Big lost for India

New Delhi: For scams, whose total size runs into 13-digit numbers, the names they are known by are short -- 2G, CWG and IPL.

Going by the estimated size of these scams, the total for the year 2010 could be well beyond 2,00,000 crore -- a 13-digit figure -- although much of the loss is presumptive in nature.

The scam with the shortest name -- 2G -- alone, according to various accounts, deprived the government coffers of 1.76 lakh crore in potential revenue.

2G is the acronym for second generation mobile telephony and it ran into a scam cloud over allocation of spectrum, or radio waves, at prices that were not market-determined.

Back home, the names of various scams mostly read like those taken out from primary school alphabet colouring books, often limited to two or three letters, with a few numerals thrown in-between in some cases.

And while the small names were certainly not beautiful for those at the receiving end of these scams, the large size of these would have definitely helped the perpetrators make a bounty.