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Q And His Cronies

Tavleen Singh Posted online: Sun Apr 29 2012, 02:15 hrs

The ruckus made about Bofors by the BJP in Parliament last week was no more than a lot of noise signifying nothing. The Bharatiya Janata Partys senior leaders know well that the time to have done something was when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was prime minister and they know better than anyone else why nothing was done. This makes the BJP as responsible for Ottavio Quattrocchi not being brought to justice as Congress. It is too late now to get into the squalid reasons why the Vajpayee government did no more than make token attempts to bring Q back to India and send him to rot in Tihar. But, Bofors remains important for another reason and this is that it provides us with the finest example of crony capitalism as it existed in the days of the licence raj. Those leftists and Anna Hazare followers who insist that crony capitalism is a product of economic liberalisation need to pay careful attention to what happened in Bofors. If they do, and if for a brief moment they take off their ideological blinkers, they will see that crony capitalism was the only kind we had in those socialist years. If there is still crony capitalism possible today, it is mostly because of ministers with too many discretionary powers like A Raja and his inexplicable powers to distribute Spectrum as he liked. And, because government contracts with foreign companies for such things as guns, fighter aircraft and passenger aeroplanes remain shrouded in veils of secrecy. In earlier times when socialism was our proudly stated economic creed, the possibilities for crony capitalism were limitless. The economy was so tightly controlled by politicians and high officials that only they could decide which businessmen needed their help to become millionaires and billionaires. In this process, they themselves often became very, very rich and often this was through money paid into foreign bank accounts. This made it possible for nearly all our bureaucrats and political leaders to send their children abroad for higher studies. Crony capitalism thrives in countries in which the state controls the economy. It benefits mostly state players which is why our political parties and high officials continue to long wistfully for the license raj. In the Sonia-Manmohan government, this longing manifests itself in such things as the retrospective tax, the attempt to bind down medical students going abroad for their studies and the attempt to perpetuate the licence raj through the misguided Right to Education Act (RTE). Sadly this nostalgia for the licence raj is not confined to Congress. The BJP has played an active role in stopping desperately needed economic reforms and has done nothing to stop such retrograde measures as the plan to tax people on money they made decades earlier. If the BJP had pronounced loudly and clearly that this is such a bad tax that they will reverse it if they come to power, the foreign investors who are fleeing our shores in droves may pause to think twice. When it comes to crony capitalism, there is the same sort of ambiguity in evidence because all our politicians know that it is only through crony capitalism that politicians and bureaucrats can become rich. If the businesses run by the families of our senior political leaders were investigated, it should be quite easy to establish that they are no more than corporate fronts set up to conceal dirty money. But, who is going to investigate? The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) behaved disgracefully in the Bofors matter. Sten Lindstrom made it clear in his interview with Chitra

Subramaniam last week that the CBI sleuths who went to Sweden were totally unserious. Who were they by the way? Is it not possible to find out the names of the officials who went to Sweden, at the cost of Indian taxpayers, and did not even meet the men who were investigating the gun deal? It may be too late to catch the man who was Q in Martin Ardbos diary but it may not be too late to punish the faceless officials who made it possible for him to not just flee India, like a thief in the night, but helped him get away with his stolen money and live happily ever after. Ah, those socialist times when it was so easy for a foreigner with friends in high places to switch from setting up urea factories (under the aegis of the Indian government) to selling heavy artillery to the Indian army. Q managed this with no questions being asked. And, has continued to never need to explain why Bofors bribed him in the first place. Crony capitalism has mercifully been curbed since the state loosened its controls on the economy but ironically those who claim to despise crony capitalism most also want state controls to return. Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ Tavleen_Singh