An Indian Nuclear
Insider Reveals Dangerous 'Fixing'
By
N M Sampathkumar
NEW
DELHI: An uneasy question has slowly started worming in the minds
of some people of India.
The
sort of people who preferred not to believe the visual and audio
clippings of a septuagenarian defence minister’s close woman
friend pocketing a paltry Rs.100,000 as speed money for fixing
a defence deal, dramatized by the TV channel Tehelka.
The sort of people who got shocked
at the trap laid (by whom?) for the personal assistant of a Union
minister, accepting Rs. 400,000 for fixing a bureaucrat’s
“lucrative” posting.
The sort of people startled by the
suspension on corruption charges of the Chief of the behemoth
Coal India Ltd (CIL).
Are these ugly happenings, just aberrations,
or do they represent the state of governance in the country? Unfortunately,
it appears to be the latter.
Particularly so in the arena where
compromises in quality of products or services due to extraneous
considerations can cause a catastrophe of unthinkable magnitude.
The state of affairs in Nuclear Power
Corporation of India, the monopoly nuclear-electrical energy utility
can make CIL bandicoots seem like saints.
Functioning as a secretive and awfully
opaque style, NPCIL appears to have perfected the technique of
“fixing” by adopting certain bizarre procurement practices.
Monstrous amounts of public funds
are siphoned off year after year to buy poor quality components
to fabricate nuclear equipment. Apart from sending public money
down the drain, the shenanigans compromise with the safety and
subject the public to unacceptable risks.
Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB),
supposed to monitor lapses in the area environment and safety,
has been rendered impotent by getting “overzealous”
regulators unceremoniously sacked.
The Corporation enjoys absolute immunity
from being scanned by the Comptroller and Auditor General for
irregularities caused by nepotism and kickbacks.
Worse, the judiciary of the country,
in its wisdom, has come to the rescue of the powers that be and
upheld the right of nuclear bosses to keep the dirty deals under
wraps; the Court dismissed a petition filed by Peoples’
Union for Civic Rights (PUCL) seeking transparency.
For the sake of continuing to enjoy
the loot, the nuclear mandarins have even managed to hijack the
program to produce weapons of mass destruction.
The
irresponsible proliferation act has fueled a nuclear arms race
with Pakistan and undermined the definite edge the country enjoyed
in traditional weapons.
This writer had formally admitted
to have supplied to NPCIL 254 numbers of fake ‘bearing sleeves’,
a critical-application-component used in a coolant channels of
atomic reactors.
These were later formally “recalled”
after proving that they were “unfit for nuclear applications.”
Their use may lead to uncontrollable radioactive leaks and bursts.
This
exercise was undertaken with the purpose of exposing (Tehelka-style)
a scandal through which an entrenched cartel of chosen unscrupulous
suppliers had palmed off thousands of fake-quality bearing sleeves.
Understandably, NPCIL is keen to
whitewash the whole affair in order to save the skin of biggies
at the helm. Neither NPCIL’s Vigilance Chief , nor the CVC,
nor the CAG, nor the concerned Ministry (under PMO) have so far
been able to touch the nuclear mafiaso, despite furnishing all
the details.
More
than five years ago, the then Prime Minister I.K. Gujral lamented
that corruption had come to pervade all spheres and warned that
the corrupt would be jailed. Is it wishful thinking to believe
that the fate of the CIL Chief will soon befall erstwhile and
current bosses of the Department of Atomic Energy?
There
will be an additional bonus if the dream comes true quickly enough;
the region can be rid of deadly weapons of mass destruction.
