The editorial “More noise than light” (April 29) reflects the feelings of all Indians. Parliament should have a meaningful debate on the AgustaWestland helicopter deal and ensure that the corrupt are put behind bars at the earliest. The fact that the United Progressive Alliance government did little to bring the culprits to book is understandable. But it is a mystery why the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government is reluctant to act despite its election promises. Sadly, it is the common man who suffers due to all this corruption in the country at the end of the day.
M.V. Nagavender Rao,Hyderabad
At a time when Assembly elections are underway, the BJP is engaged in a smear campaign against the Congress. It intends to win back the trust of the people and assert its position. The severe bashing that both parties have received in recent elections shows that there is deep erosion of public trust in them. It is the power that the BJP wields at the Centre that is instilling confidence in it to resort to this controversy as an election strategy. The sad reality is that burning issues such as inflation, farmer suicides, climate change, and acute water scarcity are overlooked or compromised in favour of such scandals. Unfortunately, this will always be the reality.
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Just as The Hindu published stories about the Bofors scandal and published the report on the AgustaWestland deal, other media houses should also make similar efforts to bring such issues to light. This sort of discussion is welcome in Parliament. But it must not disturb regular discussions on other pressing issues such as drought.
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The AgustaWestland chopper deal is costing the nation far more than people seem to appreciate. It is holding up precious Parliament time. Worse, it is vitiating the atmosphere and spoiling the chances of any cooperation or progress on serious legislative business between the government and the Opposition. It is not sufficient to express outrage over the bribes paid to Indian decision-makers by middlemen of the Italian defence manufacturer, Finmeccanica, and its British subsidiary, AgustaWestland. The sensible thing for the government to do would be to focus on prosecuting the inquiry into the bribery charges and getting to the bottom of things.
Corruption scandals might come in handy for political parties, but they do no good to the armed forces which need to buy equipment regularly as part of the upgradation and modernisation programme. Scandals hurt the interests of the armed forces and the security of the country. Politicians need to ponder over this and focus on making defence deals simple and transparent.
Hemavathi. A,Secunderabad