Clearly the Joint Parliamentary Committee has not settled the controversy regarding the alleged payoffs in the Bofors gun deal to the satisfaction of the general public, not to speak of the government’s critics. Indeed, even those who do not subscribe to the charge that it has done a whitewash would find it difficult to say that it has not been a bit too enthusiastic in clearing the government of any suspicion in the matter. The committee cannot sustain one of its principal findings in terms of its own report. For while it has, on the one hand, said that Bofors had refused to disclose the identities of the owners of the three front companies which had received payments from it in connection with the Indian deal on the plea of business confidentiality, the committee has, on the other, held that “there is no evidence to show that any part of the winding up costs was paid to any Indian, either resident in India or abroad”. The contradiction between the statement of the fact that Bofors had refused to provide the details and the inference that no Indian had been recipient of the “winding up costs” is obvious. Of course, no one gave the committee evidence implicating an Indian, resident in India or abroad, in the payoffs. But also no one gave it details about the three companies which alone could have enabled it to determine whether or not any Indian had in fact received some payments from Bofors. It is beyond our comprehension that the committee should have gone as far as it has. It should, in its own and the government’s interest, have contented itself with the statement that in the absence of cooperation by Bofors, it could not identify the recipients of the payoffs and determine whether or not some Indians were among them. We also find it difficult to understand why instead of demonstrating his anxiety and determination to get at the truth, the chairman, Mr Shankaranand, should have created the impression that he was working to a brief provided by the government. An element of desperation has been evident even in the manner the report has been presented to Parliament. Allin all, it has been a sorry affair when, in our view, there was no good reason why it should have been so.
Several issues have got tangled up. These should be separated even at this late stage in the interest of the country’s security. It should, for example, be beyond question that we needed a Bofors-type gun because Pakistan had secured such a weapon from the United States: our army would have been at grave disadvantage in the absence of a comparable gun. It should also be beyond dispute that the acquisition of such a gun had become a matter of urgency for the same reason of the US supply to Pakistan. Similarly, it cannot be seriously questioned that the Bofors howitzer suited India’s requirements best. The Joint Parliamentary Committee has done excellent work in establishing this fact so much so that it would not be illegitimate to suspect the motives of those who would still run down the gun as such. This should help settle another issue. Which is that it would not have been in India’s interest to have cancelled the agreement with Bofors last year as the Union government was persistently asked to do. Indeed, it is a matter of concern that the country should have been exposed to a vast and concerted disinformation campaign on the quality and capability of the gun last year and that this campaign should have come to centre on the demand for the cancellation of the deal. While it is unlikely that the government can trace its true source or sources, it may not be too wide off the mark to suspect that some external agency close to Pakistan might have been at work. Remember that events in Afghanistan involving Pakistan deeply were moving towards a climax – virtual defeat of the Soviet forces – and that it was useful from Islamabad’s point of view to immobilize India. Then there is the question of the price. Again the JPC is on good ground in arguing that the government bargained hard and well. It managed to reduce substantially the price the previous government had virtually agreed to pay and it secured not only credit terms Sweden had never before extended to any other country but also a guarantee that the supplies could be stopped only in the wholly unlikely event of the UN security council holding India guilty of aggression. Remember again that the US stopped military supplies to us in 1965 when we were engaged in a defensive war with Pakistan and the UN security council had not named us aggressors.
As for the alleged payoffs, it is common knowledge that middlemen are involved in arms deals all over the world. More pertinently, it is common knowledge that they had been involved in all arms deals India had negotiated with non-communist sources before the present Prime Minister decided to ask Bofors for their elimination in the controversial gun deal. Mr Rajiv Gandhi could not have been so innocent as not to know that Bofors would have long ago entered into agreements with some such middlemen. In fact, he could not have asked for their elimination if he was not aware of their existence in the first place. If he was experienced enough or sufficiently well advised, he would have known that Bofors could not just abrogate binding agreements because he was asking them to do so. Apparently this point did not occur to him: and apparently Bofors did not tell him that they would have to pay substantial sums in order to wind up the existing agreements. Or else, he would not have been taken so completely by surprise when reports of the alleged kickbacks broke into the open in April last year. Be that as it may, Mr Gandhi’s action, however, admits of only two interpretations as far as we can see. First, that he genuinely wanted a deal without payoffs to middlemen and through them to influential Indians. Second, he wanted to corner the payoffs for himself, or someone close to him, for whatever purpose – political or personal. One can opt for either explanation, depending on one’s general view of the Prime Minister. But it makes little sense to argue, as many of his critics have argued for a whole year, that a nominee of his would have been a partner in a front company (or companies) whom he was in effect depriving of a substantial part of what they must have regarded as their due. The commission on a Rs. 1,700-crore deal would have amounted to over Rs 150 crores and just not around Rs 60 crores which is the sum the three companies are alleged to have been paid as “winding up costs”. By this reckoning, all investigations in relation to the front companies have been exercises in futility. By a similar logic, however, it is inconceivable that Bofors could have entered first into binding contracts and then into “winding up” agreements with entities which did not involve influential Indians at least indirectly. Where then do we go from here? Clearly the controversy will survive the JPCs report. The critics will not take a pause and ask whether behind the touching concern some foreigners have shown for the cause of public morality in our country lie other less touching interests.
