03-13-2007, 07:05 AM
<!--emo&:blow--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blow.gif' /><!--endemo--> Kab, Q aur kahan?
Chandan Mitra
Years ending with 7 have a mysterious tendency to destabilise governments in India. In 1967, the Congress lost power across a large number of States for the first time since elections began in 1952. Indira Gandhi's Government barely scraped through to retain power in Delhi, but within two years the party split, she was reduced to a minority and widespread political instability gripped the country, leading to the dissolution of the Lok Sabha in 1970. Just 10 years later, in 1977, Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party were dislodged from power in the wake of public outrage over the Emergency.
Although Rajiv Gandhi swept the 1984 elections with an unprecedented 410 seats, he met his nemesis with the Bofors revelations in 1987, a year that marked a turning point in Indian politics. Even 1997 did not pass without turmoil. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's first stint in power at the head of a BJP-led Government, (not counting the 13-day footnote Government of 1996) was felled by the mercurial Jayalalithaa in a historic no-confidence vote that Vajpayee lost by one solitary vote! And now in 2007, a 20-year-old scandal has resurfaced to cause the first serious crisis of a regime led de facto by Rajiv Gandhi's widow. Call it the 10-year-itch or the decadal cycle Indian politics has again entered a phase of instability. It is probably not a mere coincidence that even as the Quattrocchi affair raged, Sonia Gandhi's party faced humiliating routs in Punjab and Uttarakhand.
The Bofors crisis spun out of control for two reasons. First, the country was genuinely shell-shocked that a man who people thought was refreshingly different from run-of-the-mill, corrupt politician ended up no different from the rest. Second, it was the ham-handed cover up of the kickbacks paid that resulted in the collapse of popular confidence in the regime. Irrespective of the absence of a smoking gun and despite unanimous endorsement of the quality of the 155 mm howitzers, nobody believed Rajiv Gandhi and his close associates were clean. By today's standards, the Rs 64 crore that was received by way of kickbacks in the Bofors gun deal is mere chickenfeed.
So, it's not the amount that continues to cause moral outrage, it's not Rs 64 crore but the subterfuge, the blatant attempts to mislead public opinion and outright lies that the Government belted out, which have made Bofors a byword for corruption in high places. Bigger scams have been reported since, but public memory gets recharged at the mention of Bofors, especially because, mysteriously, successive Governments (not just Congress-led or supported) have failed to find, leave alone retrieve the money from, the end users of the slush fund.
As the list of surviving dramatis personae gets smaller, attention is focused primarily on the Hinduja brothers, allegedly involved in global arms deals once upon a time. Being arms trader is not a crime, nor is representing an armaments manufacturer. The problem lay with the then Government's unnecessary assertion that no middleman was involved in the Bofors deal, a lie successfully nailed by some intrepid journalistic investigations in the late 80s.
The other figure around whom mystery has, in fact, deepened over the years is Ottavio Quattrocchi, one-time India head of Italian construction giant Snam-Progetti, and avowed friend of the Gandhi family, primarily by virtue of shared national origin with India's current reigning matriarch. It boggles the mind to recall the manner in which the infamous Mr Q was whisked out of Delhi in the darkness of night during the Narasimha Rao regime, just when the Bofors case was hotting up in court. In all probability, the judiciary would have ordered impounding of his passport and passed a directive asking him to stay put in India till disposal of the case. Just before that could happen, Mr Q was facilitated to flee India and strangely landed in Malaysia, where he continued representing his company.
Feigning outrage, the Government roared disapproval of his escape and vowed to get him back, when it would have been that much easier to prevent him leaving in the first place. Predictably, the non-serious pursuit ended in a fiasco when a Malaysian court peremptorily turned down India's quarter-hearted demand for him to be handed over. Unfortunately, later Governments did not take up the issue of signing an extradition treaty with that country and eventually, Mr Q happily returned to his motherland after some years.
The present Government appears determined to obliterate every trail of the Bofors payoffs so that there are no comebacks ever. That prompted the prosecution to weaken arguments against the Hindujas in a way that the courts threw it out on the technical ground that the documents submitted by the Government were not authenticated. The CBI chose not to appeal and the Hinduja chapter was closed. Using this pretext, the Government subsequently went on to assert that there was no case against Quattrocchi either as the related Hinduja case had been dismissed. This specious plea was used to get Quattrocchi's London bank account in which unaccounted funds were lodged unfrozen, enabling him to transfer the money out. So, not only was Mr Q helped to flee India and later leave Malaysia, but also a substantial amount of money was awarded to him. The end user of the payoffs, thus, may never be discovered.
By a quirk of fate when he was detained at a small resort airport in Argentina on February 6 on account of the Interpol Red Corner alert being still in existence, the Government did its level best to hide the news. Taking advantage of Argentina's remoteness from India, we were never told of this till the day the man was actually freed on his second appeal before a local court. Apparently this was plotted so as not to embarrass the Congress Party and its supremo on the eve of the Punjab and Uttarakhand polls. That the suppression did not help the party's electoral fortunes is another matter.
And now, to top it all, the Government is claiming that India does not have an extradition treaty with Argentina although a information bulletin of the Interpol Wing of the CBI, authenticated by the Home Ministry, categorically lists Argentina among the countries with which India has pre-Independence extradition treaties that remain valid. This flies in the face of the External Affairs Ministry's assertion that the treaty lapsed when Parliament passed the Extradition Act in 1962. As they often say, it is the cover up that often exposes the criminal. The more desperate somebody gets to loudly proclaim innocence, the deeper gets the suspicion that there is something to hide.
In other words, the Quattrocchi cover up is fast looking like the original Bofors cover up. Ominously for 10 Janpath, the combination of these adversities comes at a time when, after the withdrawal of support by the MDMK, TRS and Samajwadi Party, the Sonia Alliance's strength in the Lok Sabha is down to 222, making it hopelessly dependent on the 63-member Left for survival. Is a re-run of 1987 in the making?
(Courtesy: The Pioneer; March 4, 2007)
Chandan Mitra
Years ending with 7 have a mysterious tendency to destabilise governments in India. In 1967, the Congress lost power across a large number of States for the first time since elections began in 1952. Indira Gandhi's Government barely scraped through to retain power in Delhi, but within two years the party split, she was reduced to a minority and widespread political instability gripped the country, leading to the dissolution of the Lok Sabha in 1970. Just 10 years later, in 1977, Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party were dislodged from power in the wake of public outrage over the Emergency.
Although Rajiv Gandhi swept the 1984 elections with an unprecedented 410 seats, he met his nemesis with the Bofors revelations in 1987, a year that marked a turning point in Indian politics. Even 1997 did not pass without turmoil. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's first stint in power at the head of a BJP-led Government, (not counting the 13-day footnote Government of 1996) was felled by the mercurial Jayalalithaa in a historic no-confidence vote that Vajpayee lost by one solitary vote! And now in 2007, a 20-year-old scandal has resurfaced to cause the first serious crisis of a regime led de facto by Rajiv Gandhi's widow. Call it the 10-year-itch or the decadal cycle Indian politics has again entered a phase of instability. It is probably not a mere coincidence that even as the Quattrocchi affair raged, Sonia Gandhi's party faced humiliating routs in Punjab and Uttarakhand.
The Bofors crisis spun out of control for two reasons. First, the country was genuinely shell-shocked that a man who people thought was refreshingly different from run-of-the-mill, corrupt politician ended up no different from the rest. Second, it was the ham-handed cover up of the kickbacks paid that resulted in the collapse of popular confidence in the regime. Irrespective of the absence of a smoking gun and despite unanimous endorsement of the quality of the 155 mm howitzers, nobody believed Rajiv Gandhi and his close associates were clean. By today's standards, the Rs 64 crore that was received by way of kickbacks in the Bofors gun deal is mere chickenfeed.
So, it's not the amount that continues to cause moral outrage, it's not Rs 64 crore but the subterfuge, the blatant attempts to mislead public opinion and outright lies that the Government belted out, which have made Bofors a byword for corruption in high places. Bigger scams have been reported since, but public memory gets recharged at the mention of Bofors, especially because, mysteriously, successive Governments (not just Congress-led or supported) have failed to find, leave alone retrieve the money from, the end users of the slush fund.
As the list of surviving dramatis personae gets smaller, attention is focused primarily on the Hinduja brothers, allegedly involved in global arms deals once upon a time. Being arms trader is not a crime, nor is representing an armaments manufacturer. The problem lay with the then Government's unnecessary assertion that no middleman was involved in the Bofors deal, a lie successfully nailed by some intrepid journalistic investigations in the late 80s.
The other figure around whom mystery has, in fact, deepened over the years is Ottavio Quattrocchi, one-time India head of Italian construction giant Snam-Progetti, and avowed friend of the Gandhi family, primarily by virtue of shared national origin with India's current reigning matriarch. It boggles the mind to recall the manner in which the infamous Mr Q was whisked out of Delhi in the darkness of night during the Narasimha Rao regime, just when the Bofors case was hotting up in court. In all probability, the judiciary would have ordered impounding of his passport and passed a directive asking him to stay put in India till disposal of the case. Just before that could happen, Mr Q was facilitated to flee India and strangely landed in Malaysia, where he continued representing his company.
Feigning outrage, the Government roared disapproval of his escape and vowed to get him back, when it would have been that much easier to prevent him leaving in the first place. Predictably, the non-serious pursuit ended in a fiasco when a Malaysian court peremptorily turned down India's quarter-hearted demand for him to be handed over. Unfortunately, later Governments did not take up the issue of signing an extradition treaty with that country and eventually, Mr Q happily returned to his motherland after some years.
The present Government appears determined to obliterate every trail of the Bofors payoffs so that there are no comebacks ever. That prompted the prosecution to weaken arguments against the Hindujas in a way that the courts threw it out on the technical ground that the documents submitted by the Government were not authenticated. The CBI chose not to appeal and the Hinduja chapter was closed. Using this pretext, the Government subsequently went on to assert that there was no case against Quattrocchi either as the related Hinduja case had been dismissed. This specious plea was used to get Quattrocchi's London bank account in which unaccounted funds were lodged unfrozen, enabling him to transfer the money out. So, not only was Mr Q helped to flee India and later leave Malaysia, but also a substantial amount of money was awarded to him. The end user of the payoffs, thus, may never be discovered.
By a quirk of fate when he was detained at a small resort airport in Argentina on February 6 on account of the Interpol Red Corner alert being still in existence, the Government did its level best to hide the news. Taking advantage of Argentina's remoteness from India, we were never told of this till the day the man was actually freed on his second appeal before a local court. Apparently this was plotted so as not to embarrass the Congress Party and its supremo on the eve of the Punjab and Uttarakhand polls. That the suppression did not help the party's electoral fortunes is another matter.
And now, to top it all, the Government is claiming that India does not have an extradition treaty with Argentina although a information bulletin of the Interpol Wing of the CBI, authenticated by the Home Ministry, categorically lists Argentina among the countries with which India has pre-Independence extradition treaties that remain valid. This flies in the face of the External Affairs Ministry's assertion that the treaty lapsed when Parliament passed the Extradition Act in 1962. As they often say, it is the cover up that often exposes the criminal. The more desperate somebody gets to loudly proclaim innocence, the deeper gets the suspicion that there is something to hide.
In other words, the Quattrocchi cover up is fast looking like the original Bofors cover up. Ominously for 10 Janpath, the combination of these adversities comes at a time when, after the withdrawal of support by the MDMK, TRS and Samajwadi Party, the Sonia Alliance's strength in the Lok Sabha is down to 222, making it hopelessly dependent on the 63-member Left for survival. Is a re-run of 1987 in the making?
(Courtesy: The Pioneer; March 4, 2007)