Fill it, shut it, don146;t forget it

But this scam is not about a doting father handing out a lollipop to his son. This is not old-fashioned nepotism or favouritism. This is special because of the institutionalised manner in which not only have rules and regulations been sidestepped but even a landmark, interventionist Supreme Court judgement has been subverted so as to make the whole thing look legitimate.

This scam is not about defying or violating regulations. It is about picking up the state8217;s largesse and giving it away to your own, all done in a manner that makes it so pat, so legitimate. This scam is not so much about breaking the law as it is about making the law take your own course.

Look at this another way. You are a middle-class parent whose one ambition is to get your son or daughter into an IIT, an IIM or in the IAS. You have faith in the system. Whatever may have rotted or atrophied in our society, at least the admission process for these institutions, the Union Public Service Commission, you believe, is still clean. So if your child has the merit he/she will get a fair deal. Then your child clears the written examination, goes for the interview. And when the result comes out, somebody tells you that a majority of those selected are the offspring of the leading lights of the ruling party of the day, doesn8217;t matter whether it is Congress or the BJP. How bitter does that make you feel? How cheated?

You wouldn8217;t feel so bad if a Devi Lal merely handed over the baton to his son. Or if a politician merely ensured that his favourite nephew got a bunch of government contracts. This much, you expect, and accept. But when you are cheated like this through what, you were led to believe, was a straightforward, meritocratic system, and at so massive a scale, you ought to kick somebody in the shins. What chance have you then got if you didn8217;t have an uncle planted strategically in the establishment?

We still haven8217;t heard the entire range of the government8217;s defence on this. But even what we have heard so far is significant. Ram Naik says, for example, that he set up the Dealer Selection Boards DSBs and left it to them. Why then the secrecy in making the short lists public? Or now placing the full list of the allottees in Parliament? He says, further, that once he had put this process under members of the judiciary whom, he says, he hand-picked, he had no reason to believe there could be any irregularity.

How come, then, that not a single member of this most exalted profession protested, complained, blew the whistle? We believe some did complain to a parliamentary panel of being pressured but didn8217;t protest loud enough to make it count.

These were all members of the one profession that still places itself above media or parliamentary scrutiny, one that threatens to send us to jail for contempt even if we raise a question of fact on its performance or conduct. If any the judges on these DSBs wrote even a note of dissent don8217;t we, and the parliament, have a right to know? On the evidence of what The Indian Express reporters around the country have found out, if they still insist that the process was clean, fair, above-board, it raises questions that are dangerous to ask under our laws.

This is also a story of why the political system is so loathe to reform the crucial areas of business and economy it still controls. One of the most creative 8212; and clinching 8212; arguments lately put forward to block the privatisation of the oil PSUs is that you cannot hand over your fuel supply network to the private sector when a war might break out any time. As if you expect your army8217;s tanks to stop by at your petrol pumps to refill diesel!

This scam also tells you one more, and perhaps a more genuine, reason why there was such opposition to privatisation. Control over Air-India or Indian Airlines only 8216;8216;empowers8217;8217; you to give your nephew a free ticket or an upgrade. If you run ITDC and its hotels you can give yourself, or somebody you like, a free stay, a free meal. What is all that compared to the gift of a whole petrol pump? What better way to pump-prime the household economy of your own! And why give up this power to dole out so much largesse so brazenly, so legitimately?

IN our newsroom, the first tip-off on this scam came when we were busy working on another: a series on the most prominent defaulters in our business and industry, the top-of-the-pops on the NPA non-performing assets list. Parliament was going to be voting on a new law to enable the banks and institutions to recover bad debts and this seemed the story of the week in terms of public interest because, after all, it is your and my money as taxpayers and small-savers that our institutions lend to the industry. The petrol pump tip-off was an interesting distraction and when we spotted a a few prominent names and ran the story in The Sunday Express 8216;BJP Blank Cheque on Naik8217;s Oil Pool Account8217;, July 21.

But then one of our reporters turned up with the entire list of allottees, even a cursory look told us this was a much bigger scam. Too many second names seemed familiar, there were too many women allottees and the possibility that there was a sudden explosion in female entrepreneurship in our countryside was way lower than that these were fronts 8212; wives, daughters-in-law, daughters of somebody who mattered higher up somewhere.

That started what must be a most remarkably exhaustive exercise in investigative journalism even by the standards of this newspaper. Teams of reporters at all our publishing centres and bureaus were given pages from the list pertaining to that region and for two weeks now they8217;ve been going over them, one by one, checking out names, surnames, then suspicions, and if necessary, travelling out to distant places to confirm these.

But it is likely that we will still miss out on many others. Because it is difficult to believe how too many people could have succeeded in a scandalous mess like this only on merit.

So while you watch the fun in Parliament and elsewhere in days to come, remember that this scam is also different in that it will chase you wherever you go. There8217;s no one face to it, it8217;s not confined to a ministry, a region, a politician. It8217;s spread all over the country, nobody will be able to hide it. So the next time you stop or drive past a petrol pump in the remotest parts of the country, you will wonder who the person behind the counter is. Who8217;s his uncle, who8217;s his father, what8217;s their politics? Is he Congress, is he BJP?

What a contrast from the picture-postcard in our mind of a petrol pump by the side of a lonely highway: one person8217;s enterprise for everybody8217;s good.

Respond to: sgexpressindia.com