WITH EYES WIDE OPEN
D. N. Bezboruah
There are times when a nation is assailed by natural catastrophes like devastating earthquakes or tsunamis. These are times when a nation has a way of coming together as a single indivisible entity to tide over such calamities. These are times when the very character of a nation is put to test, and the nation invariably emerges triumphant after being put to test or being put through fire. In the long run, these are trials that truly forge a nation and give it the strength to cope with calamities. In Europe, World War II was seen as such a happening that tested the mettle of each country involved in the war. Millions of people perished in the war, the wailing of widows rent the air and the development of nations appeared to have been pushed back by several decades due both to the destruction and the penury brought about by the war. And yet, nations survived, scars healed and most countries evinced the ability to scale greater heights after the colossal devastation. In a sense, most nations emerged much stronger than they had been before World War II, and the war was even seen as a catalyst of progress in many parts of Europe. But there is a major difference between such wars and natural calamities. Wars are man-made calamities that can often be avoided. More often than not, wars are calamities that can generally be avoided because they often have to do with egos so badly swollen out of proportion that they can even overlook the colossal loss of human lives for the wrath of just one individual. War is a man-made burden that a nation has to carry for many years without rhyme or reason. There is a reason to feel happy about the fact that today most statesman and political leaders are anxious to avoid wars. They are ever conscious of the fact that today a war would not be fought with just swords or rifles, but with nuclear weapons that have the potential for far greater loss of life and devastation in much less time. Today, sensible political leaders are far more concerned about avoiding wars than about waging them. The way a possible conflict between the two Koreas was averted recently is a typical example of how scared leaders are about any war in the 21st century.
However, war is not the only man-made catastrophe that blunts or atrophies the human potential for performance. We are far more familiar with what incompetence, lethargy and plain tardiness among government officers and employees can do. In many States of India, particularly in States like Assam, we have a situation where the misery of the common man is really the outcome of government officials failing to do their duties. This is because the government employees have much more to do with the lives and living of common people than anyone outside the government. Resources available to any society for public use are generally in the hands of the government and dispensed by government officials. As such, nothing hurts the public as much as the failure of government officials to function efficiently. This failing of government functionaries is in evidence all over the country, but it is nowhere as pronounced or as visible as in Assam and some of the other north-eastern States.
The failure of government functionaries to serve the people as intended by our planners comes in different forms. The most familiar form of failure arises from a desire to do things only for one’s superiors rather than for the people. It is customary for most government functionaries to postpone any kind of necessary action except to please the right individual—the boss. A government officer will often perform a duty only to please his boss and not to do what is required or expected of him. And most bosses, who have no means or inclination of securing the required feedback are gullible enough to believe that their subordinates have performed their duties to the public and not just put up a charade to please their bosses. This is why a lot funds from the Centre remain unused due to the unwillingness of our bureaucrats to do any work related to public needs, and have to be returned, while our bureaucrats are happy to sing the customary refrain of a “paucity of funds” for all kinds of public demands.
One other major sin of government functionaries is duplicating expenditure on the same or similar projects. This happens most often because government functionaries seldom keep a tab on the projects funded by other departments on the same or almost identical projects. True, there is a certain amount of waste in the functioning of government departments all over the world; but nowhere is this waste as substantial or as visible as it is in India.
However, none of the ‘sins’ referred to above gets anywhere close to the kind of initiative unleashed by the government in attempting to cover up the Rafale deal and attempts at getting to conceal the facts relevant to the deal. The two top executives of the CBI, India’s leading investigation agency, have been suspended and their offices sealed merely because Alok Verma, Director of the CBI showed some interest in the Rafale deal and wanted to see certain documents related to the deal. We are now told that there are major corruption charges against both Alok Verma and CBI’s Special Director Rakesh Asthana. However, the crucial question is why charges could not have been drawn up against the two officers earlier and why a midnight operation was needed to deal with such corruption charges. It is also pertinent to ask why there have been no midnight operations against the innumerable corruption charges against innumerable officers of the Union government. It is possible that Alok Verma’s curiosity about the Rafale deal might have extended to the unit cost of the Rafale jets that were Rs 628.57 crore when the UPA government was negotiating the deal, but rose to Rs 1,611 crore (about 2.5 times the earlier cost) when the NDA government was negotiating the deal for the same jets. The nation knows how to respect true official secrets, but the unit price of fighter jets does not constitute an official secret and the Centre has no justification in pretending that it does. This is just one of the man-made burdens that the Centre will have to carry merely because it prefers to pretend that the people are too gullible to swallow every excuse dished out to conceal information about unit costs of fighter jets that people have a right to know.