04-17-2007, 05:58 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>AB 20 </b>
The Pioneer Edit Desk
What Bofors cost the Congress
On April 16, 1987, Swedish Radio broke the news of the Bofors bribery scandal, little realising it had lit a fuse in the incendiary chamber called Indian politics. Twenty years have passed, far bigger political swindles have overtaken this "original sin". Bofors is hardly riveting stuff for the post-1990 generation, those who came of age in recent years, with the Congress monopoly on power gone and a cynical absence of idealism being the hallmark of all parties. Yet, there is something about Bofors that makes it an enduring mystery in the corridors of power. Why? That the story has been kept alive by dogged investigators and a small community of Bofors buffs in public life, the CBI and the media is only partly responsible. <b>The larger point is that the Congress has never really been able to wash its 'hand' of the taint that its Prime Minister and his cronies were accused of taking bribes in a defence deal; or that successive Congress Governments stymied the probe. It was a Congress Government (led by PV Narasimha Rao) that had a senior Cabinet Minister handing a note to his Swiss counterpart, asking him to go slow on investigations. It was the current UPA Government that refused to let the CBI file necessary appeals in courts of law, and allowed prime suspect Ottavio Quattrocchi to walk away with what was almost certainly a segment of the bribe money stashed in a London bank.</b> On May 8, in Argentina, a similar cover-up by Indian authorities can be expected to free the infamous 'Mr Q' of his Interpol alert. On the other hand, it was Mr Joginder Singh who, as CBI director in the United Front Government, brought back crucial papers from Switzerland on the basis of which, in the NDA years, the Bofors chargesheet was filed. Much as the Congress may protest, the fact is the party's energies in the past two decades have been expended on wiping clean the Bofors footprints. The price it has had to pay for it is there for all to see.
Bofors was not India's first scandal, but it was an opportune one. It came at a time when India's investigative journalism phase was nearing its peak. In the wider context, public disquiet with the Congress system was mounting. Whether it was for backing the loser in the Cold War, mismanaging the economy with strange notions of socialism, reducing 'secularism' to wily identity politics or presiding over a corrupt edifice, the Nehru-Gandhi legacy was being questioned. Bofors knocked down its moral pretensions. It also added immensely to India's vocabulary. Government apologists went to great limits to distinguish between 'bribes', 'kickbacks' and 'winding-up charges'. Terms like 'letters rogatory' and the intricacies of Swiss banking law became a staple for local newspapers. Even if the truth is never revealed, the Bofors nostalgia industry can live on forever.
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The Pioneer Edit Desk
What Bofors cost the Congress
On April 16, 1987, Swedish Radio broke the news of the Bofors bribery scandal, little realising it had lit a fuse in the incendiary chamber called Indian politics. Twenty years have passed, far bigger political swindles have overtaken this "original sin". Bofors is hardly riveting stuff for the post-1990 generation, those who came of age in recent years, with the Congress monopoly on power gone and a cynical absence of idealism being the hallmark of all parties. Yet, there is something about Bofors that makes it an enduring mystery in the corridors of power. Why? That the story has been kept alive by dogged investigators and a small community of Bofors buffs in public life, the CBI and the media is only partly responsible. <b>The larger point is that the Congress has never really been able to wash its 'hand' of the taint that its Prime Minister and his cronies were accused of taking bribes in a defence deal; or that successive Congress Governments stymied the probe. It was a Congress Government (led by PV Narasimha Rao) that had a senior Cabinet Minister handing a note to his Swiss counterpart, asking him to go slow on investigations. It was the current UPA Government that refused to let the CBI file necessary appeals in courts of law, and allowed prime suspect Ottavio Quattrocchi to walk away with what was almost certainly a segment of the bribe money stashed in a London bank.</b> On May 8, in Argentina, a similar cover-up by Indian authorities can be expected to free the infamous 'Mr Q' of his Interpol alert. On the other hand, it was Mr Joginder Singh who, as CBI director in the United Front Government, brought back crucial papers from Switzerland on the basis of which, in the NDA years, the Bofors chargesheet was filed. Much as the Congress may protest, the fact is the party's energies in the past two decades have been expended on wiping clean the Bofors footprints. The price it has had to pay for it is there for all to see.
Bofors was not India's first scandal, but it was an opportune one. It came at a time when India's investigative journalism phase was nearing its peak. In the wider context, public disquiet with the Congress system was mounting. Whether it was for backing the loser in the Cold War, mismanaging the economy with strange notions of socialism, reducing 'secularism' to wily identity politics or presiding over a corrupt edifice, the Nehru-Gandhi legacy was being questioned. Bofors knocked down its moral pretensions. It also added immensely to India's vocabulary. Government apologists went to great limits to distinguish between 'bribes', 'kickbacks' and 'winding-up charges'. Terms like 'letters rogatory' and the intricacies of Swiss banking law became a staple for local newspapers. Even if the truth is never revealed, the Bofors nostalgia industry can live on forever.
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