It's been a while since we were rocked by the Bofors scandal, involving Rajiv Gandhi. Eventually nothing came out of it, and the Bofors guns more than proved their worth in the Kargil conflict, silencing many critics.
However, it would be naive to believe even for a moment, that the Ministry of Defence is in charge of a very corrupt, very damaging, and incredibly expensive machine called the Indian Military. Ask any industry that supplies anything to the Indian Armed Forces and they will tell you how corrupt their dealings invariably are.
From little individual contractors who build websites, to those who manufacture mission critical components, everybody has a tale or two about paying kickbacks, and who ever questions the outflow of the Indian military?
It was distressing enough for me to see an Army officer siphon petrol from his official green Ambassador and fill up his Maruti van, and it doesn't help knowing it is pretty routine for military officers to be "entertained" by private manufacturing firms chasing their decisions for lucrative contracts. It doesn't help knowing first hand that some very good looking Russian women are patriotic enough to show up to canvass for Russian contracts.
"A total number of 22 MIG Aircraft of the Indian Air Force has crashed from April 01, 2006 till date. There were three casualties in these crashes," Defence Minister Mr. A.K. Antony said today. (http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20090708/808/tnl-air-force-to-have-230-sukhoi-30-mki.html)
It has been a while since Indian manufacturers have filled in for Russian spares for the MIGs. It won't be long before the Sukhois go this route, all in the name of reducing foreign exchange burden. How many Sukhois have to crash and burn, and how many Indians will have to die before we get to the bottom of the problem?
As a nation, we should be ashamed that the bulletproof vests handed out to Mumbai policemen were found not to be bulletproof when the bullets fired by Pakistani terrorists actually hit them. Apparently, the police have even lost that file, indeed with the same impunity that comes with a mass acceptance of corruption and a morass of moral ineptitude that have come to define who we are as Indians.
We set such low standards that we don't really care that a MIG that should be thundering at forty five thousand feet has hit the ground, in all probability due to a technical snag, caused by nothing short of a corrupt supplier. The investigations will drag to a point where it can never be conclusively proved in a court of law that this is the case. With 22 MIGs crashing in three years, we really should be paying this a lot of attention.
But, we won't. We're probably uncaring enough in our apathy to worry about that one sincere pilot whose dream it was to fly a fighter plane in his country's uniform. We're not going to do anything about that policeman who gave his life in vain, for he took a chance upon his trust in his country to have given him a genuinely bulletproof vest.
That is the part that hurts, our inability to trust anything Indian. We fail all too easily. We are spineless and we are dirty in our collective Karma. That is what is depressing about living in this goddamn country. Everything is corruptible. Everything is suspect. Everything is defective. Most of all, we punish those amongst us who care to be uncompromising, and we beat them into submission.
What could possibly go wrong if we changed?
No comments:
Post a Comment