Modi’s impatience to cut out clutter and get things done forces him on back foot.
The Supreme Court is yet to pronounce the last word on the bunch of PILs in the Rafale deal. Hopefully, Their Lordships, in their wisdom, would be true to their calling. PILs often stem from dishonest intentions, petitioners trying to fire from the shoulders of the court. In the past, the Apex Court has invariably steered clear of the divisive landmines that were sought to be strewn in its path.
Let us not delude ourselves. Judges too are human. They don’t operate in a vacuum. Yet, it is in the very nature of their higher calling that an adherence to the well laid-down laws and precedents, and the self-correcting mechanisms available within the court itself, ensure that in the end what transpires is fair and just.
One more comment. It was unprecedented that the Apex Court, while hearing the Rafale petitions sought to be briefed by defence experts. Summoning of civil and military personnel was extraordinary, to say the least. This should have been avoided. From Attorney General down, a battery of legal experts was at the beck and call of the court. Aside from setting a precedent, what the bench gained remains unclear.
Now, to the main thrust of this column. If the PIL filers were looking for a scam of the scale and political mega-tonnage of Bofors, they have reason to be sorely disappointed. There was not even a molehill here, despite the desperate cries of Rahul Gandhi and a couple of high-profile new converts to his cause going under the rubric of Crusaders Inc. Trying to make a mountain even when a molehill is missing, is beyond the capacity of our crusader-in-chief, who has the habit of turning against any regime which does not fulfil his gargantuan ambitions. The unemployed are condemned to remain unemployable busybodies, even if they have snatched the mantle of real opposition from the leaders of the anti-Modi groups.
Yes, there is a whiff of a “scam” in the Rafale deal. But, mind you, not of the kind that Rahul suggests in order to paint Narendra Modi corrupt with the singular objective of establishing a sort of equivalence. The long-term partners of the bribe-taker Ottavio Quattrocchi cannot ever hope to earn the reputation for honesty that Modi enjoys. Period.
But Modi’s problem is different. He often lands himself in trouble by not playing by the rules, in his impatience to set things right, he short-circuits well laid-down procedures, bypassing regular channels of decision-making. All in an angry disgust with long-festering problems. For example, recall notebandi. The objective was beyond reproach. But taking a decision on impulse of such a magnitude was bound to be painful.
Or, let me give you another example. An old acquaintance from Gujarat came with a wedding invitation. He brought along a two-piece suit with “Narendra Modi” woven into the fabric. And PM wore it when he met the visiting US President Barack Obama. Unthinkably, he opened himself to barbs about “suit-boot ki sarkar”. Moral: when a man in his position acts impulsively, there will be a price to pay. Even though eventually that suit was auctioned for over a crore of rupees and proceeds given to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund, his critics were unnecessarily given a chance to mock him.
Come to Rafale now. For more than a decade, the IAF was crying for the latest available fighter jets. But A.K. “No Decision” Antony would not decide. The prospective offsets partner, that public sector white elephant called, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, raised unreasonable demands, seeking nearly three-times more man-hours for the same job, which the French supplier of medium multi-role combat aircraft, Dassault Aviation, was willing to pay. Besides, in January 2014, that is, a few months ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Antony had categorically asserted a lack of funds for not buying the aircraft and more significantly, insisting that the cost was yet to be fixed, adding for good measure that this could be done by the next government.
And the next government was headed by Modi. Who, continuing from where he had left off in Gandhinagar, single-handedly undertook to grasp the nettle of the long-pending demand of the IAF. If Antony pleaded lack of funds in early 2014 to buy the Rafales, all 126 of them with 36 in flyaway condition, how could anyone expect Modi to rustle up funds to buy the same a few months later? So, he unilaterally, that is the operative word, on the eve of his visit to France, announced that he had clinched the deal, 36 Rafale in flyaway condition, the rest will follow as and when we have funds. This was a headline grab of the kind he has come to love since his graduation to New Delhi.
Little did he reckon that the rival bidders for the Indian order would try and sabotage the deal. Given the hundreds of crores that defence manufacturers budget for lobbyists and PR firms, it was not unusual that they got through to the leader of the Congress Party. A special know-how in this line of lucrative work distinguishes the Family, with the late Ottavio Quattrocchi having been its closest facilitator.
So, Modi clinched the Rafale deal, giving some of the laid-down drill involved in decision-making a go-by. And that is what he has reason to rue—just like that indiscreet moment when he wore to work that suit with his name emblazoned all over it. Rafale was his suit-boot moment number two. In either case, not a single paise of taxpayer was lost, but Modi needlessly suffered a loss of image thanks to his over-confidence, nay, his arrogance. He might have got away running Gujarat as a solo enterprise. Running India is different. Here you cannot dispense with collegial governance.
While at it, let us dispose this matter about Anil Ambani ending up as one of the offsets partners of Rafale. To begin with, Dassault negotiated with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Defence. However, the Mukesh side of Reliance eventually decided not to enter the defence sector, leaving the field clear for the hard-pressed younger brother. Rivals of Dassault had already tied up with two of the biggest names in the private sector, including the Tatas.
In sum, if Rafale is a scam, it is a scam of short-circuited defence procurement procedures. Nothing more. No money, cash or kind, has changed hands. But, then, in government, spending a penny without prior sanction is a big no-no. You earn adverse mention in your CR. Fortunately, Modi’s CR is such that the impatient breach of the defence procurement drill for fast-forwarding the supply of badly needed fighter jets for the IAF is unlikely to do any harm. Gandhi can cry himself hoarse but he will have few takers other than the BJP discards who have banded together to form Rahul’s own Margdarshak Mandal.
NATH V SCINDIA, -PILOT V GEHLOT
As far as the Congress goes, chief ministership in both Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan remains open—Chhattisgarh does not have a contender, so pitiable is its local leadership. In Rajasthan, by giving tickets to both Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot, the party has played safe, though Pilot does not strictly hail from the state, his late father Rajesh Pilot, was para-dropped from Ghaziabad in UP by Rajiv Gandhi. Financial fortunes of the Pilots saw a meteoric jump since their entry into politics. Gehlot enjoys better acceptability with the Congress rank and file and is bound to pip Pilot for the CM’s post should the party win, as seems likely.
In Madhya Pradesh, Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scinda are in contention. But Nath is bank-rolling far more candidates than Scindia. Widely known to be one of the more enterprising ministers in successive Congress governments at the Centre, Nath has no shortage of funds. Scindia’s trump card is his proximity to Rahul Gandhi. However, what might tilt the scales in favour of Nath is former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh, who is viscerally hostile to Scindia. Intrigues within intrigues, that is Congress for you—not a no-nonsense Modi-Shah enterprise like the BJP.