How many Sukhois must crash for us to call it a scandal?

When Mulayam Singh Yadav was defence minister in the HD Deve Gowda government in the late 1990s, he was, for all practical purposes, minister in absentia. Preoccupied rather more with defending his political turf in the volatile state of Uttar Pradesh than with affairs of national security, he was happy to let the bureaucrats in his ministry run the show. Except, that is, for one small defence procurement matter in which he was very keenly engaged. Every morning, when Mulayam Singh turned up in his office, he would ask his bureaucrats about the progress of the file relating to the deal for the purchase of Sukhoi-30 combat aircraft for the IAF. Any delay in the stately progress of the deal through the bureaucratic maze would get him enraged and surly. You could, of course, see this as illustrative of the earnestness of a minister who was keen to ensure that the Indian Air Force did not suffer for want of a highly rated aircraft. But Mulayam Singh’s critics at that time felt there were rather more scandalous considerations at work. As another Sukhoi aircraft crashed yesterday, raising questions about the technical superiority of the aircraft, it gives cause to reflect on the colossal lack of transparency that governs defence procurements in India, and the lack of accountability associated with such high-value defence purchases. For all the well-established procedures involved in the shortlisting and selection of defence armaments, the taint of scandal always hangs over these deals, given the cloak of secrecy that they are typically camouflaged under. Even rival aircraft manufacturers acknowledge that the Sukhoi, which is since then being manufactured indigenously, is an excellent flying machine. In that respect, it is quite unlike the MiG-21, which was dubbed the “flying coffin” for the frequency with which it came crashing down, the most recent of which was in October. Such was the notoriety that the MiG-21 acquired that it even became the central theme of the Bollywood commercial film Rang De Basanti. [caption id=“attachment_156158” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“When these magnificent flying machines keep falling from the skies, you have to wonder just how deep the rot runs. PTI”]  [/caption] Yet, despite the acknowledged superiority of the Sukhoi fighter plane, the deals associated with its purchase from Russia in the late 1990s have been dogged by the taint of corruption that has spared no political party – from the Congress to the BJP to the Samjawadi Party. The deal was initiated during the tenure of PV Narasimha Rao, and became controversial even before a formal contract for the acquisition had been signed. During the last days in office, a short while before it was voted out of power, the Narasimha Rao government made an advance payment of $142 million – even though no formal decision had been taken on the acquisition of the particular aircraft. The Phukan Commission of Inquiry, which subsequently investigated the deal following allegations of corruption, recorded that the advance payment was made “with the approval of Cabinet but without there being any contract and even before the Cabinet approved the acquisition of Sukhoi aircrafts.” The amount, it noted, was paid through a bank in New York at the request of the “Russian side”. Years later, Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta narrated a delightful anecdote involving the Sukhoi deal, in which he reconstructed the circumstances in which that curious payment had been made. Acknowledging that the advance payment made, without even a contract, was an extraordinary event, Gupta recalled, based on first-hand accounts from some of the key players, that it was made in a “larger” national interest. In Gupta’s retelling, Russian President Boris Yeltsin had told Narasimha Rao that he too was heading for elections at that time, and that the Sukhoi factory was in his electoral constituency. However, the company was financially broke, and couldn’t even pay salaries to its staff. If India could pay an advance on the Sukhoi deal, which could be adjusted in the final pricing later, it would help Yeltsin in his election campaign. That advance, noted Gupta, was “a political deal between the big boys” and a “conscious, diplomatic decision”, cleared by Narasimha Rao and executed by the then finance minister Manmohan Singh. In Gupta’s retelling of that story all the principal parties – Narasimha Rao, AB Vajpayee, and Mulayam Singh Yadav – come out smelling of roses: there was absolutely no scandal involved, and parties who otherwise have a combative relationship were able to vouch for each other’s honesty. Other narratives associated with the Sukhoi deal, however, paint another, rather more sordid, picture. For instance, in 2001, Tehelka (then a website, now a magazine) sensationally exposed, complete with clandestine cameras and hired sex workers, a defence procurement scandal that led right up to the then defence minister George Fernandes. One strand of that expose related to the Sukhoi deal, about which the then BJP president Bangaru Laxman’s private secretary Sathyamurthy provided scandalous details. During one unusually candid conversation, Sathyamurthy confesses to having got 7-8 percent commission on the Sukhoi deal – and even names the middlemen involved. ( Details here.) That wasn’t of course the last of it: a report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General revealed in 2006 that the Sukhoi deal, valued initially at Rs 22,000 crore, had by then shot up to Rs 45,000 crore. Just to translate the manuals from Russian to English cost Rs 42 crore of taxpayers’ money. No one grudges the defence establishment the right to the best of equipment in its defence of national security. In fact, demands for allocations for defence procurements almost always get passed without even cursory scrutiny. Yet, there’s something scandalous about estimates that double in just a few years, particularly when private secretaries of politicians openly admit to having taking commissions on defence deals. And when these magnificent flying machines keep falling from the skies, you have to wonder just how deep the rot runs. And just how much of a blood price the nation must pay to the leeches that suck it dry.