Commentary/ T V R Shenoy

On His Majesty's Service

There are some German names that even we in India recognise -- words such as 'Mercedes', and 'BMW', and (unfortunately!) 'Marx'. I wish one more would be added to that list -- 'Nuremberg'.

It is a small town in Germany, the merest pygmy beside a Berlin, a Hamburg, or a Munich. Nonetheless, for several months in 1945 Nuremberg was the centre of the world's attention. Because it was there that an international tribunal called the Nazi warlords to answer for their crimes.

Of course, by then Adolf Hitler himself was dead. But 21 of his principal henchmen were still alive to stand trial. Three were released, seven got various terms of imprisonment, and 11 were sentenced to death.

The Nuremberg trials have earned a place in the law books for one thing. It firmly established the principle that every man is responsible for his own actions. It is not acceptable to say, "I committed the crime because boss told me to do so!"

That principle hasn't been challenged for over 50 years. Until now.

Narasimha Rao's lawyer, R K Anand, offered just that defence to get his client off the hook in the St Kitts forgery. Rao claimed he had done nothing more than obey orders coming from the prime minister's office. Amazingly, Justice Ajit Bharihoke accepted this plea, and dismissed the charges against Rao.

Let us not get bogged down in discussing the legal aspects of this judgment. (Did anyone, for instance, take evidence from R K Dhawan, the man who allegedly passed on the orders to Rao?) Let us just take a look at the ethics.

Because Rao's success seems to have set off a chain of copycats. And it isn't just politicians who are doing so, but bureaucrats too. Coming down from generalities to the specifics, I refer to Revenue Secretary N K Singh.

The revenue secretary is in the eye of a storm for his controversial decisions in the Ashok Jain case. He is being accused of putting undue pressure on the Enforcement Directorate to bend the rules for the Times of India proprietor.

By now, I am sure everybody knows of the decision to unleash the Intelligence Bureau upon the Enforcement Directorate for so-called 'leaks'. With denials and counter-denials flying around, N K Singh's role is rather murky. But there is another instance where the revenue secretary's involvement is quite clear.

On the night of January 4, 1997, he woke up to a call from then prime minister H D Deve Gowda. It seemed that Ashok Jain was at the airport and Enforcement Directorate officers had stopped him from flying abroad.

Deve Gowda wanted to know if the revenue secretary could make life easier for the media baron. N K Singh did just that. And Ashok Jain went off, supposedly for medical treatment.

Neither Deve Gowda nor N K Singh deny all this happened. But the former prime minister adds that the civil servant kept him in the dark about one crucial point.

The ED wasn't bothering Ashok Jain on a whim. It was stopping him because a raid on his house in Delhi had thrown up several questions that needed to be answered. Singh knew this, but kept quiet.

To date, Singh hasn't explained why he didn't ask Deve Gowda to reconsider. He hasn't explained why he, an experienced bureaucrat, didn't ask for orders in writing. A mere verbal expression of a prime minister's desire was enough for the revenue secretary to bend rules.

"The prime minister ordered me to authenticate a forgery," says Narasimha Rao, and that is enough to get him off. "The prime minister wanted me to see if I could help Ashok Jain," says Singh, and that seems to be good enough for everybody.

Isn't anybody in India concerned with responsibility? Public servants, whether ministers or bureaucrats, are responsible to the public whose taxes pay their salaries. They have a responsibility to uphold the law without fear or favour.

Neither Rao nor Singh acted like responsible men, capable of exercising their own judgement. They acted like mindless robots, programmed to obey their master's voice. And the worst part is that nobody thinks it out of place.

What happens if all the accused in the Bofors case blame Rajiv Gandhi? Do they all go off free? If that seems ridiculous, take another look at Rao's defence!

"The master said so!" wasn't an acceptable excuse for the world in 1945. Why should we accept it in India in 1997?

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