The Monika effect

There are several good reasons for revisiting 29-year-old Monika8217;s appointment to MTNL8217;s Board of Directors. Because, as the Sunda...

There are several good reasons for revisiting 29-year-old Monika8217;s appointment to MTNL8217;s Board of Directors. Because, as the Sunday Express pointed out, she has no other apparent credentials other than her political affiliations, while MTNL has a turnover of Rs 6,143 crore and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Because being a former member of the BJP8217;s youth wing and president of Delhi University Student8217;s Union, or being a 8216;bright, young girl8217; 8212; Communications Minister Pramod Mahajan8217;s assessment, not ours 8212; is not qualification enough for being in a position to influence the policy decisions of a navratna. Because such positions of influence are not the minister8217;s personal largesse, to be distributed at personal will or whim. By rule, independent directors are individuals from outside the 8216;system8217; 8212; corporate heads, labour leaders, technocrats 8212; who can enrich PSU decision-making and act as more independent safeguards of shareholders8217; interests. Clearly, Monika8217;s appointment is a scandal.

There is also a larger scandal. The running link between the scam in the allotment of petrol pumps and LPG agencies that this paper unravelled only recently, the arbitrary doling out of prime plots in the capital to friends and sympathisers also chronicled in this paper and Monika8217;s appointment as an independent director on the MTNL board. It is not merely that all involve the BJP 8212; though that is a damning indictment of the self-proclaimed party 8216;with a difference8217;. The BJP came to power promising a break from the corrupt past presided over by the Congress, and it is already beginning to look just as compromised, just as jaded, if not more. But the connection runs deeper than that. In all these instances of corruption, institutional norms have been smoothly hijacked by the party in government to benefit its own. Be it the distribution of petrol pumps to relatives, or the gifting of prime land to sympathetic organisations, or the parachuting of an inexperienced Monika into MTNL, the 8216;system8217; did not so much as whimper in protest.

There is a case for taking a new look at the norms and rules that govern the ways in which institutions are run, the checks and balances that are supposed to hold the ruling party8217;s hand, should it overreach its limits. But, first of all, we must retrieve our sense of shock that the system should have been rendered so pliant.