Mr Prime Minister, why don’t you have the courage to suspend Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar?
This is the last weekly piece I write for the year coming to an end. On the last day of last year God snatched away my dear daughter Rani. This year, elements within the BJP, some misguided and others malevolent, are planning to snatch my membership of the party. But I really cannot compare the two deprivations. While I will not for the remaining part of my life fully recover from my daughter’s departure, the loss of my expulsion will be borne wholly by the BJP, which will have a ruinous time to bear its consequences. I can only pray that honesty and wisdom will prevail. The party’s damage, unlike mine, is wholly avoidable.
The next thing that comes to my mind is that President Pranab Mukherjee deserves a word of congratulations. He is lucky that his counsel persuaded three judges of the Supreme Court to dismiss the challenge to his continuance in the high office he holds. I could persuade only two. There is an understandable reluctance to set aside an election where the majority is too large and the office at stake too high. That two got over this reluctance makes the minority decision worthy of respectful consideration. If I were the President under similar circumstances, I would resign and prefer to be guided by the decision of the lesser number. While this is not the place to analyse the rival views, history of precedent has enough examples about how dissents of the past have become binding law of the future. The dissenting judgement of Justice Fazal Ali in the Golaknath case is today the law declared by the Supreme Court in the Maneka Gandhi case. The Bar and even the Bench have seen the superiority of the dissenting judgement.
Inevitably my thoughts next turn to the Hon’ble Prime Minister of my country, Dr Manmohan Singh and the government he heads. There have been many occasions when I have expressed my gratitude and admiration for him. Two conspicuous occasions I recall are first, in the early Nineties when as Finance Minister he boldly rescued us from the quagmire of Nehruvian economics and heralded the demise of the kleptocratic licence raj of the Indian bureaucracy. He exposed the false conceit of pseudo socialism, dethroned the monopolistic and inefficient public sector from the commanding heights of India’s economy and ignited a phenomenal rise in the growth of our GDP.
The second was when he brought us in closer friendly economic and political relationship with the world’s most powerful democracy and forged with it the famous nuclear deal. America then acted as a friendly broker to terminate the hostility of the potential nuclear suppliers of the world. To the annoyance of many, including my leftist friends, I said on the floor of Parliament that a grateful nation must build a suitable monument in his memory after he joins his forefathers.
Mr Prime Minister, despite my bitter opposition to your scam submerged government, and its dreadful blows dealt to India’s prestige within the comity of nations, I have remained your friend because your reputation for personal integrity was never seriously dented. With the never ending succession of scams during the past few years, I have often wondered why you have not been able to dissociate yourself from the filth that surrounds you. Loyalty to a political party must end when its only actions and omissions are of looting the nation and plunging it into greater poverty and despair. I have spent the greater part of the year writing about the monumental scandals of your government and your failures and crimes against the hapless people of our country.
I have carefully watched your government’s measures announced at regular short intervals, touted as effective measures to end the curse of poverty and all its attendant misfortunes. I regret that I am not impressed, and neither are those who are advertised as beneficiaries of these measures. The poor continue to sleep on pavements and defecate in the open. The population of slums continues unchanged, as slum creation is an extremely lucrative business for builders, the greatest friends of your government. Begging continues unabated including under your very nose in Lutyens’ Delhi. Has your government done anything effective to reduce the extent of malnutrition of children, adolescents, pregnant women and mothers, except for expressing concern? No one trusts your schemes of cash transfers. They are seen as new avenues of theft and misappropriation, lacking even a basic conceptualisation of implementation. The only financial benefit visible as of now is to the contractors of your Aadhar programme, through several thousand crores of taxpayers’ money. As if biometric cards will fill the stomachs of the poor with food or provide education and skills for their children.
With this depressing reality, you staked the survival of your government on letting in FDI. Virtually the fate of millions of our producers and small traders was placed at the mercy of a corrupt international conglomerate called Wal-Mart. Thanks to you, even though a majority in both Houses opposed this suicidal intrusion, you managed a majority of support by wielding the CBI stick on deviant Opposition allies. Your conduct suggested that you were fulfilling a promise already made for some corrupt consideration, which you could not disgorge for fear of disclosure. In my piece two weeks ago, I referred to your government’s paper on black money. Did your then Finance Minister not confess that FDI is a method by which stolen wealth is brought back into this country and made to yield huge profits, obviously by reason of the insider information passed on by the real owners who also know the mysteries of our stock market? I now offer to the people conclusive evidence that removal of poverty or recovering the stolen wealth of this unfortunate nation is not a priority in your agenda.
Have you honest answers to the following questions? If you have, please produce them without vacillation or prevarication.
1) Your government knows that the stolen secreted wealth is a mind boggling sum in the vicinity of US$1,500 billion, amounting to Rs 82,462,500,000,000 approximately.
2) Do you agree that the recovery and repatriation of this wealth should be the foremost priority of your government representing a nation sunk deep into poverty and despair?
3) Do you agree that this can provide the most effective remedy for our long lasting poverty and suffering?
4) Do you agree that the French and German governments managed to make sizable inroads into the customer confidentiality rules of banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein and obtained the identity of the criminals, who certainly included many Indians?
5) Do you agree that the French and German governments offered to share information with us without cost or condition?
6) Is it true that instead of proactively obtaining this information from them, you have, through various devices, made it impossible to get this information?
7) Is it true that you have deliberately signed documents and protocols surrendering away our right under International Conventions to get this information?
(Incidentally if you do not return true answers to the last two questions in particular I will do so fully for the benefit of the nation.)
8) Has the Supreme Court in its judgement dated 4.07.2011 made a scathing criticism of your total failure to perform this elementary duty to the nation?
9) Did the Supreme Court order the creation of a Special Investigation Team, disgusted with your complete remissness in so important a matter?
10) Have you created this team or any other that is equally trustworthy?
11) Instead, have you not been trying to get the judgement revoked when the entire nation has applauded it?
12) Hasn’t the Supreme Court ordered that you have to disclose all the names obtained by you to me and my comrades before the Court?
Mr Prime Minister the nation suspects, and I am convinced, that the names include those who rule you and your government. If I was in charge of the country’s governance, or if any honest government existed, most of the culprits would be in jail by now.
Lastly, Mr Prime Minister, you have with you not merely evidence to raise suspicion, but conclusive evidence to convict Neeraj Kumar, your Commissioner of Police of the capital of India. Why do you not have the courage to suspend him and order an impartial probe by the CBI or some very prestigious commission of inquiry? Remember, Mr Prime Minister, each day of his continuance, as charges of corruption and incompetence mount against him, draws you deeper into the murky cesspool, for which the people of Delhi pay with their lives and security.