Most damaging of all, the report revealed a paper trail that led to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself, suggesting he was uncomfortable with the process but had not acted decisively to make it more transparent.
Singh, not usually one to betray his emotions, told Rai to mind his own business, accused him of overstepping his mandate and complained that the media and the CAG — two of the government’s biggest critics — get away with “murder” these days.
Congress party spokesman Digvijay Singh went further, accusing Rai of harboring political ambitions.
Rai shrugs off most of the criticism as a “reflex” defense mechanism from the government, one that just shows he is doing his job.
“It didn’t disappoint me, certainly not,” he said. “If we call them names, they have every right to call us names. The only thing different now is the stridency of the personal attack, which attributes motives and quite often political aspirations.”
Rai is not scared of creating headlines, complaining at the World Economic Forum last month about the appalling “brazenness” with which government decisions were taken.
His style is not to everyone’s taste.
Former solicitor general Harish Salve accuses the CAG of “blurring the lines between exposing corruption and revisiting government policy,” something he says that must remain the prerogative of the government. Independent economists have questioned the assumptions on which the CAG has based his estimates of losses to the government.
But to criticize the CAG on these grounds is to miss the broader point, say commentators like Pratab Bhanu Mehta, president of the Center for Policy Research.
“In the medium to long run these [reports] will make the government stronger, not weaker, because it will be forced to ask the right questions,” he wrote in the Indian Express after the coal report caused a furor in Parliament in August. “You can contest the CAG’s numbers. But the reports, even if they do not say it, leave us in no doubt the government is a rotting ancient regime.”
Rai’s six-year term ends in May, but he said he feels confident that pressure from the media and civil society will prevent the government appointing a more pliable figure in his place.
“These strident attacks have evoked a very automatic defense mechanism in the department,” he said. “So it’s not a case of taking on one guy, it is a question of taking on 63,000 guys.”
Under the unforgiving gaze of this new transparency, India’s bureaucracy and government have sometimes seemed paralyzed, with even senior officers reluctant to take responsibility or make decisions. Rai dismissed this as “an alibi for non-performance,” and said the government would learn to make decisions that withstand public scrutiny.
“It’s quite a watershed,” he said. “I am very upbeat, very bullish on this. This was a churning which was necessary in society, and it has come.“
Loading...
Comments