Ring around the Rosie

By offering to order a probe on an internal report of the Indian Army regarding the Technical Services Committee, a secret intelligence agency established by General V.K. Singh during his tenure as the 26th Chief of Army Staff, the Central Government has once again decided to use its most coveted weapon to mute anyone who defies to toe its official line; a probe by the premiere investigation agency of the country, the Central Bureau of Investigation. While the contents of the reports are confidential, the ruling class has gone all the way out to launch an investigation after 7 months of alleged inactivity on this report that was submitted in March, 2013. Also, the timing of the probe is highly controversial. 

General (Retd.) V.K.Singh, who was last seen sharing stage space with Mr. Narendra Modi, BJPs Prime Ministerial candidate for 2014 General elections, in his home state in an Ex-Servicemen rally came as no surprise after he went public pledging support to Anna Hazare, who was then protesting for formulation of a tougher Lokpal Bill to rout out the inherent corruption in the Indian governance system. 

Traditionally, the retired officials of Indian Armed Forces, unlike their American counterparts, prefer to spend a rather silent & passive public life without much hooplah post-retirement, but this was not the case with General (Retd.) V.K.Singh. Remembered as the First Chief of any Defence Staff of India who took the Central Government to Supreme Court over the controversy of the year of his birth,  he created a controversy in March, 2012 ,while holding the office, that he was offered a bribe to the tune of $2.5million by Tatra Trucks, a Belgian Defence vehicles manufacturing company, for the purchase of sub-standard vehicles for the Indian Army. This unusual feat earned the irate of the Union government which has been trying to bury the equally controversial "Bofors Scam" which tarnished the image of its tallest leader during its most testing times, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, and went on to create the bad blood between he and the ruling government.

Strangely, the government, which chose to be a silent spectator during the Anna Hazare LokPal campaign, took cognizance of the General's presence in the list of celebrity supporters and was waiting anxiously for the right time to strike back. By placing it's poster boy General Bikram Singh as a successor to General (Retd.) Singh, it is even being rumored in the political circles that the Government hatched a secret conspiracy to indict him and dent his public image, thereby subsiding the thumping popularity which Mr. Narendra Modi received during the recently concluded Ex-Servicemen rally. The establishment of an Internal Enquiry Commision to probe the functioning of the Technical Services Committee (TSC), leaking the contents of the confidential report after an alleged inactivity of 7 months since its submission in March, 2013 only strengthen the conviction of an aam aadmi that this is a classic case of "vendetta politics" which the ruling class has been eficiently exploiting, time and again, to curb the internal as well as external opposition to its ocholcracy in the veil of "CBI enquiry", which is only too much overloaded with cases of magnanimous nature. 

While the contents of the leaked report, which indicts General (Retd.) Singh for colluding to topple the Omar Abdullah lead National Conference, a key Congress ally, in Jammu and Kashmir using funds from questionable sources is debatable. If the charges are proven, General (Retd.) Singh is liable to be punished under the Indian law. While it is to be noted that no one is above law, he should have been treated in the same way as a common citizen is. If the government was so eager to act on the report, then why didn't it act for 7 months? Its action seems to be synchronous with a common folklore where a Brahmin, whose house is ransacked by robbers, shouts for help after 6 months waiting for the auspicious time to come.

Before the government chooses to treat someone, it should treat it own ring around the rosie first. This clearly amounts to gross moral degeneration and crass political opportunism to run the country as per its own whims and fancies. Such "blame-game" politics only shows how low can someone go to achieve ones mean ends. Or perhaps, the ruling class is slowly coming to terms with the inevitability of they being voted out to power in the forthcoming General elections of 2014.