No Galls:

March 27/2012: General V K Singh, the Indian Army Chief, is once again in the news for all wrong reasons. He thinks he dropped a bombshell by making the disclosure that he was approached by a lobbyist with the offer of a hefty 14 crore bribe in return for awarding a contract to a particular supplier of vehicles to the Army. In the event, the General, as he claims now, showed that middleman the door and kept the Defence Minister informed.

That was almost two years ago, a few months after he took over charge, and nobody had any inkling of it until the General himself decided to go public about the matter day before yesterday. While the disclosure is a huge embarrassment to the Government in general and the Defence Ministry in particular, it could be safely surmised that a wounded Singh, who thinks he still has some sting left in the tail, is out to tarnish the image of the nation and the reputation of whatever little is left of the Army. Singh is nursing a grievance after the Supreme Court refused to give him reprieve and the Government subsequently turned down his plea for accepting 1951 as his year of birth.

This change would have endowed the General continuance at the top Army post for one more year. Ever since the age row went against him, the General has been more than vocal to express his views on the armed forces, including selection and promotion of officers. He has just two more months to go. Probably he wants to make full use of it to hurl innuendoes and wash all the dirty linen before he demits office May 31. Probably for this the wily man used intelligence equipment, purchased to eavesdrop on enemy communications in J&K and the North East, in New Delhi to clandestinely listen in to conversations of Defence ministry officials dealing with his service files.While the muckraking may have led to some publicity, the General should be hauled over the coals for his indiscretion to go public with this bribe-being-offered startling revelation, against all accepted service rules and protocol.

He should be asked to explain the provocation to pull out a skeleton from the cupboard, almost two years after the bribe offer was made. Strangely, instead of handing over the middleman to the Police,  all that the General did was to keep the Defence Minister informed of the unsavoury development. In the process, by pushing the bribery charge under the carpet, Singh and the Defence Minister A K Antony are equally guilty of abetting a criminal. Both of them, therefore, owe an explanation to the nation. To be even more just, both should be arrested forthwith for this crime. Now, the funny bit is that the retired unnamed official who had supposedly offered the bribe to the General has surfaced. Not only that, Lt. Gen Tejinder

Singh has slapped a defamation suit against the present Army Chief.There is no past example of the top man in the Indian Army ever taking on the Government. Gen. Singh has created history of the worst sort by taking his case to the apex court with this brief, notwithstanding the fact that the armed forces have their own internal mechanism to address issues, howsoever contentious or complex they might be. To jump the gun or throw decorum to the winds is something that is not expected of a person holding such a high office. It sets a dangerous precedent as it can implant a potentially adverse influence on the morale of the forces.Singh may hold a grudge against the Government and his revelation at this juncture is in all probability targeted to undermine and show the establishment in poor light.

A man walking into the Army Chief’s chamber and tempting him with a bribe offer in return for a favour can only be viewed vis-à-vis how porous and, like any tahsil office, how easily accessible the Army top brass has become. Once considered the citadel of discipline and valour, people like Singh and Antony have completely demolished its credibility. We have always prided ourselves that unlike our neighbors, Pakistan, Burma, Maldives or even China, the Indian Army is a self disciplined and motivated force that focuses on the security of the nation alone. It is very understandable if a Ratan Tata, licking deep wounds after the exposure of his character through the Niira Radia tapes, suddenly goes public and claims he was asked for a bribe from a Union Civil Aviation minister to allow him launch a Tata airlines.

Ratan did this after nearly a decade of the incident. His claim to being a virgin in this field did not hold water with the people of India. Probably for the first time ever, a nation that eats Tata salt, watches tv through Tata Sky, builds homes with Tata steel, travels in Tata cars, carries goods through Tata trucks and so on and so forth heaved a sigh of relief that they were spared the torture of travelling in a Tata airlines flight to doomsday. That was okay for the Tatas. Not for the Indian Army headed by persons of the miniscule stature of Gen VK Singh. These men in uniform deserve no mercy from this nation. Not only should Singh be stripped of all his medals (God alone knows why they were conferred on him in the first place) but he should be demoted before retirement and a Court Martial process should be immediately launched against him. Sadly, a punier man like Antony, adorning a prime post like the Defence Minister of India, not only falters and faints during March Pasts but has no galls to stand up for this country.