Money for nothing

It is not only small-time investors from rural areas who have been victims of chit fund companies and collective investment schemes of the Saradha ilk. A state minister ruefully admitted that he, too, has been taken in by such schemes. In an informal chat with journalists, West Bengal Industries Minister Partha Chatterjee recalled his experience in the days before he entered active politics. I was young and had invested around Rs 10,000 and, surprisingly, I got back Rs 18,000 after 18 months, he said. Encouraged, he then invested Rs 30,000 in another scheme  and that was the last he saw of it!