HVK Archives: If govt were a company, the chairman would be in jail
If govt were a company, the chairman would be in jail - Sunday Observer
Jay Dubashi
()
6-12 October 1996
Title : If Gol were a company, the chairman would
be in jail
Author : Jay Dubashi
Publication : Sunday Observer
Date : October 6-12, 1996
Imagine a company with a sales turn-over of Rs 1500 crore
- nearly as big as Mahindra & Mahindra or Ashok Leyland.
The company doesn't make any profits, but keeps borrowing
money, nearly Rs 600 crore a year. It has a huge debt,
about Rs 8000 crore, but that doesn't seem to bother its
directors.
For the last five years, the company, chairman has been
involved in one scam after another, and those who know
such things say the amount involved must be something
like Rs 500 crore by now.
The company chairman and his relations make money on
purchases and also finance dubious companies here and
abroad. And their partners range from shabby little
swamis to suited and booted men from Istanbul, whom
nobody in the company has ever seen.
You think such a company cannot exist and is a figment of
my imagination? The company is quite well known. It is
called the Government of India. Just multiply the above
figures by one hundred and you have a good summary of
what the Government of India has been up to in the last
five years.
If the Government of India were a company, all its direc-
tors would be in jail by now. The chairman would be
behind bars, the finance director would be in prison and
the purchase director would be grinding wheat, as they
say in Hindi, in a dark cell somewhere outside Ghaziabad.
But nothing of the sort has happened. The directors have
been turned out by voters, but not because of seams. They
were turned out for other reasons, not for financial
irregularities.
The chairman was saved in the nick of time but other
directors are still out since there is nothing against
them.
I have a simple question here. For the last five years.
there has been one seam after another in Delhi and else-
where, all of them connected with central finances.
First, there was a stock seam, involving nearly Rs 10,000
crore. Then a PSU seam, of the same amount. We have had
sugar seam, urea seam, you name it, we have turned it
into a scam. Total amount involved is placed at around
Rs 50,000 crore, which is half the Centre's revenue
budget.
The question I should like to ask is: what has the
finance minister been doing all these years? He is virtu-
ally the nation's treasurer, the guardian of its finance
and allied resources. He is like the finance director of
a company.
Would a company keep its finance director if there were
such seams year after year, and the man said he knew
nothing about them?
As far as I see, there can be three scenarios, One:
Manmohan Singh simply did not know what was happening in
his own ministry. Two: He did know, but preferred to do
nothing. Three: He knew and did try to do something, but
failed.
Manmohan Singh cannot say he did not know, for if a
finance minister did not know that thieves were looting
the country right and left, what was -he doing there?
If the finance minister of a country does not know or
pretends not to know that over Rs 50,000 crore have been
looted since he became a minister, he doesn't deserve to
be called finance minister.
If he knew and did nothing, that is even worse. He
becomes, at least in theory, a party to the whole stink-
ing business of seams and thus a suspect. And if he knew
and tried to do something and failed, why did he not
resign?
As taxpayers, we should know what part the finance min-
ister played during all those years when the country was
being looted. There is, after all, such a thing as
accountability, for if the buck does not stop at the
finance minister's desk, where does it stop?
And why have finance ministers at all if they are not
held responsible for what has happened?
There are, of course, all these court cases, but they are
not enough. We should have a public inquiry commission
presided over by a Supreme Court judge to Inquire into
the functioning or non-functioning of the finance minis-
try between 1991 and 1996, and how the ministry - and the
minister - Permitted such a loot of public money, your
money and mine.
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