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Welcome, Chaos

It is a nice sunny day in Mumbai. Not yet sultry. The March flowers have begun to wilt. We prepare for another dark-skinned summer. I gaze at my window. It's amazing -- the shade of green of the new leaves that sprout from the waking branches of the gulmohur that sways like a barely tipsy strumpet; the scarlet is still playing coy. There is a musk in the air. It arouses senses, all in the mind: bees busy among the mango blossoms, pungent heady smells; wave after wave of damp lethargy, stolen time, heat, sweat, animal stretches and mosquito nets. I coarsely rub my face -- away, dust-tongued sins! And stare at my pc.... The Hanami screensaver has stirred: cherry blossoms, lush limp languid, licentious in their descent. There is no escape...

But escape, I must. And what can be a writer's nepenthe, if not the chiselling of words? I am, indeed, fortunate: I need not dwell on vices of the soul; I am bound to a bleaker master yet. He stifles what strains to flee and fetters what begs to remain. There is no what can be; there is only what is, drier than the dry, repugnant to the extreme: My lord, my liege, Sir Politics... Stop!! Wrong mode! Shift gears... back up... advance... and awayyyyy:

Hah! Takes another ghaati to satisfy a ghaatan: Arvind Lavakare's revealed, 'And to think that Sonia Gandhi and Jayalalitha now seem to be banking on yet another affidavit sworn by the same man who's apparently so fond of fantasising, that the Maharashtrian name he bears was itself an escape from his original one: Vishnu Kumar Sharma, son of Yagnadatta Sharma of Kanpur.' I tell you, that "Bhagwat" had had me flummoxed. A Thackeray, a Pawar, a Gadgil, a Godse -- I understand. But Vishnu Bhagwat, yuck! Sweet relief... Which, BTW, is not an aspersion on the ilk of Sharmas, but just that this parochialist felt tweely red in the face.

There are charges and counter-charges flying between George Fernandes and Vishnu Bhagwat. About the leaking of classified military information, deliberate defiance of civilian authority, national security risk, harbouring of terrorists, etc, etc. I mention the mud-slinging cursorily because, after collecting a ream of cuttings on L'affaire Bhagwat, I junked it all. The more I'd pondered over it, the more I became convinced that it was not a matter of justice, but that of national security. Even if the defence minister were Mulayam Singh or Sharad Pawar, my reaction would have been exactly the same: Sensitive defence arrangements should not be put under the public microscope.

So then you'll scream, "Bofors!" Good try, but... be patient and absorb it again: The Howitzer contract involved an estimated $ 250 million grease-money doled out by AB Bofors. This is how it went: On March 12, 1986, the negotiating committee recommends the issuance of a letter of intent to Bofors -- despite two contending parties (Bofors and France's Sofma), offering concessions and competitive bids. On the *same* day, the joint secretary prepares *and* forwards a note for the approval of ministers of state for defence Sukh Ram and Arun Singh, finance minister V P Singh, and prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. The very next day, VP signs the LoI. Just two days later, Rajiv announces the decision. On March 24, the contract is signed. March 31 had been the deadline for AE Services/Quattrochhi to receive the commission...

On April 16, 1987, the Swedish state radio blew the lid off the bribes. On June 4, the Swedish National Audit Bureau quoted Bofors as saying that winding-up charges of Rs 30 crores to Rs 50 crores were paid... India's former ambassador to Sweden Mr B M Oza later said, "The deal swung in favour of Bofors after Ottavio Quattrocchi came into the picture around October 1985. He met Bofors officials in Delhi and his contacts with the company were strengthened when Martin Ardbo spent 55 days in New Delhi in early 1986 around which time the contract was finalised... I saw Rajiv Gandhi metamorphose from Mr Clean to Mr Cover-Up in a matter of ten days. The level of desperation in the PMO in the week after April 16th was a terrible give-away."

Point is, service officers are not involved in the purchase of arms. They only evaluate the tenders and make known their preferences -- from a technical point of view. With them, profiteering involves foreign travel and small beans for making *suggestions*. The final selection and price negotiation are outside their purview. Bofors was a case of rank ministerial venality -- a coterie of corrupt politicians drawing upon an equally corrupt bureaucracy to do the corrupt, clandestine needful. In such a case, the Press and public are the only checks.

The Bhagwat affair is entirely different. It is about a service officer -- a man prone to throwing tantrums each time he felt ignored, whether in his own appointment or his appointing of others -- seeking to redefine the military-civilian relationship in a way he thinks fit.

Forget how just or unjust each of Bhagwat's claims may be -- even if they include very grave charges against a defence secretary, a vice-admiral and a defence minister. The crux is that Democracy cannot be maintained without a solid structure upholding it. And that structure is sustained by civilian authority over the military. The Constitution does not recognise military rule -- it does not allow the military to circumvent or defy elected representatives of the people. Democracy demands that the military establishment fall in line with the government. For if it doesn't, what happens is exactly what occurred in Pakistan during Atalji's bus ride: The three service chiefs had differences with Nawaz Sharief over the peace overtures towards India and turned down his "suggestion" of being present at the Wagah border to welcome the PM. They said it would be difficult to salute Mr Vajpayee since he's the leader of an "enemy country". Apparently, Sharif was furious, but could not persuade them to reconsider.

I have a question for those pacifists who have always actively pushed the Gujral doctrine. I'd like to ask these hitherto military-hostile and now, suddenly, admiral-promoting thugs: how does the aforementioned case, in terms of a service chief's defying civilian authority, differ from Bhagwat's...? Do they endorse the decision of Pakistan's service chiefs...? Or do they feel that the military men exceeded their authority with ne'er a thought to peace, progress, blah blah? Do they believe Mian Sharief was belittled? Do they feel that a policy was jeopardised by the armed forces?

Actually, it would be splendid if the Shroud did become PM. She wouldn't be able to get away with plastered smiles before diving into a car. She would have to answer the evil reporter who, you can bet, would ask for her divine thoughts on Pakistan's service chiefs' defying Sharief to insult India. Would she say they were within their rights? Like she believes Bhagwat is?

Why do governments in Pakistan and Bangladesh get ejected by the military? It happens so regularly that one would think it's the disgruntled populace that puts the armed forces up to it. Problem is, the roots of democracy in those countries are wobbly -- the generals rule the roost, they garner power, they challenge civilian rule. In India, democracy has -- so far -- been vibrant. But, should Bhagwat succeed in his designs, it will set such a precedent that India could well be unrecognisable a few years hence. Every stepped-over officer would take advantage of the vulturine Opposition to weaken civilian supremacy that much more. In no time: welcome, Chaos...

I simply REFUSE to dwell on a single charge made by Bhagwat. He has no bloody business to hurl challenges at the government! What's all this about General Malik being given an extension through a special dispensation? How dare he make insinuations against the chief of army staff just to get his own bread buttered! I don't get it: Isn't there a single maay ka laal who can put Bhagwat behind bars? This, this, "person" is a one-man foundations-destroying machine!

No, no, no, I hold the Congress entirely responsible for this sordid fiasco. If you remember, on February 22, a day after the bus thinggie, this garibi-hatao-ing, Dalit-upholding party had declared its opposition to President's rule in Bihar. February 22 was also the day when Bhagwat held a media conference to allege that the defence minister was in league with arms dealers, patronised the LTTE, had subverted the chain of command in the armed forces, undermined the civil-military relationship and destroyed the discipline in the services. Two unrelated parties, er... mucking the government over; a double whammy, so to speak. What a coinkidink.

I admit, each time I heard or read Jairam Ramesh, I felt less ill-disposed towards the Congress (he's so all there, I just want to take a spoon and eat him up). But since last week -- Forget It (the party, I mean). And all thanks to Vir Sanghvi who delivered to us Natwar Singh's remark to Strobe Talbot: "Mr Talbot, don't you think you are making a mistake by dealing secretly with a government that is living on daily wages." I was aghast! This is an Indian parliamentarian talking to an American diplomat about the Government of India!

And what's wrong about diplomatic silence...? May I know how the Congress negotiated the infamous surrender at Tashkent or Shimla? In town-hall meetings? Secondly, the BJP-led coalition is the legitimate, democratically elected government, which, only a few weeks ago, had proved its majority in the House. When any politician tries to sabotage the GoI's diplomatic activities for his petty, partisan purposes, there's only one word for the slimeball: Traitor. And, trying to run a parallel foreign policy is: Treason. Why isn't Natwar Singh in fetters?!

Now -- in April -- Georgekaka, after all that pussyfooting, finally sees that he'd been "soft" in acting against Bhagwat. Well, hell's bells! Swapan Dasgupta had worked that out in January: "Bhagwat had proceeded on the assumption that the government was too fragile and inept to risk a confrontation with Naval HQ... That Bhagwat's understanding was not inherently flawed was borne out by the fact that it took the government nearly four months to react to his obstreperousness... It is no exaggeration to suggest that Bhagwat would either have climbed down or met the civilian authority halfway had the government's image been more resolute... He had forced a confrontation with the weak VP Singh government in 1990, inveigled his way out of it when P V Narasimha Rao became prime minister and turned it to advantage when the United Front took over."

Hmm... know what I think? I think we columnists know it all better. That's it -- we must appropriate governance. My appointment of portfolios:

Arvind Lavakare -- Home (leverage: personal files on scumbags)
Pritish Nandy -- Defence (after Thackeray's, India's is easy-peasy)
Arun Shourie -- Education and Text Books
Vir Sanghvi -- External Affairs (smooth, smooth, smooth...)
M J Akbar -- Jyoti Basu's Welfare
Jairam Ramesh -- Desserts (it's *my* list, OK?)
Swapan Dasgupta -- Chippendales (expertise: de-thonging Manmohan Singh)
Kanchan Gupta -- NCM (National Commission on Mahmood)
Rajeev Srinivasan -- China Department, Ministry of Missile Deployment
Dilip D'Souza -- Tribal Welfare and Public Toilets
Amberish K Diwanji -- Ministry of Tolerance & Melodrama
Saisuresh Sivaswamy -- Sports (yeh mallu maange more)
Prem Panicker -- (Untraceable since after Sai got Sports)
Ganesh Nadar -- Justice (slams it to everybody equally)
Varsha Bhosle -- Ministry of Vulgarity & Pamphleteering
Harsha Bhogle -- (Accidentally blown up by Islamists who misread his name-plate)

Varsha Bhosle