Expense Account, Mint
It is almost as if the seething Indian aam admi is finding one more thing to get furious about—there has been a string of financial sector failures in the past few years that have directly affected the wallets of the average Indian. While the telecom and the VIP helicopter scandals add to the widely held belief that people in positions of power or those who have access to them, are corrupt, these are still far away from directly affecting the everyday finances of the household. But the institutional theft from the wallets of the average Indian is something that hurts real time. And we’ve had plenty of these in the past few years. Speak Asia, a multi-level marketing company, lost more than Rs.2,400 crore of retail money. StockGuru lost Rs.500 crore and mis-sold life insurance products cost Indian investors more than Rs.1.5 trillion. The latest is the collapse of the Kolkata-based Saradha Group where more than Rs.20,000 crore is at risk.