The Man Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest

By Swapan Dasgupta

There are two terms the keep recurring in the chatter over the drama surrounding the recent actions of the Army chief General V.K. Singh: ‘sadness’ and ‘concern’ verging on ‘anger’.

There is the ritual expression of sadness that any controversy surrounding the armed forces and particularly the Army chief should have become a subject of public discourse. There is sadness that a Defence Minister with a reputation for saintliness should have become embroiled in a controversy that implicitly involves sleaze.

At the same time, there is concern over the fate of a national institution that must remain above partisan politics. Yet the concern spills over into outright anger at the mere suggestion that General Singh is at odds with retired officers and the civilian-controlled Ministry of Defence. “Does General Singh think he’s in Pakistan?” asked former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, articulating the rage of the High Church of the Indian Establishment, “He’s gone berserk. In a democracy the civilian authority is in charge.” Equally lofty concerns were articulated by sections of the media that charged the General with waging war on India and even plotting an extremely amateurish coup.

In a strictly Constitutional sense the anger of a high-minded Establishment is understandable. It would be a sad day if senior officers of the armed forces function without regard to the elected government. In the past, allegations of unilateralism were levelled against General Thimayya, General Sundarji and Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat. With the exception of Admiral Bhagwat who was peremptorily sacked, the differences involving Generals Thimayya and Sundarji were not allowed to come to a head. With a grasp of politics that is in keeping with contemporary realities, Defence Minister A.K. Antony too has preferred a more conciliatory approach than many of the hotheads who demanded General Singh’s head on a platter.

Antony’s cautious approach appears to have been guided by both pragmatic and ethical considerations. He knew, for example, that an already beleaguered government could not afford a fresh controversy, particularly one that involved charges of possible fiscal improprieties. With only a couple of months left for General Singh to demit office, he felt it far more prudent to grin and bear it.

But Antony is more than just a politician with a reputation for playing it safe. As one of the few practitioners of ethical politics in the system, he was aware of two things. First, that despite the unorthodox manner in which General Singh brought the Rs 14-crore bribe offer to the public attention, the Army chief was essentially a soldier with a fierce attachment to old-school values such as honour and uprightness. Secondly, the Defence Minister was also aware that General Singh’s misgivings over the army’s purchase of Tatra trucks were real. Finally, Antony must have come to know that the leak of General Singh’s letter to the Prime Minister on the lack of defence preparedness was not the doing of the chief Army chief.

Whether Antony is aware of the identity of the person who leaked the letter, hoping the blame would be laid at the door of General Singh, is a matter of conjecture. What is however curious is that even after Antony ordered a CBI inquiry into possible foul play in the purchase of Tatra trucks and began work to streamline and hasten the pace of decision-making in defence purchases, the intensity of the offensive against General Singh doubled. Why, for example, have various bodies rushed in to gratuitously offer certificates of good health to the Tatra? Why is there an attempt to suggest that General Singh is more than just a painfully self-righteous man? That he is in fact capable of attempting a coup?

There is an old Chinese saying “When the finger points to the moon, the idiot points to the finger”. When General Singh pointed to something strange about the pricing of military vehicles and the dependence on just one supplier for over 26 years, why was there a desperate attempt to shift the terms of the debate and focus on the supposed madness of General Singh? Has General Singh unwittingly stirred a hornet’s nest?

There is a section of a very rotten Delhi Establishment that has come to interpret civilian control over the armed forces as the freedom of the military and Defence Ministry to be completely outside the realm of public scrutiny. Since defence is a matter of national concern and accounts for the largest head of expenditure in the Union Budget, this is an unacceptable proposition. Operational autonomy should not be detached from an overall sense of budgetary accountability.

Equally unacceptable is the suggestion that the public intrusiveness that accompanied the purchase of Bofors guns in 1986-7 was responsible for the procrastination that has marked the purchase of defence hardware, particularly in the past decade. The problem with the Bofors guns was not about quality but centred on the issue of price. Did the Indian exchequer pay too much and was the mark-up a result of kickbacks? This question is also at the heart of the Tatra truck deal where the buffer role of a public sector unit deserves closer scrutiny.

By pretending that these questions are mala-fide, the Indian Establishment has demonstrated that it is unwilling to address the very issues that agitate civil society. General Singh has asked the right questions. We now await the credible answers.


Asian Age/ Deccan Chronicle, April 6, 2012

Army chief has done nation a service

By Swapan Dasgupta

It is to the credit of India’s Defence Minister—the man who has earned for himself the lofty title of Saint Antony—that he resisted the clamour of many parliamentarians to either sack Army chief V.K. Singh or order him to take compulsory leave pending retirement in eight weeks. It is said that Antony told indignant Cabinet colleagues that he did not want “blood on his hands.”

Antony’s act of statesmanship plus his very belated decision to order a CBI inquiry into the accusations levelled by the Army chief against a retired officer and the associated murkiness centred on the purchase of heavy vehicles has at least lowered the temperature. At the same time, it has brought into the public domain another potential defence scandal which, if it plays out, may have damaging consequences for the government.

True, the controversy over the Army chief’s allegations have not yet reached the emotive heights of the furore over the Bofors artillery guns. But that is not because the charges are trivial or born out of self-centredness. When it comes to matters concerning the armed forces, the Indian political class still exercises exemplary restraint—even if some MPs broke that understanding and demanded General Singh’s immediate dismissal.

That restraint is complemented by the all-round acknowledgement of Antony’s personal integrity. Antony may well be charged with procrastination and even indecisiveness but few will argue that he is guided by base, pecuniary considerations. Both Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi should thank their lucky stars that General Singh was reporting to Antony. Any other person in the Raksha Mantri’s chair and the muck would have well and truly hit the ceiling.

The chances of that happening cannot be entirely discounted, particularly if the CBI departs from its usual ways and actually applies its mind to getting to the bottom of the grave charges relating to the sale of Tatra trucks. Prima facie, there appears to be something odd about a Czech-based, NRI-owned company exercising a complete 20-year monopoly over the supply of trucks to the army. That the imports were routed through a public sector company does not lessen the suspicion: it merely suggests that the tentacles of the arrangement go beyond the army and embrace a section of the civilian bureaucracy.

A proper inquiry into the shadowy world of defence contracts may reveal a great deal that could even startle India’s already cynical citizenry. Certainly, emerging tit-bits of information about front companies claiming to be what they are not, supplies routed through bodies specialising in escort services, and compromised diplomats and babus serve to confirm the impression that General Singh did the nation a great service by making the charges public.

On his part, and despite his initial emulation of Gandhiji’s three monkeys, we should be grateful to Antony for at least acknowledging that there is some possible evil in the world and ordering an inquiry. Only relentless public and political pressure will now ensure that the inquiry is conducted with seriousness and doesn’t become an opportunity to fudge the real issues.

The desperation on the part of those who have something to hide to keep the focus on General Singh prompted the leak of his state-of-defence-preparedness letter to the Prime Minister. If the investigators are serious, it shouldn’t take them too long to narrow the suspects to a handful of individuals. This, in turn, should provide revealing answers as to why they were so driven to engineer a situation whereby General Singh’s continuation in office would become the central issue of the controversy.  

Yet, even a leak of this most privileged of communications has its upside. The country is now aware that India’s defence preparedness to meet external threats is abysmal, and that procrastination over the purchase of military hardware has made the country vulnerable. The fact that the Army chief’s assessment corresponds to what strategic experts have long been saying must not prompt a so-what-is-new response. There is a difference between a TV pundit saying that India is unprepared to meet threats and the Army chief asserting quite independently that this is indeed so.

Neither the Prime Minister nor the Defence Minister can run away from answering this grave charge. Defence is the largest head of expenditure in the Union Budget and, so far, the unwritten political convention is that the budgetary allotment for defence is passed without any discussion. This implies that both the nation and Parliament have reposed blind trust in the Government to do whatever is necessary to protect India. If, despite this large expenditure, the Army chief complains about lack of ammunition and obsolescent equipment, it suggests that the Defence Minister has failed in his responsibilities. If, on top of these problems of hardware, there is evidence that the corruption that has sullied India’s attempts at governance has also started affecting decision-making in the Defence Ministry, there is every cause to question the legitimacy of the sainthood that has been conferred on Antony.

Every democratic country expects its ministers to live up the trust that has been reposed on them by the people. In his long political life, Antony has shown he is a good man and the country must admire his ability to remain good amid an overall climate of murkiness. But being good doesn’t mean that a minister should be content just being good. Antony has failed the test of effectiveness.


Sunday Pioneer, April 1, 2012