Responsibility

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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Uttar Pradesh elections – some challenges facing Akhilesh Yadav

In the 1984 elections, after the sudden death by assassination of Indira Gandhi, her son became the new Prime Minister and in the polls soon after, he got an astounding number of parliamentary seats giving him a huge majority – with 411 MP’s out of a total possible of 543, this was a huge mandate that he got. However, due to some misguided policies and some wrong steps (opening the locks of the Ram Janambhoomi, the Muslim Personal Law Bill, the huge controversy over the Bofors deal and a group of advisors who did nothing but mis-manage his relations with the country and the media. By the time of the 1989 elections, the support for Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress significantly declined to 197 seats.
The above example just shows that just because a party gets a huge number of seats in a particular election does not mean that this honeymoon will carry over into the next election. In fact, closer home in Uttar Pradesh, the performance of BSP in the 2007 election and then in the recent elections shows how fickle public support can be. Now, with the Samajwadi Party making a huge win in the elections, and then nominating Akhilesh Yadav to be the Chief Minister, the SP can set the ground for continuing this winning way in the future, or crash and burn in the next few years. Here are a few points for the same:
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The Lokpal Bill in Parliament – passes the Lok Sabha, fails in the Rajya Sabha

All through the progress of the Lokpal debate that happened this year, there was a strong feeling – can such a law ever come to pass ? Can a law which has been pushed for 43 years now actually come into force, even if it was not as strong as one would have wished ? As time moved on from April, when the issue came to national prominence, the discussion started getting more focused. But it was the agitation in August that seemed to do the impossible, create a tidal wave of public (and media) pressure that pressured the Government to seem to do something, and it gave a commitment to pass a Lokpal Bill with certain characteristics. But, is it really possible that any political party in India will be serious about the Lokpal ? Think about it – the Lokpal desires to set in place an independent investigating authority that will investigate corruption (and typically, corruption is only associated with the ruling Government machinery and the bureaucracy).
Now, the economics of politics in India is simple. They are almost all in it for the money and influence; and there is no money to be made from the Government unless you have a babu (or multiples babus) who show the path, partake in the corruption, or let it happen and do not raise any objection. So, when you talk about politicians being corrupt, that is not possible without the involvement of the official machinery, and we are asking the Government and other political parties to create an outside agency that seeks to throttle this money making ability. Politicians in India are smart, and they are not about to commit suicide.
So why did the political class agree to setup a Lokpal in August ? Well, they saw a huge wave of anger in terms of a public out to apparently protest wide-spread corruption, and saw that this anger could not be countered by any more denials – instead, the usual method of delay has to be used. Delay is the most potent political weapon that the political class has, to be used for any major controversy, such as the Lokpal issue, or the Telangana issue (which is no longer front page news, and hence is not worthy of needing an immediate resolution).
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