As an offshoot, he appears to be more inclined, now, towards the economy than national politics. Thus, all through the upheavals on the political front, and more so now, he kept the economy in focus. This is certainly a good development because, as a leader revered by the public, what he says always has tremendous impact. However, not being as expert in economics as he is in politics, he has voluntarily restricted himself to the broader aspects of the Indian economy.

Thus, in calling for increased market awareness and urging higher public investment in the capital market he is on target since India is pretty much at the bottom when it comes to per capita investment. For the last three years or so, investment has stagnated. Foreign investors are also not too keen today on India mostly because of non-economic hassles. It definitely must have struck them that the general Indian public appears to have reservations about the safety of their investment in the capital market which makes them shy to put their own money into it, at least on any significant scale. The discussions and comments made by ‘Pravasi Bharatis’ at the recent conclave has made this abundantly clear.

And it is not at all surprising that the Indian investor looks at the capital market as the last haven to park his savings. Even now, when bank interest rates are still taking a nosedive, gold is going beyond his reach and real estate and property is not as attractive as it once used to be, the small investor is still reluctant to enter the secondary capital market. During the heyday of the markets when Harshad Mehta was merrily ramping up his shares and every IPO was a sell-out, thousands of companies entered the market and packed their suitcases as investors literally fell over each other to give them their money, and vanished. Vajpayee has expressed his concern at the frequent scams in the stock market. He should attempt to find out why not a single defaulting company has been brought to book till now.

Take the UTI scam. Officials of the Trust favoured selected corporates to the hilt, irrespective of the worth of their shares and when the bubble burst, as it was bound to when the UTI was left without funds to pay assured returns to investors, it was the public which had to bear the brunt of the loss through lower returns and even then it cost the exchequer nearly Rs. 14,500 crore. Many UTI officials have been rather softly indicted by the Joint Parliamentary Committee which inquired into the UTI scam. Will the Prime Minister care to find out why not a single one of them has been proceeded against?

And talking of JPCs and scams, why was it that the Committee set up to go into the Ketan Mehta scam was unable to come up with anything specific against any person or company, staying within the safety of vague generalities? The JPC has, more or less, sent a signal that the Government is not very keen on bringing out skeletons in this closet. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Securities and Exchange Board of India has exonerated all companies alleged to have been involved in the scam because it failed to find a connection linking them to the share manipulations that took place to the advantage of Ketan Mehta.

And what about the L&T/Reliance imbroglio. Briefly, Reliance, which held around six per cent of L&T, brought down its holdings to four per cent and, when the price of L&T shares fell because of this offering, bought back into L&T to the extent of 10 per cent. And that’s not all, Reliance then sold this holding to Grasim at a premium of 45 per cent. And Grasim, which bought the shares for the unrealistic price of Rs. 306, then attempted to take over L&T by cornering retail shares at just Rs. 190 per share. What was SEBI doing when all this happened? This is not an exercise that took place overnight—it took weeks, may be even months, to set up. There were whispers and rumours of what was happening even before the Reliance/Grasim deal became public. Why then did SEBI not go into its watchdog mode when the market was fully aware that Reliance was selling L&T shares?

Yes, the Prime Minister is right that the capital market is the right place for savings as it not only creates income for the investor, it also boosts the country’s industrial base with the cheapest money available in the financial markets. It creates a healthy trading environment which draws in more investors, both Indian and foreign and the snowball effect gains tremendous momentum. But—a big but—all this can only happen when there is absolute transparency in the capital market, the powerful bank-corporate-broker nexus is broken up and the regulatory authority is allowed to regulate without interference from the Ministry of Finance or any other Ministry or Government body, including the PMO. There was a very good opportunity for creating such a break when the then Finance Minister, Yashwant Sinha, plaintively cried, "but nobody told me" when the UTI scam broke. But, of course, every knew he was just posturing for public consumption.

In the first place, it is unbelievable that he had not even a hint of what was going on and, secondly, if it, indeed, was true that he was ignorant, that, in itself, should be the subject of an inquiry.

The public’s hard earned money has been looted in the many capital market scams and unless it is assured of transparency and reasonable safety of its funds, it will remain wary of investing. Covering up and not punishing the guilty of scams that have become public is certainly not the way to attract the investor.