Vinod Rai has transformed the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. His recent memoirs ‘Not Just an Accountant’ bear testimony to this new role, as they detail different scams, and the tough stand taken by the CAG in each.
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In the book, Rai indicts the government on five different scams. But before that, he tells us a little of his personal story. Joining the IAS in 1972, Rai’s early days saw him in limbo land as the government of Nagaland sparred with the Central government. The young Rai made the long journey from the training academy in Mussoorie to Dimapur and then Kohima, only to be told on arrival, to go right back. Such little anecdotes set the tone for Rai’s memoirs. As he moves on, to the Kerala cadre, Rai had his own share of mini standoffs with ministers, but is able to manage most, included one with the then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram.
When Rai was appointed as the CAG in 2008, he took the office very seriously. In the chapter on the role of Audit for instance, he delves into history, on the powers and the respect accorded to his predecessors in Audit, as far back as the early days of independence. He made speeches on these matters, and evaluated very seriously all criticism directed at the CAG office. Some of this criticism was scathingly personal, and Rai quotes former Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Manish Tewari, as saying of him (Rai) “The R-virus has infected the India growth story”.
The scams are entitled ‘Follies’ and appear soon after. The Commonweath Games, the 2G spectrum allocation, the coal block allocation, the issue of gas exploration in the Krishna-Godavari basin and the mismanagement of Air India in aviation, have all been the subject of audit investigations. Each scam has been the subject of a detailed audit report, placed in Parliament and therefore in the public domain. Backed by unassailable data and investigation, Rai explains the intrigues behind the scenes of each of these scams.
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Communicating such exposes on scams has been Rai’s forte. He and his team took the social obligation of audit very seriously. “We commenced pushing the envelope and going beyond conventional and conservative practices” he says. Rai began to design and disseminate hard hitting communication to the public. Pamphlets, referred to as ‘Noddy books’ were distributed to media and citizen groups. These explained the gist of bulky audit reports in about 20 pages in the style and size of Enid Blyton’s Noddy series. Losses to the public exchequer were quantified and the size of these (Rs. 1.79 lakh crores) electrified the nation. The individual chapters in the book, one per scam, are in a similar style of communication. They attempt to explain, in layman’s like language the extent of the scams, and the sequence of events around them.
The gas exploration issue, for instance, is referred to as ‘a slippery deal’. The saga merits narration, says Rai because it illustrates how “in a Public Private Partnership (PPP) the interests of the government are the first casualty”. Contrary to policy the Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) consortium was allowed to keep blocks it should have relinquished. It was allowed to inflate capital costs and therefore deprive the government of revenue. Rai goes on to say the Prime Minister seemed impervious to suggestions of structural changes to this partnership defending RIL as one of the ‘most respected and best-known companies possessing a global reach’.
Manmohan Singh is held accountable for some of the other scams too. “Had the Prime Minister insisted on transparency … the course of political history of this country would have been different,.” he declares. On the subject of former Telecom Minister, A Raja and the scams in the 2G spectrum allocation, he says “How can the office of the Prime Minister distance itself from such major decisions? Arm’s length from the action of his own government?”
In a concluding chapter, ‘Course Correction’ Rai ends with a dose of didacticism. He indicts the present ‘crony capitalism’. Demand transparency, accountability and morality, he says through citizen participation, through NGO’s, and through empowering watchdog institutions and the media. Much of the stories and the controversies in the book have been played out in the public domain. Yet despite being public, the book has an intensely personal feel to it. It is deeply defensive, laying fact after fact on the table. Eventually it is this intensity, as well as the sheer topicality of the issues it looks at, that make it such an engaging read.