President’s Warning Shot – Voters Must Take Heed

Dr. A Surya Prakash, 

Distinguished Fellow, VIF

The Indian President’s speech on occasions like the Independence Day and the Republic Day is seen by people as something of a ritual that the Rashtrapati performs year after year. This is so because what dominates these speeches is dull, uninspiring prose packed with officialese and platitudes. Far from connecting with the people, these speeches only end up emphasizing the disconnect between the Head and State who lives in this grand palace which majestically overlooks Rajpath, and the Aam Aadmi (the common man).

But, President Pranab Mukherjee’s address to the nation this Republic Day was distinct. It had the stamp of a person who has rich political and administrative experience, is deeply worried about India’s welfare and democratic well-being and has no qualms about calling a spade a spade. More, importantly, it was strongly rooted in the country’s contemporary social, political and economic reality, was non-partisan and contained a very strong message for the country’s electors who have to make an all important decision in May, 2014.

As stated earlier, every one of Mr.Mukherjee’s predecessors has delivered these customary speeches that are religiously broadcast by All India Radio and Doordarshan, but few, if any have ever had the gumption to speak on behalf of the people and to honestly reflect the mood of the nation, even if it means hurting the incumbent government or the coalition of parties that are currently in power. The Rashtrapati showed that he had his finger on the pulse of the people and was aware of the growing sense of hopelessness among the citizenry when he said “we do feel angry and rightly so, when we see democratic institutions being weakened by complacency and incompetence. If we hear sometimes an anthem of despair from the street, it is because the people feel that a sacred trust is being violated”. He then turned to the one big issue troubling all Indians – corruption – and spoke on behalf of every citizen when he said “If Indians are enraged, it is because they are witnessing corruption and waste of national resources. If governments do not remove these flaws, voters will remove governments”.

That the President had chosen to speak his mind became obvious when he talked of the dangerous rise in hypocrisy in public life. Obviously referring to the reckless promises that politicians make in order to garner votes and the terrible implications that these promised freebies have on the economy and the finances of governments, he said that elections do not give any person “the licence to flirt with illusions”. “Those who seek the trust of voters must promise only what is possible. Government is not a charity shop. Populist anarchy cannot be a substitute for governance. False promises lead to disillusionment, which gives birth to rage, and that rage has one legitimate target : those in power”.

The President has warned that this rage will abate only when governments deliver and that those in office must eliminate the trust deficit between them and the people. They must also understand that every election comes with a warning sign: “Perform or Perish”.

Never before has a President cautioned politicians about the consequences of public rage as he has done in his recent address. Though many feel that his reference to “populist anarchy” is particularly directed at the Aam Aadmi Party, it would be unfair to think that the President operates on such a small canvass. Obviously, the President is troubled by the tactics of the Delhi Chief Minister, who prefers street agitations to a decent day’s work at the Secretariat. But, there are many others politicians who have infringed age-old rules of governance in this country. One has to only look at the reckless populism of the Manmohan Singh Government at the Centre or the Akhilesh Yadav Government in Uttar Pradesh or the Siddaramaiah Government in Karnataka to realize that the AAP is only the new kid on the block. There are older, much seasoned players who have taken to this dangerous path to garner votes and brought about terrible economic consequences for the nation.

Further, never before has a President displayed such bluntness in analyzing a contemporary political situation in the country. Mr.Mukherjee, it would appear, has done this because of several reasons. First, he is deeply disturbed by the sloth, inefficiency and corruption that is now all pervasive and is now clearly eating into the vitals of the country’s democratic system; Second, unlike many of his predecessors who read out speeches drafted or approved by the government of the day, the President has chosen to speak on behalf of the people, rather than on behalf of “his” government; Third, going by the overall tone and content of the speech, it is obvious that the President is troubled by the prospects of yet another fractious mandate and its implications for the nation and for the survival of the democratic system itself. Therefore, he has chosen the right occasion, just three months prior to the Lok Sabha poll, to warn all citizens of the consequences of a fractured mandate and appealed to them to vote for stability.

That the President is distressed by the prospect of political instability is obvious when he says the coming election is a momentous one. It is not just another year and another election. He says “2014 is a precipice moment in our history. We must re-discover that sense of national purpose and patriotism, which lifts the nation above and across the abyss”. He has also spoken about the urgent need to provide jobs and opportunities for the youth. But says a fractured government which is hostage to whimsical opportunists will be an “unhappy eventuality”. He warns that in 2014, such an eventuality could be “catastrophic”. Therefore, he tells every voter: Don’t let India down.

By saying all this, the Rashtrapati has echoed the concerns of 1.3 billion citizens, and shown that he is in touch with the Aam Aadmi and that he will speak his mind on behalf of the Aam Aadmi, irrespective of what it does to a few individuals holding public offices. He has sound advice for the Aam Aadmi as well. He says, democracy is like the physician who heals himself. It has the “marvelous ability to self-correct” and therefore, 2014 “must become a year of healing after the fractured and contentious politics of the last few years”. One only hopes the electorate will value the sage counsel of Mr.Mukherjee next May and give India “mukti” from the unstable and corrupt politics of the last decade.     

Use and Misuse of Public Funds: Some Questions Which Must be Asked

Dr M N Buch, 

Dean, Centre for Governance and Political Studies, VIF

Recently Rahul Gandhi visited Bhopal for a day on purely Congress Party work. He did not come by a normal commercial flight, the fare of which he could have reimbursed as a Member of Parliament. He came by a special aircraft and for his personal protection a bullet proof armoured vehicle had been sent in advance from Delhi by train. Naturally he was accompanied by his SPG escort and more than one thousand policemen were deployed for his protection and general bandobast. He travelled in a convoy of several cars, piloted and escorted by the police and barricades were erected for crowd control. I cannot think of the Chairman of the Labour Party in Britain travelling in that country in such style and at such a great expense. In Delhi the Sonia Gandhi family maintains a life style which undoubtedly must cost a great deal of money, certainly more than can be afforded by the emoluments earned by her and Rahul Gandhi as Members of Parliament. The question which the people of India must ask is, “Where is all this money coming from?”

I am not targeting Rahul Gandhi or the Congress Party because every party and every leader does exactly the same thing. The BJP President Rajnath Singh travels by special aircraft and helicopters as do Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav and leaders of the parties in the Southern States. The Congress Party is supposed to be the richest political party in India, followed by BJP and CPI (M). If we take the population of India as being 120 crores, including adults and minors, if a party were to collect five rupees per head that would still come to only Rs. 600 crores. Considering the life style of our leaders, the cost of their travel, the huge amounts spent during elections, it is obvious that parties and party leaders are accepting money from business houses, whereas their followers are extorting money from smaller businessmen. Why should a business house give any money to any politician unless he is convinced that this is a form of investment which can be encashed at huge profit, to the advantage of the politicians also for overlooking the malpractices of the business house? One is told that the House of Tata refuses to pay bribes and I am prepared to accept that the family of Jamnalal Bajaj, mainly Rahul Bajaj, would also be principled in this behalf. But that is not true of most of our business houses and, therefore, party funds are very largely dependent on contributions from black marketeers, people indulging in illegal business and business houses, some on the make but most who know that if they are to survive they have to please the politicians. This is the root cause of corruption and surely the question must be asked, “Why are parties and politicians sourcing funds from businessmen and why are businessmen doling out such huge amounts?’

In my family we three brothers were in the IAS (the middle one died when he was just 52 years) and my wife was also an IAS officer. She, my youngest brother and I are pensioners and no doubt after the Sixth Pay Commission the pension is enough for us to live reasonably comfortably. It is not enough to afford luxury, which is why my wife is unable to replace her eleven-year old car. In some ways we are fortunate because there is a huge escalation in land value and the house which I built in 1975-76 cost me just about rupees three lakhs, including the cost of land, which is now worth crores of rupees. However, I cannot think of acquiring more property at today’s prices. On the other hand most of our politicians have acquired assets for which there is no logical explanation in terms of what they earn. For example, a Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh once told me that his Industries and Excise Minister, who belonged to a particular tribe, came from a poverty stricken household but he now owns a hotel in Itanagar, properties in Guwahati, Delhi and Bombay and is an extremely wealthy man. I can give any number of examples from Madhya Pradesh of politicians who could not afford a bicycle now owning several cars, others who could not afford a one room tenement having luxurious bungalows and commercial properties, with their wives being loaded with jewels. Where does all this money come from? Elections cost huge sums of money and it is obvious that political parties cannot afford to give every candidate crores of rupees for an assembly or parliamentary election. A person who has spent rupees five to ten crores to win a parliamentary seat has obviously to collect money by illegal means in order to recoup what he has spent. He becomes corrupt, he corrupts the system by forcing his civil servants to assist in collecting money, the civil servants in turn find that it is lucrative to be corrupt on their own, unscrupulous contractors and businessmen take advantage of the corruption of the bureaucrats and the politicians and, therefore, spurious drugs and liquor are sold and kill innocent people, the roof of a hospital collapses with patients occupying the premises, a Dawood Ibrahim flourishes and scams occur on a national scale.

Let us carry the analysis further. There are two phenomena which one does not find in most developed economies which are also democracies. Newspapers such as Le Figaro, Washington Post, The Times do not carry several one-page advertisements celebrating the birthday of some leaders, highlighting by way of an advertisement the speeches of a Chief Minister or lauding appointment of some political leader to a post in government or in a government corporation. There are no hoardings and ceremonial gates put up all over the city because an office bearer of a political party is paying it a visit. There are no bill boards or hoardings at street corners and along public roads containing the portraits of politicians and celebrating something relating to them. That is the way of dictatorships. The Nazi Party rallies at Nueremburg, the portraits of the Great Leader adorning the streets of Pyongyang, the statues of Stalin and Lenin in the Soviet cities are all hallmarks of Fascist and authoritarian Communist societies. The situation in India far exceeds anything that was found in Nazi Berlin, Mussolini’s Rome, Franco’s Madrid or Kim Il Sung’s Pyongyang. It goes even further than Mao’s Beijing. The sycophancy and the prostration before the leaders is so sickening that one is sometimes ashamed to be an Indian. In a democracy the citizen is supreme, the system of politics is multi-party, the voter decides who governs us and the Constitution prescribes how we shall be governed. Party leaders individually count for nothing and even so powerful a person as Margaret Thatcher would have been laughed out of court if, for example, she were to visit Liverpool at the height of her power and her party tried to plaster the city with her portraits. Why, then, does India, which calls itself the world’s largest democracy, have a culture of what is nothing short of idolatry with regard to its political leaders? The media, the party workers, the bureaucrats, the political parties themselves and, sad to say, citizens at large are guilty of this miasma which has overtaken our society and our politics. We must ask the question why this has happened and we must root out this toadyism lock, stock and barrel.

Advertisements in the newspapers in favour of our politicians cost a great deal of money, may be about rupees two crores for a full page advertisement in a national newspaper. Where is the money coming from? Who pays for the banners, posters, ceremonial gates, the tonnes of flowers when a person like Advani, Rahul Gandhi, etc. visits a city? Quite apart from the waste there is also the case of the corruption which accompanies such expenditure, all of which is ultimately paid for by the common man. Why are we not asking for an immediate end to this practice? As a young District Magistrate I have had visits of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, Jaiprakash Narain and others to my district headquarters. What we see today did not exist then and certainly politicians were much simpler in those days and more austere. We have to return to the days of sane politics and people must insist on this.

We can no longer hide behind the ‘purdah’ of democracy when dealing with corruption. I, as a citizen, would like know why the cases of disproportionate assets against Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, both in Uttar Pradesh, have been pending for so long. The allegations do not relate to some obscure tale of illegal funds passing through a confusing maze of transactions in Mauritius, a West Indian island, anonymous banks in Switzerland or Luxembourg. They relate to tangible immoveable assets in India, to cash payments, bank balances and jewelry. The allegations are false, in which the case should be closed, or they are correct, a prima facie case exists and the matter should be challaned before a court of competent jurisdiction. Instead the Delhi Police Special Establishment (popularly known as CBI) digs up or buries the cases from time to time according to the need for the support of the Samajwadi Party or Bahujana Samaj Party when things become dicey in Parliament. That CBI is professionally incompetent, its officers are not above corruption and its is extremely selective, depending on what government wants, in prosecuting offences, is well known. The Supreme Court bravely states that it will free CBI from political control. Why does the Supreme Court not ask the Inspector General of the Delhi Special Police Establishment, who is a legal entity, also known as the Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is only a non statutory executive agency, to read Chapter XII of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973? In the matter of recording of FIR, investigating an offence, apprehending accused persons, collecting evidence, arriving at a conclusion whether a prima facie case does or does not exist against the accused person or persons and then deciding to either challan the accused in court or to submit a final report seeking permission to close the case, the police has complete and absolute legal autonomy. Only a superior police officer has the power to supervise a case under section 36 Cr.P.C. and section 158 Cr.P.C. However, even a superior police officer cannot direct that the investigating officer excludes from his investigation a person against whom there is a prima facie case, or include in the charge-sheet a person against whom there is no evidence of a prima facie case, challan a case in which there is no evidence that an offence is made out or submit a final report for closure in a case where there is enough evidence for a charge-sheet. No one, minister, civil servant or superior police officer can make an investigating officer delay an investigation or make a false investigation. That provision already exists under the present law. Even if the law does not specifically state that a Law Minister or an officer of government is debarred from interfering in an investigation, there are any number of decisions of the Privy Council, our High Courts and the Supreme Court which makes this amply clear. What other autonomy does the Supreme Court intend to confer on CBI? Will the greatest respect to our courts my submission to them is to use their judicial power to make officers, including police officers, function according to law instead of making statements about how they intend to liberate officers or organisations from the control of government.

I think a question must also be asked of the Executive as to why it has abandoned its executive functions. Despite what some police officers like to believe, the police is part of the executive arm of government, whose existence is determined by laws enacted by the Legislature, whose authority and functions are prescribed by such laws and whose accountability and subordination are both determined by law. Let me give one example. The Supreme Court is insisting that the police should not function under the control of government. Superintendence over the police vests in government and must continue to do so. The power of superintendence does not mean micro management of the police, but it does mean that the framework of policing, the objectives of policing and the broad policy relating to the methods of policing will be laid down and prescribed by government through rules, regulations, manuals and standing orders. In the ultimate analysis the Minister in charge of Home is accountable to the Legislature for the manner in which the police functions and neither the Supreme Court nor any other authority can dilute this accountability of the Ministers. Suppose the police exceeds its powers, misuse its authority, harasses citizens, indulges in excessive force in dealing with a law and order situation, fails to deal with crime because it is corrupt or incompetent and questions are raised about this in the Legislature. Can the Home Minister turn around and say, “I have no control over the police, I cannot shift an officer, I cannot punish him until some prescribed authority permits me to do so?” The legislators will then demand a change in the law and if this demand is supported by the majority, the law will be changed.

What we need is a balance between the authority of the Executive, the role of the Judiciary in ensuring that all executive arms, including the police, function according to law and for the police to be operationally autonomous so that it can fulfill its task of maintaining order, preventing crime and quickly detecting and prosecuting offenders. This calls for restraint, rational thinking, proper legislation, competent executive functioning and vigilance on the part of the Judiciary which, in the present surcharged environment, is no where visible. The question which people must ask is “Why is this so?”

Good government is a function of a proper balance between the Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary. It is equally a function of integrity, honesty in the matter of working and efficiency and competence on the part of the constituents of the State. I consider the role of the Legislature and the legislators pivotal because it is this body and these persons who, because they are constituted by the freely cast vote of the citizens, are the key components of a representative democracy. Legislators have a constitutionally defined role and that consists of enactment of laws which are in the public interests, approval of the annual budget and individual items of expenditure and grants to meet such expenditure and then maintaining a watch over government to ensure that it functions in a manner such that the funds allotted to it by popular will, expressed through the representatives of the people, are properly utilised. This is done through questions, resolutions, debates, call attention motions, adjournment motions and through functioning of the Public Accounts Committee, the Estimates Committee and the various standing committees for different departments, which all call government to account. At every step the Executive is accountable to the Legislature and if legislators were to do their duty the end result would be good government. But the fact is that the legislators do not do their duty, most sessions of parliament are heavily interrupted by agitations, there is very little meaningful debate in State Legislatures or in Parliament and most legislators are more interested in getting executive posts or in interfering in the day-to-day working of the Executive by demanding postings and transfers, insisting on work being done according to their whims and fancies and using the bureaucracy as a means of making money rather than in attending to legislative business. Should not a question be asked why the legislators do not perform their legitimate function and instead make it impossible for the bureaucracy to function? Should we also not ask why the bureaucracy has become so used to this situation that it has now become a willing partner in what ultimately leads to wholesale corruption?

We have been silent too long and an Anna Hazare fasting to end corruption, an Arvind Kejriwal jumping around and agitating, a Prashant Bhushan filing public interest writ petitions do not even scratch at the problem. We need a massive upsurge of public anger which would tear down the posters of our leaders, dog their footsteps when they talk nonsense in public and insist on an austere style of living and functioning of the politicians and the civil servants. That will bring us back to the early days of independence, when India looked to the future with hope, the politicians still imbued with a sense of Gandhian morality and the civil servants enthused by and proud of their role in building a new and prosperous nation.

The Emperor’s Frayed Clothes

PP Shukla

Joint Director, VIF

One important chapter of the Anna movement has ended; a new one is set to begin. Time, perhaps, to pause and take stock of what went wrong, why the promise of August fizzled by December 2011.

The principal failure – for failure is what we are seeing, no matter how it is dressed up – was caused by the fact that Team Anna, and Anna himself, displayed the very faults that they were fighting against. The irony is that they did not see this. And when forced to confront it, they resorted to petulance or brazen denial.

Corruption was their main plank. And yet, all the principal members of the Team, and the most articulate ones for sure, were themselves exposed. What made things worse was that each time one or other individual was exposed, Anna condoned it. Not only did this expose the double standard that was being applied, but it also showed the arrogance of Anna who seemed to set himself up as the arbiter of right and wrong in these matters. Importantly, it raised the legitimate question: if these men and women were going to be tempted by the piffling amounts they swindled, how could they be expected to resist the much bigger temptations that power would surely bring?

Anna was also in the habit of calling the Government gaddars. No question about it, this Government has done very nearly all it can to hurt the country’s national interests, most notably on national security matters. They have left the country dangerously unprepared for any military challenge that may appear in the near term. Yet, here was Prashant Bhushan saying we should be prepared to let go of Kashmir. And again Anna set himself up as arbiter and declared that he disagreed but Bhushan would not be made to pay for this egregious betrayal of the country’s supreme interests.

As if all this was not enough, there was the question of protection for the whistle-blower. Anna’s own blogger, Parulekar, found that there was no protection for him if the whistle were blown against Anna. In a well-publicised case, Parulekar was sacked for bringing out the differences within Team Anna, and the unhealthy trends emerging within it. And again, Anna got away with it, because the media were giving him an easy time, for reasons of their own.

Anna’s own tendencies need to be understood too. Firstly, the inconsistency that has been remarked upon earlier, showed up again over the famous slapping incidents, one involving the self-same Prashant Bhushan, the other involving Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. The first incident attracted unbridled anger from Anna, and rightly so. But on the other, he went so far as to imply that one slap was not enough for Pawar. Again, this is not in defence of Pawar – God knows he has enough to atone for. But the inconsistency was glaring – and inexplicable. Further, when Anna was confronted with this inconsistency and asked to explain, he walked away from the interview.

The Team is also wont to make grand claims that their finances are all there for the country to see. And they are never challenged by the media, where they make such tall claims. Here is what happened to me, writing under a pseudonym. I sent an email to Anna on his feedback address asking for his financial statements; within minutes I got a reply, automated I suspect, from a Suresh saying that he would get back to me soon. That was in August 2011. Since then, I have sent two reminders, but there has been no response. This is not to suggest that there is any financial impropriety in Anna personally, but that the tall claims of transparency are definitely hollow. As to whether their finances are indeed clean, we need details in order to be able to judge. Again, for accuracy, it should be added that charges against Anna have been probed and nothing has incriminated him.

Then there is the issue of nepotism. There is a father and son team working as part of the core committee. No doubt, Anna considers them very competent lawyers, but was it really necessary to find a father and son team? If a Minister or a leader of any political party were to do this – as indeed most are doing – do we not criticise the nepotism implicit? And especially here we have charges of soft corruption against them, and of course, of being a gaddar against one of them.

These facts provide as good an explanation as any for the collapse of the movement started in April 2011, and received with such enthusiasm by the people of the entire country. By the time of the Mumbai fiasco, it was clear that the movement was dying down. Just as well: the actual draft of the Anna team for the Lokpal bill was really a power grab. It is a safe bet, borne out by many TV interviews of the people who gathered to support Anna at Ram Lila grounds in August 2011, that most of the people had not read the grandly-titled “Jan” Lokpal bill. The kind of power that it gave to the Lokpal would have effectively ended the separation of powers that is so important in a system like ours.

Anna has now recognised that one phase is over, and he has rid himself – so it seems – of Team Anna. Politically, there are very difficult times ahead for the country. The General Elections of 2014 have been likened by someone to the Fourth Battle of Panipat. Indeed, the future of our country as an independent country, no less, is at stake. Anna’s latest is that he is going to plunge into electoral politics, though he does not appear to have decided what precise form this will take. He must weigh his options very carefully, realising that Brand Anna is frying and he does not have the cushion to be able to get away with too many more mistakes. As a nationalist, he must clear away all the cobwebs in his mind, and the persons, that led him astray. The coming year-and-a-half will undoubtedly see very rough tactics, and the nationalist forces must be ready to confront them at all stages and at all levels.

Governance and The Prime Minister

Dr. M.N. Buch
Visiting Fellow, VIF

The whole theme of the Constitution of India is that this country must be governed and how this should be done is laid down in every Article of the Constitution and in particular in Chapter 1 of Part V of the of the Constitution for the Union and Chapters 1 and 2 of Part VI for the States.

The post of Prime Minister exists because Article 74 so mandates and it is he and his Council of Ministers who, in accordance with the Business Allocation Rules and the Rules of Business of the Executive Government framed under Article 77, will advise the President on how the executive functions of government will be conducted. In this there is no ambiguity and the Constitution and the Rules framed under it demand that the Prime Minister will in fact govern. The Constitution does not permit or forgive lack of governance and a Prime Minister who does not govern has no right to occupy that post. Of course as the person who, together with his Council of Ministers, enjoys the confidence of the House of the People he is the one required to initiate and pilot legislation and to carry out the wishes of the Legislature as stated through laws, the budget, debate and resolutions, etc. The Prime Minister, therefore, straddles the twin horses of the Executive and Legislature, both wings of the State being concerned with governance.

In order that a Prime Minister may govern there has to be an environment of government in which the Prime Minister can function effectively. It is for this reason that the Prime Minister enjoys and must enjoy a degree of independence in functioning in which, while discharging his responsibility to the House and to the electorate in general, the Prime Minister is not subjected to nagging, pettifogging complaints which prevent him from performing his fundamental duty of governance. Does such an environment exist in India? After independence at least till imposition of Emergency and its aftermaths such an environment did exist and though people such as Ram Manohar Lohia were the gadflies who tormented Jawaharlal Nehru for taking the decisions which a Prime Minister should, nor was he ever bogged down in controversies in which self-defence took precedence over governance. That was the period in which India took momentous decisions. We entered an era of planning and there was an immense thrust of building basic infrastructure so that the sinews of a modern industrial state were created. Whatever might be the complaints about adequacy and quality of electric power, the fact is that from a situation in which only five thousand towns and villages in India were electrified in 1947 when the British left, today we have one hundred percent electrification. Life expectancy has increased from twenty-seven years to sixty-three years, epidemics are under control, food production has increased dramatically and India is a major industrial power today. There were inefficiencies which have prevented India from achieving its full potential, but that does not detract from the magnitude of achievement during a period when India was actually governed. Not surprisingly this was also the period when corruption was at its lowest ebb, which proves that taking decisions leads to less corruption than dithering and then taking decisions in panic.

To whom should the Prime Minister be accountable? Obviously to Parliament and, by implication he should be accountable to the President. He is accountable to the electorate because every five years there is an election and the ruling party, if it wants another term in office, it has to convince the voters that its achievements in government have benefitted the average citizen and, therefore, it should get another term. If the ruling party fails to convince the electorate, then it loses power and the Prime Minister his office. We have seen this happen in India where a powerful Indira Gandhi was ousted at the polls, only to return to power at the next election. Atal Bihari Vajpayee won power and then lost it, just as the Congress under Rajiv Gandhi won power and subsequently lost it. This is normal in a democracy, but the lesson learnt from our elections is that a party and a Prime Minister whose conduct of government does not live up to the expectations of the people will lose power. In other words, what the people of India want is a firm government and not a government whose every step seems to be dictated by populism and immediate expediency. One wishes that this lesson is learnt by the present government and all governments to follow.

This background about governance has been sculpted because ever since Anna Hazare and his cohorts launched a movement for the enactment of a Lokpal Act drafted by them government has been on the defensive. That is not all. Various actors have come on the stage and encouraged by a complete collapse of executive government have begun enacting solo dramas of their own which do not necessarily combine to create a great play but individually lead to such chaos on stage that the audience cannot make head or tail of what is going on. The nearest resemblance in real life of what is happening in the world of government is a lunatic asylum at bedlam hour in which no one can make any sense of what people are saying or doing. This is made possible because in the manner in which coalition governments function in India no government can orchestrate a scenario of governance which makes any sense and, therefore, chaos reigns supreme.

This point needs to be illustrated or elaborated. The Constitution in Article 112 directs that the President will cause to be laid before both Houses of Parliament and an annual statement of the estimated receipts and expenditures of the Government of India. In popular parlance this is called the budget. Under Article 113 each item of expenditure as estimated which is not charged upon the Consolidated Fund of India is to be presented to the House of the People in the form of a demand for grants and the House may approve or disapprove a grant. The aggregate of the approved grants would be the final amount of expenditure agreed upon by the House of the People and this would take the form of an Appropriation Bill under Article 114. No expenditure can be incurred before the enactment of the Appropriation Act. This entire process is initiated by the Executive, discussed and voted upon by Parliament and then handed back to the Executive as the sanction on which it will operate in the matter of expenditure. This is purely a matter between Parliament and the Executive, with each Minister being accountable to Parliament on how the grants relating to his department have been spent.

In order that Parliament can judge whether the manner in which government has spent funds is according to what has been voted the Constitution, Part V, Chapter 5 provides for the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. Under Articles 149 and 151 Comptroller and Auditor General audits the accounts of government and in the case of the Union Government he presents his audit report to the President and in the case of the States to the respective Governors, who is then required to present the report to the House of the People and the State Legislative Assembly, as the case may be. Till then these reports are not in the public domain and have to be kept between CAG and government. It is for Parliament then to decide whether it accepts the audit report and directs government to take action thereon, or that it rejects the report or only partially accepts it. The Comptroller and Auditor General, when auditing an office, can comment on the propriety and wisdom of expenditure, but it cannot do what the present CAG has been doing, that is, sitting in judgement over the decisions of the Executive and stating that had some other decision been taken there would have been accrual or a certain amount of gain to government and that failure to take such decision has resulted in loss. Such hypothetical questions and views come within the realm of speculation and not audit.

No one is denying that our system has been highly corrupted by the arbitrariness of political decision making and the complete and absolute surrender of the Civil Services to political bullying. This surrender has to a large extent been converted into a nexus between politicians and civil servants. That is another story. At the same time CAG is not competent to state that if at the time that spectrum was being made available to telecommunication firms, the auction route had been followed government would have gained Rs. 1,76,000 crores and, because this was not done, government has incurred this much of loss. What about the proposition that if the auction route had been followed initially there would not have been growth in the telecommunication sector? These are political and administrative issues and are not within the realm of audit, To assume corruption from such a defective audit report is a complete distortion of facts, but tragically this is what has led to the Anna Hazare movement which started with good intentions but which has now grown berserk and is threatening the very existence of meaningful executive government in India. Once again let me hasten to submit that this is not an apology for the wrongdoing of government under the guise of compulsions of coalition nor does it excuse government from taking a firm stand but always succumbing to the pressures of such puny partners as Mamata Banerjee or Karunanidhi. Any movement to curb corruption which also forces government to provide good government would be welcome, but unfortunately Anna Hazare’s movement is not the one which can do this.

More than Anna Hazare it is some of his more irresponsible associates such as Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan whose voices, in ascending order of shrillness, have launched a most incontinent attack on the Prime Minister and his Ministers for taking decisions in cases where lack of decision making would have been fatal. Let us take the allocation of coal blocks. No decision of a Minister or the Prime Minister is open to question in this behalf unless it can be shown that there is some personal gain to the Minister concerned, which is not justified by law or the rules of financial propriety. Unless the decision has an element of criminality which could justify the registration of a First Information Report (FIR) no investigating agency with police functions can sit in judgement over such decisions. Increasingly CBI, which is accused by opposition parties of being a political handmaiden of government, is being involved in reviewing administrative decisions which it has neither the authority nor the competence to do. Legally CBI does not exist except as a government body constituted by executive order. The police is created by the Indian Police Act or the relevant State Acts and it operates according to the powers vested in it by the Code of Criminal Procedure in the matter of maintenance of public order, prevention of crime, investigation of offences and their subsequent prosecution. The Delhi Special Police Establishment, popularly known as CBI, is such a police force constituted under the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, enjoying legal powers as conferred by the Act. CBI as such has no legal powers. It is not the administrative superior of government officers or ministers because the Rules of Business confer no such powers on it and it certainly does not have the competence to sit in judgement over the administrative decisions of senior officers and ministers. No investigating agency ever has such competence. Despite this, increasingly, CBI, through what are called preliminary enquiries, is interfering in the general administration, which it has no competence to do. It is still a mystery why when under Entry 8 of List 1 of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution Parliament has the right to enact a law creating a Central Bureau of Investigation and conferring on it both functions and power, this has not been done and for which there does not seem to be any initiative on the part of government. It would be a sad day for our democracy if agencies like CBI begin sitting in judgement against the decisions of ministers.

In this behalf let me tell a true story. In 1977 when Indira Gandhi was ousted from power and the Janata Government was formed, in Madhya Pradesh also we had a Janata Government dominated by BJP. K.L. Pasricha, the then Chief Secretary, issued an order to all Secretaries of the State Government to review the orders of their ministers in the past five years and to bring to notice for action such cases where they felt that the minister’s order was wrong. My colleague, B.J. Hirjee and I independently wrote to the Chief Secretary that under the Rules of Business it was the job of the Secretary to ensure that if an order of his minister is contrary to rules or the law, or even the canons of propriety, he should advise the minister accordingly and if the minister did not agree, then to bring the matter to the notice of the Chief Minister through the Chief Secretary in a process called Coordination. If, therefore, the Minister had taken a decision and the Secretary had failed to advise him correctly, then he was equally responsible for the wrongdoing and would have to bear the brunt of consequences. He could not hide ex post facto under the excuse of wrongdoing by the Minister, thus sitting in judgement over his Minister. We both stated that allowing a Secretary to sit in judgement over his Minister’s orders ex post facto is not permissible in a democracy. The same applies to CBI or any other agency. Of course if they are investigating a criminal case duly registered under law, then it would be a different matter.

Our past experience of bringing government to a halt on account of allegations against the Prime Minister has been very unhappy. V.P. Singh, who went on to be Prime Minister, alleged that in the purchase of Bofors 155mm guns for the army illegal gratification had been paid. Rajiv Gandhi, then Prime Minister, first denied the allegations, then said neither he nor his dear ones had taken any bribe and became increasingly embroiled in an unseemly controversy in which the Indian Express came out with an expose. For the remaining years of his tenure Rajiv Gandhi was just defending himself and could be described as a lame duck Prime Minister. V.P. Singh neither provided clinching proof in the matter, nor withdrew the allegations and this, while creating an environment of distrust which has still not dissipated, brought government to a halt.

Contrast this with the case of Yoshihiro Tanaka, Prime Minister of Japan. It was alleged that he took a bribe of Dollar Two Million from Lockheed Corporation for purchase of aircraft. The complaint was registered as a criminal case, duly investigated, found proved. Tanaka was prosecuted, convicted, given a jail sentence and his party expelled him and he was removed as Prime Minister. A corrupt man was punished but the Prime Minister’s post was unscathed. In India we persecute but do not prosecute and this seriously harms the post.

If the Prime Minister is convinced that neither he nor his colleague did wrong then it is his duty to categorically state that neither CBI nor anyone else could inquire into their conduct and that under no circumstance would he concede what Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan are demanding. Having said that the Prime Minister must resolve to govern firmly and justly and not be deviated from this path by the likes of his present detractors.