#dnaEdit: Breaking silence

Ex-Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai’s categorical assertion that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was aware of the 2G spectrum scam as it unfolded changes everything. Of course, the letters exchanged between former telecom minister A Raja and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in the run-up to the scam are public knowledge by now. Singh’s famed financial integrity and coalition compulsions, his ignorance of Raja’s motives, and the policy imperative of increasing tele-density while keeping tariffs low have repeatedly been brandished in his defence to exculpate him for the huge presumptive loss to the exchequer. But with Rai, a former constitutional functionary, pointing out that Singh squandered repeated opportunities to stop the scam, the question of whether Singh’s actions amounts to criminal misconduct by a public servant punishable under Section 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act cannot be shirked any longer. 

It is unfortunate that Singh, the architect of the 1991 economic reforms, who achieved much in a long and glittering career in public service, fell short at the pinnacle of his glory: when he was chosen to be a Prime Minister without political power. Despite this shortcoming, his government won an impressive second term in 2009, only for the dirt brushed under the carpet during UPA-I to emerge from out of government files through a series of audit reports. Since early 2010, CAG reports on the allocation of 2G spectrum, coal blocks and S-Band spectrum, Commonwealth Games irregularities, and the suspicious purchase of 68 jets by Air India that landed it in a debt trap, revealed that Singh, as Prime Minister, had little control over his cabinet colleagues. The Raja-Manmohan letters in the 2G case clearly show Manmohan’s discomfort on the telecom minister’s unilateral actions, but the consequences of his failure to refer the matter to the Cabinet for a collective decision are yet to die down.

The once-robust telecom industry has never really recovered in the aftermath of the scam. Both the telecom ministry and industry have bungled along the way. Though the 3G spectrum auction was a success, it soon became evident that most companies had overbid. Amid allegations of cartelisation by old players, the new companies who entered the market through the flawed first-come first-served process adopted by Raja never really won public confidence. The Supreme Court’s cancellation of the 122 “Raja” licences, the retrospective taxation demand on Vodafone, the under-par bidding for 2G spectrum in subsequent rounds, and the hint of a scam in the 4G spectrum auction have roiled the sector further. The government’s defence of Raja, with Kapil Sibal deriding the CAG report, even coining the words “zero loss” and “notional loss” for the 2G scam did not help either.

The 2G spectrum and the coal block allocation scams irreversibly turned the tide of public opinion against Singh’s government. Its political fallout was the emphatic general election results of 2014. Neither the Group of Ministers mechanism in 2G allocation nor the Screening Committee comprising bureaucrats allotting coal blocks could stop these scams. What Vinod Rai, in his book, has alluded to is the breakdown of individual and collective responsibility in a weak government. In contrast, the Modi government is proceeding with the most powerful PMO in history. Reports of ministers and bureaucrats awaiting directions from the PMO before getting into the act suggest a level of distrust and paucity of talent. While another mala fide of 2G scam-proportions may not happen soon or again, this new style of functioning does not translate into  democratic or flawless decision-making either.