The Supreme Court’s scathing November 20 order passed against Ranjit Sinha, director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), while hearing an application filed by the Delhi-based Centre for Public Interest Litigation, directing Sinha to recuse himself and not “interfere in the 2G spectrum investigation and trial”, has confirmed the worst fears of the tax-paying public that the CBI, constituted in 1941 as an autonomous crime investigation bureau with national jurisdiction, has been debilitated with corruption and patronage.
It’s pertinent to note that the CBI, governed by the Union ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions, is not a mere glorified police station based in Delhi. According to Wikipedia, the bureau is housed in a Rs.186 crore, state-of-the-art 11-storey building in New Delhi, with a built-up area of 75,000 sq. ft and equipped with modern communications systems, an advanced record-maintenance system, storage spaces, and computerised access control. Mandatorily headed by a director-general of police or state police commissioner drawn from the Indian Police Service (IPS), it has its own training academy spread over 26 acres in Ghaziabad, Delhi NCR and 52 branches across the country. Unsurprisingly, with 6,590 personnel on its muster rolls, this elite crime investigation agency costs taxpayers more than a pretty penny with its annual expenditure estimated at Rs.243 crore.
Given the huge investment made annually by the public in the CBI, it’s a matter of wonder if not amazement, that Sinha who seems innocent of the most basic principles of crime investigation and sleuthing, has risen to the very top of this 6,590-strong agency. Only a complete duffer would invite suspects under investigation by CBI for wrangling telecom spectrum and coal mining licences to parley with him at his home in the night hours, a charge Sinha has admitted. That the head of the CBI is ignorant of elementary sleuthing and espionage norms raises disturbing doubts about the competence of agents and detectives in the lower reaches of the country’s premier crime investigation agency.
Little wonder the CBI’s investigations are so clumsy and ham-fisted, and it’s been a while since it has obtained any worthwhile convictions.
Vindictive network
If further evidence of the incompetence and ignorance, if not contempt, for the law of senior IPS officers is needed, it’s been recently provided by R.P. Sharma, a Bangalore-based ADGP (additional director general of police) of Indian Railways, and a service (ex-officio) member of the vintage Bangalore Club (estb.1868).
Under the rules of the club, members are obliged to paste a vehicular entry pass on the windshield of their motor cars to permit smooth entry into the club’s well-maintained and manicured premises. On November 4, Sharma’s car was stopped at the gate by the club’s security personnel as it didn’t display the mandatory entry pass. With typical arrogance, constables travelling with this exalted worthy belaboured the hapless security guard, prompting the club to suspend Sharma’s membership.
Curiously, ten days after the incident, the state excise department raided the club premises to investigate violations of the Excise Act. The worthies discovered that the club’s management has committed the grave crime of serving massively taxed liquor in several areas within the club instead of the bar, as per the terms of the licence issued to it. Threats of suspending the club’s liquor licence and/or imposing a Rs.2 crore penalty were reportedly made. Oddly, the babus of the state government’s excise department notorious for their itching palms, display little zeal for investigating or prosecuting thousands of liquor shops in the city functioning as informal bars.
Thus the country’s vindictive netas and babus network to throw the fine print of the copious terms and conditions of any licence issued by government at law-abiding citizens to force them to kowtow. It’s a durable, effective (and profitable) modus operandi.
Misjudged liberaliser
Contrite obituaries on the death in Mumbai on November 24 of Murli Deora, an individual of modest background who was elected mayor of Bombay and served as chief of the powerful Bombay Regional Congress Committee for 22 years during the tumultuous 1975-91 era, speak volumes about the excellent public relations and survival skills of this under-rated politician.
During my previous avatar as editor of India’s first two business magazines, your correspondent interviewed Deora quite a few times, and also met him on the cocktail circuit. But I was never able to pinpoint exactly what he did for his livelihood. Mystery on this issue prompted the intellectuals and jholawallahs who dominated the media and academia at the time, to unfairly label him a corrupt middleman, fixer and the like.
It was only much later that I realised Deora was in effect a pioneer investment and business consultant, a tribe which was legitimised only after the 1991 economic liberalisation and deregulation policy initiative of the Congress party. Yet the plain truth is that throughout his life and even when he was appointed minister of petroleum and natural gas in the Congress-led UPA-I government (2004-09), Deora played a major role in facilitating foreign and particularly American, investment into the forbiddingly government dominated Indian economy, to create millions of well-paid jobs.
Deora never denied his admiration for free India’s most successful business tycoon, the late Dhirubhai Ambani, and Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), the company Dhirubhai built from scratch into one of the world’s largest conglomerates. Deora believed in RIL because it had created well-paid employment for millions of citizens and also because the company was the country’s largest taxpayer. Even on the issue of supporting RIL for demanding a higher price for gas extracted from offshore deep-sea oilfields, Deora’s stand was vindicated by the Rangarajan Committee’s report (2013) which recommended a higher unit price than espoused by him. A much misjudged liberaliser who deserved better than he got.