Secrecy on Rafale

The BJP Government at the Centre resorted to a well-worn ploy when faced with a difficult situation: counter-attack. PM Modi's diatribe in Parliament on Wednesday followed the cornering of the Government a day earlier over the Rafale deal. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's may have had a lapse of judgment but the opposition seized its moment when she refused to disclose the financial breakup of the contract due to a secrecy pact with France. The BJP, as is its wont, rose to its last cheerleader to back Sitharaman's obduracy, overlooking that under a different Defence Minister, the same Government had parted with information about the per aircraft cost. The public has the right to know whether the French arm-twisted the Government into inflating the deal? 

The Government may be within its remit to refuse a break-up of the Rafale deal on national security considerations; past government too have opted for this route. But the BJP Government invites a different judgment because it boasts of a different morality. Moreover, the Government is happily press-ganging the citizenry into subscribing to a new code of non-secrecy, demanding the linking of its personal and financial data with Aadhaar even as issues rage about data security and the Supreme Court is seized of the matter. The Modi Government's coyness with Rafale also grates uncomfortably against its zeal to resurrect the Bofors defence scandal which paid it handsome political dividends in the past.

However, the bigger problem with the Rafale deal is the telltale timeline that knocks out the BJP Government's claim as a paragon of moral clarity and consistency. India signed a new deal just in time for PM Modi's visit to France where the order helped fetch him a red carpet welcome. Worse, the experienced HAL was scratched out and the contract for partnering the French given to a neophyte from the Reliance stable; the company was not-so-coincidentally set up just before Modi inked the Rafale deal. The Modi Government's attempt to sanctify the Rafale deal by appealing to national interest fails to wash when it has set a different yardstick for transparency for the people.