•Dhiraj Nayyar: The BJP has raised the issue of tax havens and black money. Most of our FDI comes from Mauritius and that’s legitimate. Has your party made that distinction? How do you plan to address the issue of bringing the money back?

There is a lot of confusion on the Mauritius issue. The Mauritius route was opened for FDI and FII investment by Manmohan Singh in the 1990s and it has continued. But several things have happened since then. One is that we are not short of foreign exchange. We don’t have to go out and attract foreign exchange from anywhere under any circumstance. The second is that after 9/11, a movement started against terrorist funding in IMF, ADB etc. This led to a movement on behalf of transparency and tightening of laws. So the situation has changed. The third thing is that after the financial crisis, there is greater awareness of slush funds playing a destabilising role in the global economy, which is why the G20 demands greater transparency. I believe that India should have been leading this movement for transparency in international transactions—which means, making tax havens more transparent. Taxation is a sovereign responsibility. With regard to secrecy in banking laws in various countries, we are in a better position to demand that secrecy laws should go and we be told whose accounts they are. No Indian account in Swiss banks is likely to be legal. If it’s legal under Swiss law, then it is illegal under Indian law. So there is a case for taking up this issue strongly. We have to involve the IMF and G20.

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