Sharma and his official secrets

While housing minister Ram Jethmalani's scheme to open up his ministry's files for public scrutiny has died a natural death following the op...

While housing minister Ram Jethmalani8217;s scheme to open up his ministry8217;s files for public scrutiny has died a natural death following the opposition of top bureaucrats, it8217;s perhaps time to revisit it, especially in the light of the current investigations being carried out into Dawood Ibrahim8217;s alleged frontman and extortionist, Romesh Sharma. For, while public attention is now sharply focussed on the alleged Reliance-Sharma connection, following the well-publicised raids on the Reliance group, little is known of the extent of Sharma8217;s connections with Delhi8217;s top police setup, top bureaucrats, or politicians.

While several names of those who have helped Sharma, or have availed of his generous hospitality, have come out in the newspapers, it doesn8217;t appear if much investigation has gone into whether, and how often, Sharma was bribing top police officials and bureaucrats to protect him. Certainly, no raids, well-publicised or otherwise, have been carried out on those officials who helped him get a passportfor Dawood8217;s mother, or on those officials in the police and the Home Ministry who, over the years, sat tight on the complaints of various individuals who complained of extortion by Sharma.

And given the nature of most such investigations in the past, it is foolish to expect that any major police official/bureaucrat/politician will be prosecuted. What8217;s likely, at best, is that we8217;ll be told of how there was a systemic failure, and that a departmental inquiry will be held 8212; after that, the process of burial of reports and findings will begin in real earnest.

But how does the Official Secrets Act, and Jethmalani8217;s Freedom of Information Act, come in? The answer8217;s obvious: if we had free access to information, it would have been possible for anyone in the public to requisition all the files pertaining to, say the passport for Ameena Bee, and to see what exactly had been recommended by the bureaucrats and politicians handling the matter. And, in the case of the extortion deals such as the helicopter or landones, it would be easy to find out why the cases were not pursued, or which top official, for example, ensured that the helicopter was hastily transferred to Sharma8217;s name. The list is endless.

Talk to the bureaucrats opposing any change in the Official Secrets Act, and they8217;ll tell you that while it may serve some useful purpose in the Sharma case, the overall ramifications are dangerous. If it is known what stand a bureaucrat has taken on a particular file, no one will give his opinions freely.

In the Sharma case, for example, they will argue, if it is known that an officer in the Home Ministry has recommended that Dhirubhai Ambani8217;s residence be raided, then Dhirubhai will get him transferred to the Andamans. Similarly, if it is known that a top official in the ministry of railways has opposed the railways paying high penalties to the Hinduja power plant in Vizag, then the Hindujas will use their clout to penalise the officer. It is, according to this line of argument, annonymity which allows abureaucrat to give his opinion in a frank and fearless fashion.

Given the clout that top industrial groups, or anyone with large enough amounts of money, have with most governments, it is possible to empathise with bureaucrats who want the garb of anonymity anyone with a bit of time can come up with a list of scores of inconvenient bureaucrats who have been transferred arbitrarily. Such transfers, however, do not take place because of the system being transparent. They take place only because the system is not transparent, and that is what enables politicians or top bureaucrats to transfer the inconvenient ones, without anyone getting to know why they were transferred in the first place.

Story continues below this ad

In any case, with most official and top secret8217; documents freely available through surreptitious channels, of course, most bureaucrats will admit, industrialists generally know of what recommendations have been made against them or in their favour, and by whom.

Once, on the other hand, the files are thrown open,such arbitrary behaviour gets severely curtailed. So, if a joint secretary makes a recommendation against giving a huge concession to someone, and he is soon transferred, or gets a very poor annual performance review that year, it8217;s easy for anyone to understand why that has happened. It would then, in all likelihood, be possible to prevent him from being victimised.

It8217;s not as if bureaucrats are so stupid that they don8217;t realise the advantages of a genuinely open system, and the protection it offers them. The problem arises from the fact that it also opens them up to genuine scrutiny instead of just review by their peers or should that be cronies?. Consequently, it reduces their element of discretion8217; in granting favours to the select few. Granting a huge concession to an industrial house is one thing, but to let it be known that it was you, and not necessarily your minister, is quite another.

The flip side, of course, is that it becomes somewhat embarrassing to claim credit for trying to get afavour done, if it can be discovered later from the open files that you never tried at all!Opening up of files it must be clarified, this pertains to files on decisions already taken, not those being taken also opens bureaucrats and politicians to scrutiny for project delays and other such measures which result in waste of public funds. The Official Secrets Act, to borrow a phrase from the famous BBC tele-serial Yes Minister, is to protect officials, not secrets.