Satyendra Kumar Dubey could have chosen to keep quiet, like the majority of young professionals of this country. He could have continued doing his job as a deputy general manager in the Centre’s National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and shut his eyes to the variegated ways in which a prestigious project — the Golden Quadrilateral, the prime minister’s pet project, no less — was being compromised by numerous criminal acts, including the fudging of Detail Project Reports, the forging of documents on procurements, the extension of tacit support by NHAI authorities to big contractors and the like. Dubey opted to do the right thing by alerting the PMO to these developments because he believed the project was of “unparalleled importance to the nation”. He paid with his life for having done so. The shoddy fashion in which the PMO chose to handle an issue that clearly endangered the life of the man who made the revelations — an aspect that Dubey had himself foreseen and highlighted in his letter to the authorities — the apathetic manner in which the PMO has subsequently chosen to respond to it, and the cluelessness displayed by Union Minister of Surface Transport B.C. Khanduri about the consequences, together constitute a damning indictment of a system that has neither the stomach for self-correction, nor the mechanisms with which to achieve it. The right to confidentiality of those in positions of vulnerability, or who play the role of whistle blowers, is taken extremely seriously in many democracies the world over. For instance, under completely different circumstances, the British government found itself in deep trouble for allegedly “outing” the name of Iraq weapons expert David Kelly as the source of the BBC report on the so-called sexing up of the government’s Iraq dossier. Dubey’s tragic death must bring back into focus the need for a law specifically designed to protect such individuals, along the lines that the Constitution Review Committee had recommended. If the country is serious about launching a frontal attack on wrongdoing at every level, it will have to seriously think through how it plans to achieve it. Empowering and protecting individuals in sensitive posts to stand up against the malfeasance that permeates their working environment is a crucial aspect of this project. We have adopted the words “Satyameva Jayate” as a guiding principle. But if truth has to triumph, we must first ensure that it does not kill.
