Tuesday: 19 July 2011:

Came across this news on TOI website, which states that “In view of growing incidents of bomb blasts and intelligence failure, the government is setting up a multi-disciplinary school of economic intelligence in Mumbai to train its secret agents drawn from the Intelligence Bureau, R&AW, CBI and state special branches, who will keep a tab on terror masterminds by mapping their financial records.”-Soon, training school for secret agents in Mumbai

Though waking up late, I think this step should be certainly welcome. The basis of this innovative initiative is certainly traceable financial records. And the details given in the news certainly point out that the records have been helpful in the past investigations. This clearly indicates the power of having traceable transactions. In developing countries most of the transactions, say about 80-90%, happen through banks hence those are traceable. The traceability of transactions was one major reason because of which US could stop terrorist attacks on their country after the one on World Trade Centre, whereas India has consistently been ineffective. Today we have about only 15% of transactions happening through banks, still even these have proved helpful. So if we are able to divert most of the transactions through banks, we can imagine that how much more useful it could be. It will not only be helpful reactively for investigations, but it would in fact be helpful to avoid such attacks in future.

Here you can find more about -

• Importance of banking system
• How cash transactions, promoted by high denominations, have sever antisocial impacts

All benefits those we will have by implementing bank transaction tax (Arthakranti) proposal.- AK proposal benefits

Author,
Bhushan Patil,Pune