The real question is different: can the money looted from India be brought back to the country when the attitude of the government continues to be as determinedly inactive?

Can the government which allowed Ottavio Quattrochi to take his money out of banks —where it was lying frozen on court orders — be trusted to bring back the loot that is lying in Swiss banks and other tax havens? Can the government which prostituted the CBI so that he may get away from Argentina be trusted to bring the loot back?

n Why did the BJP government replace FERA with FEMA, and thereby make the offences compoundable?

Again, the Congress is relying on the short memory of its audience. The fact of the matter is that no one had been pressing more for the replacement of the harsh provisions of FERA than the Congress itself. The changes were being contemplated since 1996. The demand for doing away with the harsh provisions came to a crescendo during the VP Singh government when FERA came to be used for interrogating captains of industry — like Mr. S.L. Kirloskar — under harsh circumstances. As news reports of that period themselves indicate, FEMA which was approved by the government in July 1998, was on the lines of a draft which had been prepared under the leadership of the preceding finance minister, P. Chidambaram. Even today, if you go to the Rediff website and turn to their dispatch of 25 July, 1998, on “FEMA, Money Bills: Cabinet nods, Parliament’s turn next,” you will read, “The Bills were broadly on the lines of a draft prepared under the leadership of then Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambram.”

... contd.