Central Bureau of Intimidation

If anything is likely to provoke an ‘‘unrestrained’’ reaction from me it is advice of this kind. This is a family newspaper so I have to be restrained in my use of language or I would really tell the CBI what it can do with its advice.

I shall say only this: you do not scare me. But, you could be scaring your employers. Dr Manmohan Singh may have his flaws but even his enemies (if there are any) would not accuse him of being the sort of Prime Minister who approves of censorship. As for the Inner Voice, she could be seriously irritated with government agencies trying to intimidate humble columnists like me because she remembers the Emergency and remembers that press censorship was one of the things that worked badly for her mother-in-law.

The late Mrs Gandhi did not like journalists, at least not Indian journalists. She had a puzzling weakness for foreign journalists and confused them, in her years out of power, by telephoning them to complain about her travails. But, Indian journalists were usually treated like the scum some people believe they are. Only those who kowtowed, grovelled and gushed were given access or information, the rest of us had a troubled relationship with Mrs G that became a total estrangement when she imposed censorship. It happens that my career in journalism began a month before the Emergency at The Statesman which, other than this newspaper, was the only English daily that fought censorship. The effect on me personally is that I have since had disdain for people in authority who try to intimidate me into writing the things they think I should be writing.

But, because the CBI is the Government’s most important investigative agency, I feel obliged to deal with the charge that my article was ‘‘unrestrained, unjustified and irrelevant’’. Excuse me? Rs 32,000 crore were paid in bribes to government officials last year, so that makes official corruption relevant for those of us who are not officials. Since the CBI is so proud of its honest and dedicated efforts though, would it like to tell us how many of those thousands of crores they recovered in their ‘‘nationwide’’ raids last year?

Giving advice is a business of give and take, so it’s my turn to tell the CBI what I think it should be doing to make its work more relevant and effective. Instead of ‘‘raids’’, would it draw up a list of all officials employed in the Government’s various economic policing departments and subject them to the ‘‘routine scrutiny’’ we taxpayers are subjected to by the Income-Tax Department? Many of those thousands of missing crores might be discovered this way.

When this exercise is complete, they should begin a scrutiny of the assets that MPs have declared for themselves and their wives. If they study with particular care the assets of the wives and relatives of our elected representatives, they might be astounded at how many more crores of unexplained assets are found. These are simple, obvious ideas that anyone seriously interested in reducing official corruption should be able to think up, so why is it a ‘‘dedicated, honest’’ bunch of investigators like the CBI has not yet thought of them? When I wrote that so offended the CBI that ‘‘corruption exists because government wants it to’’, this is what I meant.

Meanwhile, here is another bit of free advice. Instead of intimidating hacks and conducting nationwide raids that reveal only small change, the CBI could show us what a tiger it is by going ahead with at least one of the ideas suggested by me. Let us start with a routine scrutiny of assets owned by the Government’s economic policemen. India could be less corrupt in a year.

write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com