| With Arun Singh's resignation from the government, the premiership of Rajiv Gandhi dies morally, its executive effectiveness finished. From the day V. P. Singh resigned as defence minister and began his crusade, the prime minister vitally needed to draw in his defences, buttressing them with all the remaining worthies in his team; instead he goes and lops off his right arm.
The paralysis of thought that currently afflicts Delhi is frightening. Having expelled colleagues that earlier lent his government substance, to a correspondent's just request for comments, our worthy prime minister feigns nonchalant ignorance: "What expulsions?".... "Ah! those," and waves the disturbing thought languidly away, hand lathered in overwhelming Italian perfume. Surely, this cannot be inadvertent incompetence; it is congenital. The hapless Moopanar is asked to parrot out one evening: "V. P. Singh's resigna-tion, being conditional, has not been accepted." Just twenty four hours later he is "expelled" for anti-party activities. Which party? What activities?
At the time of writing, with publication almost ten days away, I have no confidence that events shall not overtake these comments. The current in-joke in Delhi is, "Who will unfurl the national flag at the Red Fort on 15 August?" And to think that elementary commonsense was all that was needed. A timely, effective and honest spiking of Bofors would have done it. Take but two aspects of this infamous deal.
On 16 April, Swedish Radio had announced in its broadcast that some payments had been made by Bofors to parties connected with India for the contract. Rightly enough, the defence ministry immediately requested the government to instruct our Mission in Sweden that the facts be established and Bofors be asked to clarify. Parliament was in session, Fairfax and HDW already haunted our government.
In response, Bofors on 22 April, made available to our Ambassador in Stockholm, a communication which in effect said that payments amounting to 2-3 per cent of the total contract value of $1.3 billion had been paid as some kind of winding up fees. This information was available to our prime minister the very next day. Despite this, consistently and perversely, he withheld it both from the Parliament and the nation. All through this murky episode our government was acting in three different unconnected strands: Our prime minister's office directly with its Swedish counterpart, our ministry of external affairs with the Swedish foreign office; our ministry of defence with Bofors — and all three were saying different things at the same time. Sweden, in any case, bored with all this needless furore about commissions, got the appropriate message: the Indian prime minister is stalling for time, he does not want the facts.
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