The last few years have seen some highly publicised and viciously argued positions for and against the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and presumed misdemeanours of the government resulting in huge assumed losses to the national exchequer over a 25-year period. In some cases, these losses have been discounted, while in others they have not, for reasons best known to the CAG. If this anomaly arouses doubts about the CAG’s motivations, that authority is itself to blame. However, this is not about these so-called financial losses, factual or otherwise, but about the huge losses in combat capability that some CAG reports have caused, all to the detriment of national security. These are far more serious and damaging, to say the least.
The first of these is the CAG report on Bofors. To refresh memories, the government had signed a contract with a Swedish company named Bofors in 1986. This envisaged procurement of a good number of 155 mm guns for the army in the next three years and technology transfer for the continued production of hundreds more in the following years. Even before the ink was dry on the contract, news appeared that Rs 64 crore had been paid by the supplier to various Indian agents or wheeler-dealers, at least one with access to the highest political authority, the prime minister. This, by itself, was a storm that might, possibly, have been ridden over since the gun was the cheapest on offer but the icing came in the form of a CAG report that, with unacknowledged inputs from vested sources, claimed that a better French gun had been dumped because the Swedes were willing to pay bribes. The fact that both guns had been certified as “acceptable” by the army and the deciding criteria prescribed by the then minister, Arun Singh, would be price and price alone was not even mentioned in the report.
The contract was suspended, Bofors was blacklisted and the resultant political machinations saw Rajiv Gandhi being voted out of power; it is a different matter that despite years of concerted effort, many under non-Congress governments, the Central Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, has been unable to bring anyone to “justice”. For the nation and its security, the result has been calamitous in that no new gun has been inducted in the army over the past 25 years. To quantify this loss is not possible but the source that made it happen was the CAG. It gave to odd bits and pieces of news the credibility that only a “constitutional” authority could.
The second case, in almost immediate succession, almost suggesting a “plan”, was that of the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) submarines being acquired for the navy. The contract to buy two of these boats from a German yard, HDW, and to build the next two in India’s own Mazagon Docks Ltd (MDL) in Mumbai, was also signed in 1986. This was to be followed by continued production of these submarines at MDL. By mid-1987, not unexpectedly, it was alleged that money had been paid as bribes. All plans to continue to build the vessels in the Indian yard beyond the two contracted were immediately put on hold and HDW blacklisted.
Once again, it was the CAG report that gave credibility to the bits of information. The result: building of submarines within the country came to a stop in 1992 and things remained that way for the next 15 years, and technicians trained in Germany at considerable cost to the exchequer were allowed to wither away. Yet, not one person could be brought to court. On the other hand, the force level of these vital platforms, which should have exceeded 20, is just about a dozen today.
Clearly, these two CAG interventions have cost India and its security very dearly. From a position where we had predominant superiority over Pakistan’s armed forces, we have been reduced to mere equality. If we were unable to convert the mobilisation after the attack on our Parliament 10 years ago into more forceful retaliation or respond more assertively to the state-sponsored terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November in 2008, the reason lies in inadequate military capability. And two systems at the forefront of such power were rendered impotent by the after-effects of the two CAG reports. Sadly, this authority failed to discern, knowingly or unknowingly, the larger and more strategic effects of these pronouncements.
More recently, some two years ago, the CAG castigated the government for signing a contract with the Russians for the acquisition of an aircraft carrier due to increase in the contracted cost. Its report alleged that an indigenously produced platform would cost about the same, around $2 billion, and have two to three times the life. This was naïve to say the least. First, the cost of the ship escalated because the Indian side sought many changes as also the fact that the initial estimate of refurbishment needed was very low in which we were as much to blame as the Russians. Second, not only would the locally-built ship cost much more, but also, 10 years after being ordered, it is nowhere in sight. Had the government, this time much more resolute, possibly in hindsight, repeated the Bofors/HDW scenario, India would be without an aircraft carrier in the next two years. Happily, this Russian ship, INS Vikramaditya, will be in Indian waters by the end of this year, when the 50-year-old INS Viraat can be rested. The one ship that establishes India’s pre-eminence in the Indian Ocean littoral is its ability to operate an aircraft carrier, which is what the CAG’s report would have neutralised.
It is a different matter that the Russians are the only country to have supplied us with a nuclear-powered submarine that would not be available from anywhere else at any price. Similarly, it is a different matter that the Swedish government was the first western nation, in fact any nation, to support India’s quest for membership of the Security Council way back in 1986.
All authorities, certainly the vastly experienced constitutional ones, should be able to assess the quantifiables as also the non-quantifiables that may, sometimes, be even more important to the national interest. Rated on the metre for measuring our national security capabilities, the CAG has not covered himself with glory. Sadly, these reports have done more to degrade India’s security than almost anything that an adversary might have been able to do.
The writer is a former Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command and Director General of the Defence Planning Staff
