Great Indian Blunders

I was going through the emails of Rana / Headley revealed during Chicago trial - It was interesting to check these mails from one Mr. Rajaram Rege, known to Headley as PRO for Bala Thakre.

See how well he has narrated the process of government and private tenders in India... It was all well-known, or at least we had doubts - he has just openly unfolded it.

These are the very people who rob our nation, heap up black money and become richer themselves, by making the poor poorer. These people don't have any party - they are all-pervasive.

Considering that this fellow is in the business for minimum 6 years, just imagine how much he might have robbed from India. And how many people like him India might have? What might be the amount robbed by all these? Just think, imagine - your heart is sure to stop for a while.

So nothing can be done to stop this nonsense? Yes of course, a few major things can be done by the central and state governments, and from the corporates.

1) Make the process of tender more transparent
2) Get rid of the middlemen from tender processes / outsourcing works
3) Not to award tenders to foreign companies - no one knows what kind of trap lies where.
4) Not to outsource works related to sensitive departments like defense and power to any company
5) Government should make the corruption-laden, almost-non-existent Public Works Department strong and accountable so that public roads and infrastructure can be developed by the government itself, no 'PPP' model that will rob people some day in future.

If all these are done, where will the esteemed players of Great Indian Political League go? How will they make money? So never never will they let all these happen.

Here are three examples of fence eating the crop, which I have experienced myself directly, and heard from others, though all of them are not related to political or national security angle:

1) Art of making 'cut's
While I was working for an ad agency, we had a so-called client. Working as an area manager, he used to take the details of hoardings, FM commercials, newspaper ads etc, and never used to get back to us. While introspecting, we used to think in plain terms, about giving best rate for him, or about the mistake we did in presenting him the output etc. and were thinking it was our mistake.
One fine day we came to know that he used to take details from us, and was dealing with the third parties directly, avoiding us, and thus getting the commission himself. If we had been little more clever and able to strike a deal with him regarding his 'percentage', we would have bagged projects worth crores of rupees from him.

2) Quality check in regional TV channels
We used to do a teleprogram. The programme had to get clearances from the technical department of the TV, during the quality check. After a few initial weeks, our programs started facing 'rejection' due to 'low quality' and 'grains' in the feed. We pondered over the reason, did the best to avoid errors in shooting and editing as much as possible, still the problem of 'rejection' persisted. Meanwhile we used to wonder how the programs of lesser quality were getting telecast in same channel.
Finally the 'cat' was out of the bag - this human cat which does the quality check, needed a different kind of 'milk' - haalu in Kannada - alco-'haalu' ! Once the he-cat started getting ample treat every week on behalf of us, there were no more rejections for our programs!

3) Bharath-Rakshak!
Don't ask me how I know this. We boast of having the strength of defense missile launchers and radars - Rohini, Agni, Brahmos. All these are constructed by private bigwigs in India. These private companies are dependent upon UK-based or China-based (there may be other nations too) equipments for the supporting functions.
Dependence is such that, one small faulty controller in a generator set stops the whole functioning, and engineer of the foreign company which manufactured the controller has to repair it in the spots which are supposed to be confidential and not accessible to the public. I know of one instance of Rohini radar that was used to spy Indo-pak border lying idle for more than three months, due to faulty spares.

How can we trust the foreign company that provided the spares? Or such engineers who get access to the inaccessible, to repair work? There is a rule that such tenders should go to Indian-based companies, but what is the use of this rule if the spares are foreign?

See how vulnerable is our system. Corruption tops all other priorities. No wonder if terror plotters get easy access to our establishments.