. My inexperienced but rational mind could not accept astrology and the effects of some stars and planets on human life. But later day experiences polished my rationality to practicality. I began to observe some astonishing similarities in the personality characteristics of some people which led me to read more about astrology and the zodiac. Reading some best selling books authored by Linda Goodman enhanced my interest in this topic.

While I read the personality characteristics that various authors have described about my own zodiac-Sagittarius- I wondered how some intelligent humans in the present and the past have mastered the subject. Many things written about my sun sign have been characteristically true. I got chances to study those around me whose date of births I have known. Due to certain characteristic personality traits within even those under Sagittarius, such as myself,  some astrology masters in recent times have proposed another zodiac sign now known as the Ophiuchus which many now accept as the 13th zodiac with characteristic personality attributes!

The truthfulness of the personality traits among people of the same zodiac has been observed as more or less similar to what the scientists consider for proving their scientific postulates by experimental observations! 

So I felt it logical to consider astrology as a science when it is all about grouping people with regard to their personality traits and some of their intricate relations with birth, death and diseases. Some research organizations trying to solve this mystery of astrology scientifically have been observing this to be more true than false! However, there are other studies which prove astrology not-so-scientific but pseudo.

Then came the truths of the fifth epochal revelation to my notice and I became a curious student of it. I learned about the evolution of human race on earth from it. It was logical and the ideas of natural evolution as proposed by Darwin got fine tuned by more added information introducing the concept of controlled evolution and divine over control on life. 

I had earlier wrote some aspects of human evolution and the colored races for the benefit of my readers, as I learnt it from this book of life guidance. 

But this revealed book of knowledge denounced astrology as a pseudo-science. But on closer examination I found that the book did not contradict all the concepts and beliefs of astrology, but has only fine tuned it by removing certain unfounded beliefs. The book was specifically denouncing superstitious beliefs of human beings which are essentially not correct either scientifically or spiritually!

The book revealed the relationship between a person's birth date and birth place and the future development of his or her personality with respect to them. In some earlier blogs in this site, I had written about it in some detail.

It became clear to me that a person's time of birth and and place of birth have some role in determining his or her unique positioning coordinates with regard to some universal gravity lines. This unique positioning during birth is so  unique that certain genetic changes get frozen or imprinted uniquely in the brain cells or genes of the person together with the biological characteristics that are inherited. Together these make up the person's frame work of personality. 

This frame work also determines to some great extent the quantum of life energy that the person gains which in turn determines the person's natural life span. The person's personality framework with regard to body and mind is thus founded during birth. It gets augmented during growth of the person to adulthood by learning, experience and by self creativity. Properly developed human mind is also a receptor of divine or spiritual communications. That is the way the Universal Creator has made up his universal laws for human personality development and progress, both individually and collectively.

Since every person's birth time and place of birth is almost unique, every person is unique. The uniqueness of a human being is imprinted both in body and mind. There are so many secret codes divinely inbuilt in our bodies and minds. Some we are able to discover with our own intelligence and some others we can not.

There are a number of universe energy lines that cause and fix the personality mechanisms of the brain. But there are also broad similarities and groupings. Thus the western astrologers have characterized human personality under twelve zodiacs while the Indian and the eastern astrologers made further subdivisions to make the grouping at about twenty four. Genetically we have almost double that grouping!

It is not my intention to go in to the depths of such human knowledge. Our personalities evolve based on a number of factors. Some are biological and hereditary while some get fixed at the time of birth. Additional aspects of personality refinement and development takes place when we grow. Our family, culture, environment, education, profession, etc all cause our inherent personality to further develop and refine.

The most important aspect of human life is our ability to judge good or bad by ourselves. We have also the reasoning power, the creative power and the self determination power. We can over come our negative traits if we so desire.

But most of us are reluctant to know and learn about ourselves. A good majority of us are lazy to learn and improve. 

Many of us are reluctant to satisfy our inherent curiosities for advanced knowledge. Most of us do nothing to change or know what nature or attitude of ours need to be consciously changed so that we live in harmony with others who are not in agreement with us. 

It is important to realize this. We react to various stimuli differently depending upon various aspects of our personality maturity at a given time. Our inherent personality frame work gets augmented and influenced by our environment, society, family, friendships, education, experience, training and vocation. 

We can have natural reaction to a stimulus and we can also have controlled or adjusted reaction to a stimulus. The more we are inexperienced, the more would be our natural reaction. The more experienced and developed we are, the more we learn to react wisely. Our actions and reactions not only affect us, but also affect others!

When more and more of us become experienced to discharge our reactions in a wise manner, we become matured individuals. More and more of such matured individuals tend to make up a matured society. A matured society would have less and less human induced problems!

A matured individual and a matured society would be broadminded and accommodating. They are likely to be sympathetic to others.

They would know the foolishness of arguing over their wisdom and knowledge. They would know how to tackle immature fellows among them with minimal use of the sticks and arms. 

They would know how to take care of their younger generation to grow and develop in to a more mature future society.

So, what is it that prevents us now to become matured individuals?

Would you consider giving it a deep thought?