The reason why the real culprits seldom caught in our major scams is because they have so many cutouts. Add to that the massive time gap between the act of corruption per se and the investigation and there is a whole new cast out there with a different agenda, not so much to uncover the truth but to align the probe to a specific target.
So even if that target is guilty as sin it is unlikely the arrow will hit the mark. Oh yes, it will hover over the circle but harmlessly fall elsewhere. When these exercises are then filtered through the prism of the media and its various priorities it all gets muddled even further and we are easily deflected by the trivialities and deliberate release of red herrings.
Take the case of the Agusta helicopter deal. So much has been written about this grand scandal but it goes round in circles chasing its own tail. Without being an expert on the issue, I am intrigued that in this era of technology and havens for ill-gotten gains that are impenetrable somebody would actually write “Signora Gandhi” in the documentation. Surely a woman who has been on the center stage for decades and tramped the corridors of power would display more than a two-digit IQ in ensuring her identity was concealed behind cast iron assuming she was up to no good.
Take the issue of Air Chief Marshal Tyagi. You can probe his companies and check out how his finances came to flow but a man who retired three years before the deal was brokered could hardly be held responsible. Two other chiefs followed him. It would have been child’s play to change his recommendation. And between the army of politicians and bureaucrats and two governments in the interim where recommendations are bagged do you really think a retired four-star officer’s recommendation would have been gospel. You retire, you don’t count for anything, you are a total has been.
Tyagi is being accused of lowering the required ceiling of the Agusta to 15,000 feet from 19,000 feet to make it competitive. Are we seriously saying it was written in stone and in the three years that passed when Tyagi was nobody in the picture not a single expert, no air force commander spotted this lacuna and said, hey whoa why are we lowering the ceiling? A student of aviation could have looked up the specs in Jane’s book of aircraft. Tyagi is history why would his advice matter? Kill his file.
Sometimes you wonder if these spiraling almost savage attacks are used as smoke and mirrors to divert attention seeing as how the big fish never really get caught.
Win Chadha of the Bofors saga was famously quoted as saying an emissary was sent to him in exile when he was afraid to come to India with the message that all he had to say was that Rajiv Gandhi was involved and he would get his passport back. Is that all needed to end the chapter? Whether Chadha was lying or not the fact is that right through those years he steadfastly refused to name Rajiv as a beneficiary. Now that the top players are all dead we are no further from learning what exactly happened in a purchase that was so rusted with accusations of corruption that in the mind of most Indians the gun itself was of poor quality...which is untrue. That it was instrumental in Kargil is not often mentioned.
Very often the product has to pay the price. We are seeing this in the Adarsh Housing scam because even if one tracks the officers involved the case will inch along over the years and even the demolition will be in the distant future. Nobody living there is actually packing at the moment because of a demolition order.
Remember the Tatra truck. The functioning levels of the much-maligned Tatra trucks, which have been manufactured since WWII and have a record of performance for 70 years were miles ahead of the competition so why would anyone offer a bribe to buy them if they were integral to an ongoing program. There is nothing substandard about them and their “breakdown” quotient is at the expected average for the heavy duty they perform in rough terrain. Compare those to the green painted Tata trucks plying the paved hill roads and groaning up the incline. But the waters were muddied and a scandal that stayed unproven only caused delay, problems for the forces in getting supplies on time and second-rate options.
That is the crux of the series of military hardware shopping. The moment the element of scandal is introduced the end-user is adversely affected. If we are impacting on the performance levels of our services while trying to indict “guilty” individuals or scapegoats over lengthy periods of time then it is now necessary to make these aspects mutually exclusive.
If the items bought work for efficiency then go ahead and investigate the kickbacks but don’t consign the product to the rubbish heap.
So even if that target is guilty as sin it is unlikely the arrow will hit the mark. Oh yes, it will hover over the circle but harmlessly fall elsewhere. When these exercises are then filtered through the prism of the media and its various priorities it all gets muddled even further and we are easily deflected by the trivialities and deliberate release of red herrings.
Take the case of the Agusta helicopter deal. So much has been written about this grand scandal but it goes round in circles chasing its own tail. Without being an expert on the issue, I am intrigued that in this era of technology and havens for ill-gotten gains that are impenetrable somebody would actually write “Signora Gandhi” in the documentation. Surely a woman who has been on the center stage for decades and tramped the corridors of power would display more than a two-digit IQ in ensuring her identity was concealed behind cast iron assuming she was up to no good.
Take the issue of Air Chief Marshal Tyagi. You can probe his companies and check out how his finances came to flow but a man who retired three years before the deal was brokered could hardly be held responsible. Two other chiefs followed him. It would have been child’s play to change his recommendation. And between the army of politicians and bureaucrats and two governments in the interim where recommendations are bagged do you really think a retired four-star officer’s recommendation would have been gospel. You retire, you don’t count for anything, you are a total has been.
Tyagi is being accused of lowering the required ceiling of the Agusta to 15,000 feet from 19,000 feet to make it competitive. Are we seriously saying it was written in stone and in the three years that passed when Tyagi was nobody in the picture not a single expert, no air force commander spotted this lacuna and said, hey whoa why are we lowering the ceiling? A student of aviation could have looked up the specs in Jane’s book of aircraft. Tyagi is history why would his advice matter? Kill his file.
Sometimes you wonder if these spiraling almost savage attacks are used as smoke and mirrors to divert attention seeing as how the big fish never really get caught.
Win Chadha of the Bofors saga was famously quoted as saying an emissary was sent to him in exile when he was afraid to come to India with the message that all he had to say was that Rajiv Gandhi was involved and he would get his passport back. Is that all needed to end the chapter? Whether Chadha was lying or not the fact is that right through those years he steadfastly refused to name Rajiv as a beneficiary. Now that the top players are all dead we are no further from learning what exactly happened in a purchase that was so rusted with accusations of corruption that in the mind of most Indians the gun itself was of poor quality...which is untrue. That it was instrumental in Kargil is not often mentioned.
Very often the product has to pay the price. We are seeing this in the Adarsh Housing scam because even if one tracks the officers involved the case will inch along over the years and even the demolition will be in the distant future. Nobody living there is actually packing at the moment because of a demolition order.
Remember the Tatra truck. The functioning levels of the much-maligned Tatra trucks, which have been manufactured since WWII and have a record of performance for 70 years were miles ahead of the competition so why would anyone offer a bribe to buy them if they were integral to an ongoing program. There is nothing substandard about them and their “breakdown” quotient is at the expected average for the heavy duty they perform in rough terrain. Compare those to the green painted Tata trucks plying the paved hill roads and groaning up the incline. But the waters were muddied and a scandal that stayed unproven only caused delay, problems for the forces in getting supplies on time and second-rate options.
That is the crux of the series of military hardware shopping. The moment the element of scandal is introduced the end-user is adversely affected. If we are impacting on the performance levels of our services while trying to indict “guilty” individuals or scapegoats over lengthy periods of time then it is now necessary to make these aspects mutually exclusive.
If the items bought work for efficiency then go ahead and investigate the kickbacks but don’t consign the product to the rubbish heap.
