Bury the Bofors ghost

The gun’s prowess was proved beyond doubt during the Kargil conflict 15 years ago. But for many years, no government dared enter into a defence deal for fear or scandal. The inventories of armed forces are full of obsolete weaponry

President Pranab Mukherjee is absolutely right in saying that no Indian court has proved any of the allegations made with regard to the 1986 deal for the FH 77 guns signed with the erstwhile Swedish firm AB Bofors. While referring to media reports of the alleged pay-offs in the gun deal, he cautioned against the expression “media trial,” used by interviewer from Swedish newspaper “Dagens Nyheter” that, along with the Swedish Radio, had then broken the story. Perhaps, conscious of serving from the highest office in the country, he refrained from accusing political parties that actually fed the media, only to recycle news reports to bolster their case in Parliament against the Rajiv Gandhi Government. Twenty-nine years after it rocked the nation, the expression “media trial” is being aired in a seeming fit of amnesia, to revive the issue.

Who gains? Mukherjee is to begin shortly a state visit to Sweden, a friendly nation with whom ties were damaged by the controversy. Rajiv and then Swedish premier Olaf Palme were friends. That factor was used to whittle down the price. It was India’s biggest deal till date. India had purchased the best available gun at the best price (Rs 1,687 crore for 400 pieces). Rajiv government’s cardinal mistake lay in not acknowledging possible wrongdoing and ordering a probe. Instead, it wrongly viewed it in that Cold War era as a move to “destabilise India”. Rajiv paid for this and subsequent mistakes after his own finance minister V P Singh joined the critics, eventually to become the prime minister.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is not the first BJP leader to cautiously ‘certify’ the gun as ‘good.’ One of his predecessors and party seniors, Jaswant Singh, himself a retired artillery officer, as member of a parliamentary committee, had operated the gun and praised it. Some other lawmakers ‘felt’ the gun, as if purchasing kitchen utensils, and refrained from ‘certifying’ it. Late Devi Lal, who became deputy PM under V P Singh, had told his Haryana electorate that the gun “fired on the reverse”, killing Indian soldiers. The gun’s prowess was proved beyond doubt during the Kargil conflict 15 years ago. But for many years, no government dared enter into a defence deal for fear or scandal. The inventories of armed forces are full of obsolete weaponry.

Prominent defence journal ‘India Strategic’ writes: “Many Army Chiefs in the preceding years had announced that the jinx post-Bofors was over and the process for the renewal of the artillery inventory was just about to begin. But each time, their words proved hollow. Because of the strongly expressed allegations in the 1980s, and hounding of officers instrumental in the deal, neither the political masters nor the bureaucracy ever found courage to initiate even periodic replacement of outdated or old guns.” Mukherjee has spoken when the present government has decided to use the designs supplied in 1986 as part of the technology transfer to develop the gun’s Indian version called ‘Dhanush.’ Can lessons be learnt, at least by hindsight?

By Mahendra Ved