Chandigarh, Saturday, July 25, 1998
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This above all | Chandigarh, Saturday, July 25, 1998 |
    
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Bofors
buster: Chitra Subramaniam IF it had not been for this gutsy Tamilian girl based in Geneva, the Bofors case would have long ago been swept under the carpet of oblivion. From the time of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi down to the present, successive governments and investigative agencies have actively connived at deliberately delaying or fouling legal procedures to protect the guilty from being brought to book after 10 years since the story was first put out by Swedish Radio that some Indians had taken kickbacks on the contract with Bofors for the supply of Howitzer guns, to this day we don’t know who these people were. Many names came up — Hindujas, Win Chaddha, Quatrocchi, and even that of Rajiv Gandhi. The Swedish and the Swiss Governments were willing to furnish necessary documents to identify the guilty; Indian investigating agencies, acting under the orders of our Prime Ministers, were reluctant to get the go from them. But for Chitra Subramaniam, Bofors files would have been collecting dust in the archives of the CBI (or disappeared for ever). Chitra persisted in her investigations, unearthed documents in European countries to throw light on this murky deal. For some years she lived in fear of violence: she and her maid servants received phone calls threatening to kidnap her children and she had to seek protection from the Swiss police. Her bank account was secretely fed by an unknown party to fabricate evidence of her receiving illicit money from unknown sources. Undeterred, she continued to ferret out more information and report her findings to Indian newspapers. The Hindu and, when The Hindu editor got cold feet, to The Indian Express. By any reckoning Chitra is a most unusual girl. She is tall, lanky and swarthy. She has a chip on her shoulders for not drawing admiring gazes from men. She insists in portraying herself as a plane Jane: in fact she is both physically and mentally attractive. Perhaps the only thing she has got right about herself is a Vayadi Tamil for loud-mouth. Chitra was born in Sindri (Bihar) in 1958. Her father was a technocrat specialising in production of fertilisers. Her mother, a singer and a polyglot, who spoke eight languages. The couple had spent a few years in Germany. After stint in Sindri, the family moved to Orissa and then to Delhi in 1975. Chitra went to Lady Sri Ram College and then Indian Institute of Mass Communication. She was taken on by India Today. She admits that till then she had not written any thing except love letters to herself because no one wrote them to her. A full scholarship took her to Standford University in California. There she met Giancarlo Duello, aSwiss national of Italian origin. He followed her back to India, was approved by the family and married Chitra in New Delhi in July, 1983. The couple settled down in Geneva. Part of her dowry she took with her was being a stringer for The Hindu. The Bofors story broke in 1987 — a few months after she had got to Geneva. She latched on to it with the tenacity of a bull-terrier. "I am obsessed with corruption because money corruption leads to mental and moral corruption," she wrote. She tracked down the leads in Switzerland, Sweden and elsewhere. Her revelations embarrassed successive governments in India. Rajiv Gandhi lied in Parliament: Narasimha Rao tried his best to scotch the whole affair with his ally, the notorious Chandraswamy and did his best to implicate the honest V.P.Singh in a false case. He entrusted Foreign Minister Solanki to hand over a letter to a Swiss attorney to go slow over Bofors: Solanki lied saying he knew nothing about the contents of the letter. Then there were supporters of Rajiv Gandhi — the all-time defender Mani Shankar Aiyar and P. Chidambram, who wanted Bofors inquiry to be closed as a tribute to Rajiv Gandhi. How does one woman fight all the kind of skullduggery? Chitra Subramaniam vent her spleen in a small book India For Sale in which she revealed all she knew. And much more: How Indian delegates to International congresses spend most of their time shopping, sight-seeing, wining and dining. They end up making fools of themselves and their country when serious discussions take place. The outstanding example was Pandit Sukh Ram who led the Indian delegation to a telecommunication conference in Geneva. And had nothing to say. Chitra gets her blood pressure up when anything goes wrong in India. Indians have learnt to take corrupt politicians in their stride; they re-elect them to Parliament, make them Chief Ministers, Cabinet Ministers and Governors of states. Chitra Subramaniam spits on their faces in print. Corruption unlimited A corrupt society produces a lot of literature on corruption. India is, and has always been, a corrupt nation. So its output of books on the subject is impressive. Amongst the names of authors that readily come to mind is A.D. Gorwala and A.G. Poorani. And recently that of S.S. Gill of Prasar Bharati. They dealt with different facets of this sordid give-n-take between bribe-giver and bribe-taker. But there is more to corruption than simple passing of money from favour-seekers to favour-givers. Nepotism is another form of corruption which is old as history, expected and accepted in our society. There is hardly a minister or politician in India who has not elevated his offspring. To this sin fell victims, otherwise upright men, like Pratap Singh Kairon, Ram Krishna Hegde, Narasimha Rao, Buta Singh and Pandit Sukh Ram. There is smuggling of gold, silver, narcotics, and arms. There is racketeering in land deals. You can hire goondas to bump off landlords or tenants. There are organised gangs like those of Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon and ArunGawli who will oblige you by killing anyone who stands in your way in exchange of suparee which may run into several lakhs. Often these gangsters go for each other, kill their adversaries in crowded streets. The mafias hold large parts of Mumbai in their vicious grip, have men of their choice elected to state assemblies and made ministers and even Chief Ministers. I have read most books on corruption published in India but found nothing more absorbing and as well written as Foul Play: Chronicles of Corruption — 1947-97 (Banyan Books) edited by Shiv Vishvanathan and Harsh Sethi. The next time you hear the slogan Mera Bharat Mahaan, shout back Aur Saara Mulk be-imaan. Falling prices Two men were arguing over the achievements of the BJP Government in its first 100 days of rule. "Prices have gone up steeply. Can you name one commodity whose price has fallen? "Yes, I can," retorted the other, "the rupee". * * * * Santa and Banta had fallen
out and had stopped speaking to each other. One day they
met on the road and Santa greeted Banta very
sarcastically: "Sat Sri Akal, Sardar Sahib. Long
time, no see." Apology
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