Get going Mr Prime Minister

Throwing a sulk isn’t good enough, start cleaning up your government

Sunil Jain

Sunil Jain

Years ago, at the height of the Bofors and other scandals, a senior editor advised Rajiv Gandhi to arrest Amitabh Bachchan as his name was doing the rounds along with brother Ajitabh’s for various deals where money was alleged to have changed hands. “But there’s no proof that he’s taken money, how can I just arrest him”, exclaimed an aghast Rajiv, appalled at the prospect of jailing a dear friend.

“Arrest him at a time when he can get bail immediately, and doesn’t actually have to go to jail ... but you have to be seen to be delivering justice ... the fact that Amitabh is a personal friend will only help reinforce the message”, the editor patiently told Rajiv. Needless to say, Rajiv didn’t heed the journalist’s advice, one thing led to another, and his government remained dogged with allegations of scandals.

Cut to the present and you’ve got another Prime Minister in exactly the same situation, with the exception of course, that this time round the Opposition doesn’t really seem interested in putting the government on the mat — the leader of the opposition didn’t even make a speech in Parliament on the various scams.

Like Rajiv, Mr Vajpayee also appears to be unwilling to act tough with anyone. So, for many months, he clung on to his PMO even when his opponents were specifically targeting the officials rather than him during the Tehelka days. And now, when his foster son-in-law’s name began doing the rounds as one of those who’d called up jailed ex-UTI chief P S Subramanyam, Mr Vajpayee chose to throw a sulk, offering to resign.

Frankly that’s not good enough. As his partymen like Lalji Tandon have made clear, the next time Mr Vajpayee offers a resignation, it’ll be accepted. Like Rajiv, Mr Vajpayee also needs to act. Except this time, just being seen to act won’t be enough; coming out with details of a Swiss bank account of a Ketan Parekh or a Subramanyam (the hunt for his account is on in all earnest) simply won’t wash. Mr Vajpayee needs to address the serious issues, and for that he needs to turn his attention inwards.

As this newspaper has highlighted often enough in the past, the real problem today is not Cyberspace. Rather it’s the thousands of crores lent to various industrialists that are now non-performing assets, it’s the loans given to favoured industrialists often for dubious projects. Mr Vajpayee needs to focus on this and get rid of some top directors of financial institutions for their roles in such loans.

Take the Industrial Development Bank of India’s (IDBI) loan of Rs 100 crore to Koshika Telecom last year. This came after three of the group’s four cellular licenses were cancelled for non-payment of license fee dues. On what basis did IDBI extend this loan? And how could Kulwant Rai, father of group chief Vinay Rai, be on IDBI’s board when this was allowed to happen? IDBI officials say they felt that Koshika’s UP West license would be revived with this Rs 100 crore loan, but the Department of Telecom rules are very clear — no license can be revived unless dues on all licences are cleared. Didn’t IDBI know this, and that Koshika had outstanding dues of Rs 400 crore for these three circles?

And for all the government’s talk of jailing wilful defaulters, the fact is that Mr Vajpayee’s government has not even been able to cancel Koshika’s fourth licence despite overdues of Rs 165 crore for this circle alone. Is this due to the fact that the Rais are believed to be close to the Prime Minister? Nor has the government been able to act on Sunil Mittal’s Rs 477 crore of overdue licence fees for the Punjab circle he bought from JT Mobile.

Both decisions on recovery of licence fees, ministry sources say, remain stuck between telecom secretary Shyamal Ghosh and the two ministers in charge, Ram Vilas Paswan and Tapan Sikdar. Mr Vajpayee incidentally, had signed the file transferring Ghosh out of the ministry, to be in charge of rehabilitation after the Gujarat earthquake, but then had to eat humble pie when, thanks to lobbies both within and outside the government, Ghosh managed to retain his job.

The government’s biggest danger, Mr Vajpayee doesn’t seem to realise — possibly because he’s not going to contest the next elections — is not from the Opposition, but from the BJP’s own vote-bank. People who’ve been upset with what they are convinced were unjustified cuts in the provident fund interest rates over the past few years, people who’ve seen their leaders (be stupid enough to?) take bribes while being taped on a television camera, people who’ve lost their life-savings in what they were convinced was a government mutual fund, people who’ve waited for 12-14 hours at a stretch to fill up CNG in their buses/scooters in the country’s capital...The list goes on. The next time there’s an election, a large number of them just may not come out to vote.