Obviously, the government’s loss is the industry’s gain. The gainers’ names are known. The names of some of the industry touts dealing with the government for the ‘favour’ have also surfaced. But, those personally responsible in the government for dishing out the unbelievable largesse to the industry are still to be established although Andimuthu Raja, former Telecom Minister, resigned taking no responsibility of the financial scandal.

The most notorious allegation was that the choice of Andimuthu Raja for the job itself was influenced by an industry house through its public relations consultants. It is not impossible. The ministerial appointments in departments such as petroleum and civil aviation have long given rise to suspicion of their being industry-plants. New Delhi has long been a hub of political fixers, who also act as business touts. Several of the ministers in the current UPA government openly worked as touts of one company or the other when they were out of job. Some of the parliament members had been openly accused of touting for business houses by fellow party politicians. Some of the under-paid Delhi journalists too have allegedly made fortune out of their industry, political n ministerial contacts. Not all these allegations may be baseless, for sure. Niira Radia tapes recording interesting conversations by certain business leaders, politicians and senior journalists confirm the suspicion.

The UPA government has been fighting shy of the huge corruption issue in its ranks. Even as the government is doggedly resisting the Opposition demand for a joint Parliamentary committee (probe) into the matter, its dirty dogs are regularly exposing small new corruption cases in the system, almost insignificant in size compared to the 2G spectrum scam or CWG expenditure fraud, in a bid to divert the media and public attention from the biggest ever financial scandals in history. The government is afraid of a JPC as it could expose many of its ministers and bureaucrats for their direct or indirect involvement in the telecom scam. The provision for joint parliamentary investigation into government wrong-doings, which affect the nation, exists for the purpose. If the government has nothing to hide, it should allow JPC to bust the industry-politician nexus, if proven, which illegitimately robbed the nation of billions of dollars in government revenues. It is important that the government comes clean on the issue of increasing corruption in its ranks.

The Satyam Computers’ bookkeeping scandal, which followed an unprecedented open confession to the crime by the company’s board chairman B Ramalinga Raju, involved the fudging the company’s books of accounts for eight consecutive years to a total extent of Rs. 7,000 crore. The country’s single largest corporate accounting scam involved the company’s statutory auditors, Price Waterhouse, the income-tax department, nationalized banks and a host of other government agencies and regulatory bodies. The Satyam fraud case, for reasons best known to the government, never got the serious public attention it deserved. No action has yet been taken against the audit firm and the co-conspirators in the income-tax department and government banks. A reminder of the Satyam fraud case came rather unintentionally after Raju was given a bail to walk out of the Hyderabad jail, which turned out to be a temporary relief. While under judicial custody, Raju mostly spent in five-star hospital cabin to nurse his ‘fallen’ health. Raju’s social contacts involved the Who’s Who of Indian politics, from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and New Delhi.

If the soft drinks manufacturing industry’s wrong-doings in India could invite a JPC probe in 2003, the financial frauds at Satyam, at CWG, at IPL and at DoT all deserve JPC investigation at least for the general public to know the state of governance in the country and how the government treasury and bank and institution funds are being looted. The JPC is certainly expected to do a more honest investigation job than that by government’s own agencies such as CBI, ED and DRI, whose credibility is suspect as heads of these inquiry agencies are supposed to follow the directions given by their political masters. These agencies have rarely let down the political syndicate in power. It is true that the previous JPCs had failed to purify the system. But, they have certainly exposed the extent of wrong-doings and identified the culprits. If the system could not be purified, it was because the government failed to act on JPC reports.

This year’s multi-billion dollar financial scam involving the Indian Premier League (IPL) of cricket, which too cost the job of a union minister, Shashi Tharoor, had a big industry-political party connection, linking such names as Vijay Mallya, Venu Srinivasan, Lalit Modi, Praful Patel and Sharad Pawar. The investigation into the scam has made little progress so far. The Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate of the Union Finance Ministry are investigating into all these cases along with several others, including the one concerning a massive wastage of public funds in the recently concluded Rs. 70,000-crore Commonwealth Games (CWG) in New Delhi.

The loss to the exchequer due to indiscretion on the part of the organising committee of CWG in dishing out overinflated contract to various private parties at home and abroad is yet to be established. But, few can deny the questionable roles played by the Delhi chief minister, Ms Sheila Dikshit, and those influential members in the union cabinet, who approved the repeated cost escalation in executing the event billed as a national pride. The general public has a right to know who engineered these cost escalations, how were they approved, who approved them, the cause of poor construction, loss of lives in negligence and gratis to private contractors and suppliers.

Sadly, the government is not only seen to be not doing enough to expose the corrupt and the corruptor, but also perceived to be shielding them or shadow them by giving more publicity to smaller scams such as political nepotism in Maharashtra and Karnataka or corporate loan kickbacks involving LIC and certain nationalized banks, which by all means deserve to be condemned. But, equating such guilt with Spectrum scandal or CWG fraud is like equating small burglary with gang-rape and planned murder cases, which are all crimes in the eyes of law.

The official noise through CBI against the alleged public fund embezzlement by former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda earlier this year was clearly intended to divert public attention from the spectrum scam at the initial stage. Every week, the CBI would brief the media about the quantum of fund embezzled by Koda, raising it from a modest Rs. 100 crore to a whopping Rs. 4,000 crore. The final CBI charge sheet has reportedly put the amount only at Rs. 13 crore. Who will trust the CBI and the government after this? The CBI has not cracked a single corruption case in which the political top brass in the union government are involved. It has done nothing to expose or prevent the loot of the central exchequer. This alone should be a good reason in favour of an omnibus JPC probe in to all the mega scams of the day.

Finally, those politicians and businesspersons, who owe their national prominence to the support they receive from the public by way of either securing favourable election mandate or ordinary shareholders’ and creditors’ trust, can’t take shelter under privacy laws to avoid issues concerning political morality and corporate governance. If they take bribe or give bribe to bend rules for massive gains at the cost of the nation, the public, the ultimate stakeholder, has every right to know every detail of such transactions and communications. Their so-called private dealings and private chats to influence the government machinery and democratic institutions for gains deserve to be nakedly exposed.

Watergate leaks had nakedly exposed Nixon. WikiLeaks have unmasked the US double-speak in global scale and is sending shivers through the governments of several external conflict-ridden countries. There should be no censoring of India’s current cablegate to protect its political and business criminals. Along with the Supreme Court, the whole nation is shocked about the devious way our mighty politicians, highflying industrialists and a section of the media are going about to manipulate the whole system to make illegal money at the cost of the exchequer.(IPA Service)