Corruption

Defense Ministry – Delays in acquisition of critical supplies – Is Antony at home ?

Saint Antony. That is one of the names by which the Defense Minister is known as. And why so ? Because he has a high reputation for honesty that being in the Congress party has not managed to besmirch, and he is also in charge of a ministry that is now appearing in the news on a regular basis, and not in a good way. The confrontation with the Army Chief over the age matter is old news (ever since the Supreme Court did not deny the truth of the general, but did not approve of the confrontation he was having with the Government).
Who else is known to be a paragon of honesty, against whom there are no allegations of corruption ? It is the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. What else is Manmohan Singh known for ? For having the most corrupt Government in modern India, for refusing to act against corruption unless forced to do so by the media or by the judiciary (remember past speeches and comments about the policy followed by Raja being the policy of the Government, and how Kalmadi had the full support of the Government as he spent and spent money on the CWG (accompanied by huge spending by many others arms of the Government)).
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The conviction of Bangaru Laxman – one rare case

The saying in India is that there is no politician who is ever convicted of corruption. Of course, once in a while, this dictum is broken, but almost all of the time, there is no punishment for corruption that is lasting. Even if a lower court does provide some amount of corruption, the conviction is not upheld in a higher court (which may happen in this case as well). For the past many decades, there have many instances where corruption has been alleged, but the investigation has not led to a conviction, but everybody believes that there is large scale corruption that is happening.
The case that shook everybody up was the Bofors case. Before that case, corruption was prevalent, but it never really raised a stink except in some random movie. However, it was Bofors and the investigative journalism that went on which convinced people that there was something that stank, that Rajiv Gandhi was involved in some way. The case went on for years, was one of the reasons that caused Rajiv Gandhi to lose the 1989 elections after the huge win only 5 years back, and yet the case did not really lead to any conviction of any sort.
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The row about the Tatra trucks gets more and more weird ..

For some time now, it has seemed that all of you have to do is to make an allegation about anything, and when there is an investigation, there does seem to be something wrong. Call this endemic of the amount of corruption that is present in Government, and which nobody tries to take any steps to prevent. The army is still one of the more respected institutions of the country, but one is starting to feel that the defense sector (not the army specifically, but the entire wing of the Government dealing with defense) is as corrupt as any other arm of the Government. The Minister in charge, AK Antony has no allegations of corruption against him personally, but just like his boss, the Prime Minister (who also has a reputation of honesty), just being personally honest is not enough. You have to enforce the same thing in your area of responsibility, else you are as liable as if you were personally corrupt yourself. Antony is now starting to come under a cloud because he does not seem to have done too much to weed out the corruption present within the defense sector. Antony over the past few years has black-listed firms that have done indulged in corruption when dealing with the Ministry of Defense, but these actions have not been deep nor have they done anything to stop the stench of corruption in this area.
Consider the case of the Tatra trucks. These are trucks that are used by the army extensively for transporting anything from equipment to missiles to other stuff. The army gets these trucks from BEML, but they originally come from a company owned by an Indian origin person, Ravi Rishi. When the army chief made the controversial allegation that he was offered a bribe of 14 crores for allowing the supply of these trucks, there was a firestorm of controversy. The Army Chief had apparently carried on this complaint to the Defense Minister, but there was no further action by either the Minister or the Army Chief. The Army chief was negligent in not pushing for an investigation, but the Defense Minister was criminally negligent for not handing the matter over for investigation at that time, rather than pushing for a CBI investigation when the matter came to the media.
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