Time to go, Mr Sreedharan’, July 20 is hugely damaging to our country. In every government organisation, we have given audit a deference that is overwhelming. This was possibly originally done to make sure that everyone behaved themselves, and corruption was minimised.
In practice, as we can see, corruption has blosssomed and we are among the world’s worst countries in this regard. Audit has a single objective, and that is to find fault. Whether the objectives of a project are acheived or not is irrelevant.
All that matters is that the correct procedures should have been followed. Timely completion is neither here not there. The quantum of cost over-runs also matters less than whether or not the prescribed procedures were followed — in fact, a higher cost arrived at by following proceedures is preferable to a lower cost achieved by negotiation.
Sunil Jain would have us believe that changing the head of the organisation three times in three years (as NHAI has done) is preferable to having the same person in charge for 14 years. This is preposterous.
Shirish B Patel, Mumbai
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