Catch the culprits, keep the choppers -Governance Now

Catch the culprits, keep the choppers

Cancelling the deal for the $750 million order because of kickbacks is not the right approach

Bikram Vohra | February 25, 2013

The trouble with Indian military shopping deals is that when things go wrong they throw the baby out with the bathwater. Cancelling the deal for the $750 million order for a dozen helicopters from Italian defence group Finmeccanica, because of kickbacks is not the answer. Catch the culprits, keep the choppers.

Why make the equipment guilty? They did exactly the same thing with the Bofors 155 mm shoot and scoot artillery gun, confusing crime with capability and lost millions in taking it out by blocking spare parts, ammunition and maintenance data on the weapon system eclipsed the purchase of an excellent artillery asset.

Totally crazy approach and once more replicated by this shrill display of outrage. Seeing as how three of the helicopters have already been received just get the other nine and then go for the investigation. The Italians have put the scope on the CEO but they haven’t shut the factory down.

So in their infinite if questionable wisdom, India has frozen payments for the other nine AgustaWestland helicopters pending an inquiry after Italian police arrested the head of Finmeccanica, Giuseppe Orsi, in connection with the case. Good, arrest the nasty little fellows but keep the helicopters coming.

Clearly, election year calls for distancing self from scandal and spotting scapegoats to feed the media frenzy.

As for the attack on former four-star chief of the Indian Air Force Tyagi who is being investigated for his role in this dog’s breakfast of a scandal if it is true that his three nephews, Huey, Dewey and Lewy actually fronted for the sale not only is his defence going to be wafer thing but he is going to be a sitting duck. You cannot have family greasing the path and hope to get away with it. That is shooting yourself in the foot. No, no, no, that is plain stupid. And one can only hope he is, like Caesar's wife, above reproach, otherwise it is a damn shame for an air chief to be so indicted.

The fun part is the shrill piety that everyone sprays when we know corruption is part of almost every transaction and we have ministers in India who were sacked years ago sitting in huge mansions and no one says anything about them. We have MPs who become rich in one tenure and no one ever calls them on it. Against all that graft, this is probably financial tiddlywinks but then, there is no humour in this uniform.

Comments

Other News

Climate change is stealing sleep

Climate change has at least doubled the temperature-related sleep loss across 1,338 major cities worldwide over the past five decades, highlighting an emerging but often overlooked public health consequence of rising global temperatures. A new study by Climate Central estimates that between 2020 and

Cabinet approves Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme

The union cabinet chaired by PM Narendra Modi has approved the Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme (MPMS) with a budgetary outlay of Rs 62,500 crore. It aims to further scale up the production, deepen domestic value addition, strengthen supply chain resilience, enhance global competitiveness. It

Building infrastructure is only half the job

Recent stories of stolen railway wires, disappearing communication towers and missing public infrastructure are often treated as bizarre law-and-order failures of India. Yet they raise a more fundamental question. Why does the State often discover the disappearance of a public asset only after it has alrea

New Delhi’s Indo-Pacific strategy enters a new phase

India appears to be investing fresh dynamism in its Indo-Pacific strategy. At the time when the US, under president Donald Trump, has adopted a conciliatory approach towards China and has changed the name of America’s Indo-Pacific Command to just Pacific Command, India has quietly moved towards con

CAG flags major fiscal lapses in Maharashtra

Maharashtra`s fiscal management has come under sharp scrutiny after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, in its State Finances Audit Report for 2024-25, flagged significant budgetary inefficiencies, accounting irregularities, understatement of key fiscal indicators and widespread governanc

The health sector research we are not doing

Some neglect is loud. This kind is quiet. It sits in research never commissioned, data never collected, questions never asked. In South Asia, that quiet has let the region’s worst health problems stay understudied, underfunded, and out of sight of those who could act.