Scam after scam

The piling up of scams has been compounded by the total mismanagement of the economy by the Manmohan Singh government.

The UPA government, inarguably the most scandal-prone government in the history of Independent India, seems to operate on the wily premise that every few weeks, either deliberately or otherwise, it must come up with a new scam in order to make people forget the previous ones. That way, it will make the Opposition and the media constantly shift their focus from one target to the other so that no scamster will ever be nailed.

The CommonWealth Games scam, the 2G’s horrendous scandal or the Adarsh Housing scam are all a few years old and most of the alleged culprits are out on bail and strutting around as if nothing has happened. Has anyone heard of any progress in these cases in the last few months as influential criminals and the government machinery have been working in tandem to exploit the slowness of the judicial process?

The UPA government has also tried to take care of its ‘friends’ such as Mayawati who has almost escaped the Taj Corridor dragnet and Lalu Prasad nearly torpedoed the judgment in the 14-year-old fodder scam with little bit of help from the government advocates. The disproportionate assets case against Mulayam Singh Yadav keeps bobbing up now and then, but it will never reach finality as long as the Samajwadi Party leader remains the ruling party’s faithful crony who will not allow the government to fall.

Former railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal’s recruitment scam has been given a neat burial despite clear cut evidence of bribery involving his nephew, while Robert Vadra’s DLF land scam has received ‘official’ clean chit, despite feisty bureaucrat Ashok Khemka trying to rake it up now and then. Vadra, who initially took a dig at ‘mango people’ for interfering in his business deals, has perhaps been asked to keep his mouth shut to stay away from more trouble.

Petroleum minister Veerappa Moily’s generosity in offering windfall profit to Mukhesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries with quadrupling of gas prices has been rubber-stamped by the Union cabinet, demonstrating the Ambani clout in the UPA government. There is also evidence of active official connivance in stalling a CAG probe into Reliance’s not-above-board gas exploration activities in the KG Basin.

The latest scam to hit the Manmohan Singh government is the case of missing files in the ‘coalgate scam.’ The CBI has been investigating the coalgate scam under the direct supervision of the Supreme Court following reports that over 140 mining licences were handed over arbitrarily to individuals and companies without sticking to norms and causing a loss to the exchequer in excess of Rs1.86 lakh crore. Crooked industrialists, including a gutka manufacturer, were among the beneficiaries of the government largesse, but the government is hell-bent on scuttling the investigation. As the prime minister himself presided over the coal ministry between 2006 and 2009 and the PMO, whether with the knowledge of the prime minister or not, has been accused of brushing aside the recommendations for auctioning the coal mines, the case has attracted a lot of attention.

Impossible to digest

BJP leader Arun Jaitley’s observation that the files have not ‘disappeared’ as much as made to disappear, has been corroborated by a former Cabinet secretary who says that in the government the file movement is recorded at every stage and it can easily be established as to where they went missing. The government’s claim that as many as 257 files are missing is impossible to digest.

Union coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal’s explanation that a committee has been constituted to look into the missing files is a clear attempt to hide the facts and derail the investigation. Missing files almost amounts to destruction of evidence and somehow protect the culprits. The apex court could very well ask the CBI to initiate criminal proceedings against the officials under whose jurisdiction the files went ‘missing’ so that they may be forced to spill the beans.

The piling up of scams has been compounded by the total mismanagement of the economy. The falling rupee and skyrocketing inflation as reflected in the onion and other prices have caused irreparable damage to the reputation of Dr Manmohan Singh and his economic ‘think tank’ comprising finance minister P Chidambaram and deputy chairman of the planning commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia. They seem to have no clue on how to arrest the rupee’s fall, but Chidambaram has the gumption to suggest that there is ‘excessive and unwarranted pessimism’ about the state of the economy.

CBI director Ranjit Sinha has opened another can of worms by pointing out that the non performing assets of the public sector banks has risen alarmingly from Rs 59,924 crore to Rs 1,17,262 crore in the last two years alone and that the bank frauds involving amounts of Rs 50 crore and above of several corporates have increased by 10 times. The banks treat the NPAs as ‘confidential’, but it is high time the high-profile scamsters are named, shamed and punished. As these frauds have occurred under the supervision of Chidambaram as finance minister, he has much to answer for.

Besides, on the political front, the government’s mishandling of the Telangana issue has not only caused political turmoil in Andhra Pradesh, and consequent stalling of Parliament, but stoked fissiparous tendencies in other parts of the country, particularly Gorkhaland, Vidarbha and the North-East. The irony is that the Congress, which had hoped to reap political dividend out of Telangana’s creation, may end up losing more votes because of the mess it will leave behind. Is there any silver-lining at all to this all-round gloom?