Credibility of India's military at stake

By Nirmal Ghosh

NEW DELHI: With External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh taking over additional charge of the Defense Ministry following the resignation of George Fernandes, the Indian military has begun an inquiry involving officers in the clandestine videotapes which have severely damaged the administration's credibility.

The mood at army headquarters in the capital this week is sombre.

The three-man panel will hold the inquiry in camera, with no media present, and the court will, among other things, view the video films.

The officer corps is well aware that the investigation is an essential step in shoring up the credibility and integrity of the armed forces.

The officers under investigation are Maj. Gen. P.S.K. Choudhary, M.S. Ahluwalia and Satnam Singh, Brig. Iqbal Singh and Lt. Col. Anil Sehgal.

According to the video, Gen. Choudhary accepted 100,000 rupees (S$3,600) and a gold chain.

For his part, Gen. Ahluwalia asked for a bottle of Blue Label Scotch whisky, saying Black Label was not good enough to clear a weapons sale.

The investigation is currently just an inquiry. The court's mandate is to recommend whether or not there is a prima facie case for court martial proceedings. The military is proceeding along strict legal lines.

The scandal is the most severe yet to hit the officer corps, in a military that has been held in high regard for its professionalism and its independence from politics.

A serving army officer told The Straits Times: "Everyone knows there is some level of corruption in the ordnance branches."

"But with Gen. Choudhary, this is the first time that a fighting corps man has been involved. The officers are very hurt at this."

"The ease with which these people could be approached by dealers has come as a shock."

The impact is greater because this is the first time that military officers from any branch of the armed forces have been involved in questionable defense deals.

Corruption in defense purchasing is nothing new. The HDW submarine deal and the Bofors gun deal, both in the 1980s, changed the face of India's political establishment.

But the people involved were politicians, a breed generally looked upon with wariness and distaste by military officers schooled in tradition, discipline and nationalism.

Military officers have generally remained outside the circle of sleaze in defense deals, because the process of selection of hardware is complex and there are many checks and balances.

For instance, a field gun will be subjected to field trials in all kinds of conditions, from hot dry deserts and rain-soaked jungles to icy mountains.

Field commanders write trial reports which are seen by others in cities far away, and subjected to further study and inquiry by a slew of committees.

The potential for a single individual to skew decision making is, in theory, limited.

It is only when equipment reaches the narrow shortlist -- in which the difference in performance between competing hardware is marginal and all candidates essentially meet specified requirements -- that there is scope for manipulating the final deal.

Defense agents -- in other words, arms dealers -- were technically banned from the process in 1989.

Deals made since that date have been turned over to the corruption watchdog, the Central Vigilance Commission, for scrutiny.

Central Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal told journalists recently "procurement procedures have to be made more transparent since there is a lot of myth about national security and how negotiations are conducted on a need-to-know basis."

Former minister George Fernandes had sworn to eradicate middlemen from the corridors of the Defense Ministry.

But with the huge sums involved, middlemen by any name are a fact of life in the defense business, and the undercover operation by Tehelka.com exposed the vulnerability of the system.

The act of corruption, as viewed from the video, is almost casual, betraying a system in which sweeteners are used to smooth the path of a deal.

For the men of the fighting corps, credibility is at stake -- and not only in the eyes of the public. The respect of the junior officers and soldiers is crucial to the professional pride and efficiency of the military.

While the role of the armed forces has been stretched in India, as in several other Asian countries, by the political requirement of fighting armed insurgency movements, that has been the limit of political influence on the military.

The Tehelka expose has, for the first time, brought the reality of deal-fixing in the political and bureaucratic arena into the professional corps.

Analysts are worried that the taint will seep through the military, sapping morale.

Coincidentally, the annual meeting of the Asian News Network, of which The Straits Times is a part, was held last weekend in New Delhi along with a conference themed, The Role of the Military in Asia.

Opening the one-day conference, which was attended by several retired and serving members of the military's top brass, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee -- in the middle of his government's worst crisis yet -- said the military had to rise to the expectations of the public.

"The armed forces need to constantly raise their standards of probity, transparency and accountability," he said.

-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network