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Journalism of Courage
The battle of Kargil is being won by our boys. And by the Bofors gun. We almost did not have the gun. Had the fainthearts been listened to 12 years ago, we would probably have remained saddled with inferior artillery. It is a sobering reflection for those who sneered when the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, fated to fall over the gun, warned his Minister of State for Defence, his school-friend Arun Singh, not to be tempted into a quot;knee-jerkquot; reaction.
There were many dimensions to the Bofors controversy. The quality of the gun was one of them. In the cascade of allegations made at the time, two stood out in st-ark profile. Gen Mayadas, as Director General, Weapons and Equipment DG-WE, had recommended the Austrian gun. Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Sundarji, had himself preferred the French gun till just months before the final decision. Was it political pressure, that tilted the final choice to Bofors? The Statesman carried a story, virtually co-terminus with the breaking of the story, that the Bofors gunhad been used in Operation Brasstacks and proved a flop. Few listened when L.K. Jha clarified in the Rajya Sabha that the gun had not even been used in the operation. This newspaper, then under a different management and a different editor now a distinguished BJP MP, became synonymous with the row over Bofors. In the Lok Sabha, V. Sobhanadreeswara Rao of the TDP, initiating the debate on the very day Swedish Radio broadcast its story, claimed that quot;during the trial period some components of the Bofors gun are said to have been broken and flown off.quot; He quoted a report in The Economic Times of nearly a year earlier which had said that quot;while the staff requirement for the gun was to fixing a range of 30 km, the gun supplied by Bofors of Sweden could strike only after 15 km in the beginning. Later the guns fired up to only 21 kmquot;. In the Rajya Sabha, P. Upendra, then of the TDP, brought up a January 1987 report of the School of Artillery, Deolali, pointing to defects in quot;sights, electricity cylinders,electric firing circuits, control cables, ammunition cranes, engine oil filters.quot; Jaswant Singh, at his ponderous best, weighed in thus: quot;the essence of the present concern is not the technical merits or demerits of a medium artillery weapon system, but they are also not extraneous to our anxiety.quot;
After weighing the evidence, the JPC concluded: quot;It is most unfortunate that uninformed criticism has been levelled to insinuate that the Bofors field artillery system was picked up on extraneous considerations. The Committee find there is no force in such allegations and that the best gun has been selected for the Indian armyquot;. Every day our TV screens show that the best gun was indeed selected for the Indian army.
Had, however, the quot;panicquot; and quot;stomach crampsquot; which Rajiv Gandhi warned against led to the cancellation of the Bofors contract, we would either have beenwithout a sophisticated 155 mm at all or landed, at much higher cost, with the French or Austrian alternative. Yet, this is precisely what was mindlessly demanded in the motion moved by Jaswant Singh, our present External Affairs Minister, in the Rajya Sabha on August 10, 1987: quot;an immediate cancellation of the contractquot; if Bofors fails to make quot;full disclosures of all the facts.quot; For five of the 10 years that have passed since Rajiv Gandhi ceased to be PM, those who were then howling for the cancellation of the contract have been in office in one permutation or combination or the other. Neither Jaswant Singh nor any of the others has succeeded in securing quot;full disclosure of all the factsquot; from Bofors AB. Fortunately, the empty threat of quot;immediate cancellationquot; of the contract has not been put into effect. But the induction of the gun into our artillery system has been needlessly delayed; indigenous production of the howitzer put off, perhaps forever; and there is the threat of ammunition running out if thebattle goes on much longer. Not one non-Congress government, of the five we have seen in the past five years, has got any more information out of Bofors than was made available by them in 1987. Nor has any responded to Rajiv Gandhi8217;s demand that all the papers relating to Bofors be tabled in the House. Indeed, none of the documents from Switzerland is in the public realm. Both Win Chadha and Quattrocchi are absconding. And the BJP has been particularly tardy in securing the last set of documents 8211; the Lotus account 8211; which might well show up the involvement of an industrial house with particularly close links to the party that fights elections on the lotus symbol and that has been showered with particular favours by the Vajpayee government.
Immediately after the Swedish National Audit Bureau confirmed unexplained payments by Bofors into pseudonymous Swiss bank accounts, Rajiv Gandhi, in his note of June 15, 1987, to Arun Singh tabled in Parliament by V.P. Singh as PM, asked the following questions inregard to cancelling the Bofors contract: quot;Has he evaluated the actual position vis-a-vis security? Has he evaluated the financial loss of a cancellation? Has he evaluated the degree of breach of contract by Bofors, if any? Has he evaluated the consequences for all future defence purchases if we cancel a contract unilaterally? Has he evaluated how rival manufacturers will behave in future?quot;
For asking these questions, and sticking to Bofors, Rajiv Gandhi lost his government. But our jawans in Kargil got their Bofors guns. And today it is those guns 8211; and those jawans 8211; who are winning us the war against the enemy.
Aiyar is a Congress party official but these views are his own
