The extradition of Christian Michel, one of the alleged middlemen in the AgustaWestland helicopter deal, brings some hope to a graft-wary country that there may still be some accountability and that some light may be finally shed on corruption at the top levels in the UPA era. Among the many promises that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, eradication of corruption was one of the most major. Indians had looked at him with hope that he would carry out a surgery of the cancer eating into the body politic of this country. While many measures of good governance have been taken and channels of corruption sought to be blocked in the past four and a half years, critics—and supporters alike—cannot be blamed for wondering what happened to bringing to justice the perpetrators of big-ticket fraud and outright criminality. While the Bharatiya Janata Party made much noise ahead of the elections about UPA-era corruption, the fact is, no politician or bureaucrat worth their name has been sent behind bars ever since the National Democratic Alliance has come to power. In fact, those who were sent to prison by the Manmohan Singh government, including minister A. Raja, were acquitted by the court recently for lack of proof in the 2G spectrum allocation case. A “scam” that allegedly caused a loss of Rs 1.76-lakh crore to the exchequer, suddenly could not be proved in the court of law.
When the Modi government came to power, it was expected that a major shake-up of the bureaucracy would take place. It was well known that many bureaucrats were behind the wheels and deals within the system that made a mockery out of governance in UPA’s time—bureaucrats who helped themselves and their masters to unimaginable riches. But most of them were retained perhaps out of the mistaken belief that they would overnight turn saints and transfer their loyalties to the new government smoothly. Unsurprisingly, that did not happen. As a result, many of these bureaucrats continue merrily in their posts, cleaning up the record books of their “past” masters, apart from still taking instructions from them to block the investigations into some of the worst financial frauds perpetrated on this country over the past decades, while also trying to sabotage the financial markets and as a consequence, even the economy, in the hope that the resultant anti-incumbency will vote the current government out of power in 2019.
Alleged cases of corruption against worthies such as P. Chidambaram and his son, Karti, are suspected to have been investigated so poorly that there is speculation that these may not stand the courts’ scrutiny. As this newspaper reported last week, even though the former Finance and Home Minister has been charge-sheeted in the Aircel-Maxis case, the tardy progress of the investigation has already given rise to speculation that the Central Bureau of Investigation may not get the custody of P. Chidambaram for his interrogation, and worse, he may even go scot-free, 2G-style.
Amid this all-pervasive atmosphere of gloom and doom, the arrival of Christian Michel to India should be perceived as a thin ray of light at the end of a rather long and dark tunnel, apart from a reaffirmation of the Prime Minister’s pledge to bring the corrupt to book. In this particular case, the diplomatic overtures made by the Prime Minister himself to the rulers of Dubai played a significant part in ensuring that this British citizen be extradited to this country. Of course, the investigation will not be easy. Many hindrances will come in the way of the investigators. Michel is anyway proving to be hostile, as he refuses to confess to his alleged crimes and tries to pass the buck to others to save his own skin. So the need of the hour is to build a convincing case against him. In fact, soon the country will get to know whether its government has been able to put up a convincing case against absconder tycoon Vijay Mallya in the British courts, to ensure the extradition of a man who owes Indian entities thousands of crores of rupees. Justice will not only be served, but seen to be served if Mallya can be brought to India to spend time in an Indian jail, instead of enjoying his uber-rich lifestyle in the United Kingdom, as he is currently doing, while being out on bail.
So the extradition of Christian Michel should be the beginning of this country’s battle against graft, not the end. The battle must go on, for it’s India’s future that is at stake.