Investigation

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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The Army chief causes huge tension to the Government, but what about the real issues ?

Ever since reports came out that the Army chief would challenge the Government with regard to his date of birth row, there was some amount of consternation in the Government and the Congress party. Even though the courts finally advised the chief to let go of his claim (they did not say that he was wrong though technically), there was some initial problems for the Government; further, the defense minister was criticized for letting the situation reach this point. And ever since then, the chief has been causing some pin-pricks for the Government, with 2 issues having been raised so far, one being the bribe being offered for a truck used widely by the army, and the other being the controversy caused by the release of a letter to the PM which claims that defense preparedness is at an absolute low.
There are 2 main problems that come out in this discussion that are not really being addressed. Worldwide, army chiefs are treated with respect, along with the stated position that the military chiefs report into the civilian leadership; in this particular case, the tension that the army chief is giving to the government is causing many politicians (including ruling party politicians) to call for the sacking of the army chief like he is a lowly servant who had the audacity to make remarks against the master. And the Government, which is so sensitive of politicians being called corrupt or criminals, has no problems with such remarks being made against the army chief and it is only a day that the defense minister states that the army chief has his full support. One should not really take actions that look unfair to a large section of the armed forces, the consequences of breeding resentment are not really worth contemplating.
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