Re: [IAC#RG] The inside job

Really appreciable. The facts are even not known to people of todays India.

On 4 April 2013 06:54, Sarbajit Roy <sroy.mb@gmail.com> wrote:
> FEROZE GANDHI – Unlike any Other.
>
> He is the forgotten Gandhi. Son-in-law to one Prime Minister, husband to
> another and father to a third, he should have been a well-known face in the
> country's political landscape. But this is not the case with Feroze Gandhi
> whose birth centenary on September 12 has just gone unnoticed.
>
> September 12, 2012, the birth centenary of Feroze Gandhi - India's greatest
> investigative parliamentarian, crusader against corruption, advocate of
> press freedom and the first campaigner for the people's right to information
> - has gone unnoticed.
>
> He was such a cerebral, diligent and ruthless pursuer of truth that he was
> once described by a fellow MP as a "dangerously well-informed person". While
> the nation remains obsessed with the fortunes of the family which has 10,
> Janpath as its postal address, it appears to have forgotten the real Gandhi
> who bequeathed this magical surname to Sonia et al.
>
> But why blame the nation when the fault lies with an ungrateful Government
> controlled by this ungrateful family. Last year the Government splurged Rs
> 7.25 crore on newspaper advertisements on the occasion of the birth
> anniversaries of Indira and Rajiv, but pretends not to notice Feroze's birth
> centenary.
>
> There may be other reasons for this display of ungratefulness. Since the
> Government is engulfed in scams and is employing undemocratic means to
> curtail parliamentary investigations, how can it hail the man who was
> described as the greatest campaigner against corruption?
>
> Let us pay tribute to the man who demanded a strong ethical framework for
> governance during the formative years of our democracy.
>
> Feroze Gandhi began life as a freedom fighter when still in his teens and
> went to jail on several occasions. He became a member of the Provisional
> Parliament in 1950 and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Rae Bareli in 1952
> and 1957. He emerged as a formidable parliamentarian with his maiden speech
> on the Insurance (Amendment) Bill in December 1955 in which he exposed the
> cunning and wicked ways of the proprietors of several private insurance
> companies.
>
> Having done painstaking research, he held the Lok Sabha in thrall as he
> narrated story after story about how business barons and companies like the
> Dalmia-Jain Group played around with the funds of insurers and the web of
> lies that these companies put out to fool insurers, banks, shareholders and
> Government. At the end of his narration he demanded strong measures to
> protect public funds invested in insurance companies, meaning
> nationalisation of the insurance business.
>
> Such was his impact that within two months the President promulgated an
> Ordinance nationalizing the insurance industry. Happy with the outcome,
> Feroze Gandhi said: "To hold a horse you need a rein; to hold an elephant
> you need a chain."
>
> The LIC-Mundhra Scandal
>
> In November 1957, Ram Subhag Singh and Feroze Gandhi got wind of some shady
> deals between LIC and HD Mundhra, an industrialist.
>
> Singh fired the opening shot via a question in which he asked:Whether LIC
> had purchased large blocks of shares from different companies owned by
> Mundhra?
>
> Deputy Minister of Finance: Towards the end of June 1957, the corporation
> had invested Rs 1,26,86,100 "in concerns in which Shri HD Mundhra is said to
> have an interest".
>
> Ram Subhag Singh again asked whether nationalisation of life insurance was
> not meant to stop such "spurious investments".
>
> Then Finance Minister TT Krishnamachari (TTK) rose to say the investments
> were not spurious. LIC had invested in these companies "solely with a view
> to getting a return and making a safe investment…"
>
> Feroze Gandhi: May I know whether it is a fact that a few months ago shares
> were purchased at the higher price than the market price of those very
> shares on that particular day…?
>
> TTK: I have been told that no such thing has happened.
>
> These words would soon come to haunt the Minister and cost him his job.
> Through this brief exchange during Question Hour, Singh and Gandhi had laid
> a neat trap into which the Minister had fallen. As the drama unfolded over
> the next year in Parliament, people realized the extraordinary power of
> Parliament and the potential power of an MP.
>
> Dissatisfied with the Minister's reply, Feroze initiated a half-hour
> Discussion on the subject.
>
> He said: "A mutiny in my mind has compelled me to raise this debate. When
> things of such magnitude, as I shall describe to you later, occur, silence
> becomes a crime."
>
> He unfolded the story of murky deals between LIC and Mundhra companies as he
> attempted to "breach the ramparts" of the Minister's defence. The Minister
> had claimed that the Government had no particular interest in Mundhra
> companies but Feroze showed that over a six month period in 1957, on 19
> occasions, LIC had bought shares of the Mundhra Group for Rs1.56 crore. Did
> this not amount to favouring one individual?
>
> Feroze Gandhi then went on to show how LIC had allowed itself to be cheated.
> He obtained damning evidence of fraud from the stock exchanges. Shares of
> Mundhra companies had been artificially jacked up by 30-40 per cent in the
> week prior to the purchase of shares by LIC. For example, the share of Osler
> Lamp Manufacturing Company, which was quoted at Rs 2.81 from June 17 onward
> suddenly jumped to Rs 4 on June 24, a day prior to the purchase by
> LIC.Similarly, the shares of Angelo Brothers, which stagnated at Rs16.87 for
> a week, jumped to Rs 20.25. These purchases were made on June 25, but by te
> time this debate took place in December, LIC's Mundhra stocks had
> depreciated by Rs 37 lakhs.
>
> Bowing to pressure, the Government announced the appointment of a commission
> of inquiry headed by Chief Justice MC Chagla, of the Bombay High Court.
> Feroze promptly offered himself as a witness and was the first to testify.
> Justice Chagla upheld Feroze's contentions and said that the Finance
> Minister should take constitutional responsibility for what had happened.
> TTK tendered his resignation.
>
> The most extraordinary aspect of Feroze Gandhi's work was the forensic
> precision with which he collected facts and the manner in which he marshaled
> his arguments. While MPs do not exert themselves to obtain facts even in
> this Internet age, Feroze Gandhi sent telegrams to the Calcutta Stock
> Exchange and obtained the quotations for Mundhra companies between June 17
> and 24, 1957. When he tabulated the information, the effect was dramatic.
>
> Referring to the power of Parliament he said: "We cannot hang people, nor
> can we chop off their necks. But we can turn their existence pretty
> difficult."
>
> Later he said: "I think collectively we have demonstrated the terrific
> striking power of democracy. I think this inquiry has had a tonic effect on
> the entire country and administration."
>
> When it was all over, Home Minister GB Pant said that there would be few
> parallels in political history to what had happened in this case — where a
> member of the ruling party has exposed the Government. It was all because of
> "the crusader" sitting in their midst.
>
> Defender of Press Freedom
>
> A staunch democrat, Feroze had an abiding commitment to a free press and the
> people's right to information. After he became an MP, he realised that while
> the Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech to MPs and insulated them from
> defamation suits, the press did not enjoy any such protection. Therefore,
> newspapers were afraid to report the proceedings of Parliament.
>
> "The law of libel hangs like the sword of Damocles over the head of every
> editor and correspondent," Feroze said, adding that this fear operated like
> a "silent censor" and prevented people from knowing that which they have a
> right to know. The remedy lay in Parliament passing a law to protect the
> press.
>
> Feroze examined the legal position in other democracies, consulted fellow
> MPs and journalists and drafted the Proceedings of Legislature (Protection
> of Publication) Bill. It was passed by the House in May 1956 and gave the
> press much needed protection while reporting what transpired in Parliament.
> In fact, but for this law, the media would have had great difficulty in
> reporting the LIC-Mundhra Scandal as it unfolded in Parliament. In an
> unusual gesture, the Government allowed a private member to draft and move a
> Bill.
>
> It is a different story that his widow, Indira Gandhi, repealed this law to
> gag the press during the infamous Emergency in 1975-77. Subsequently, the
> law was restored.
>
> A Forensic Mind
>
> Feroze scrutinized lazy ministerial pronouncements with a fine-toothed comb
> and caught them when they spoke without applying their minds to the issue at
> hand.
>
> For example, the Railway Minister had informed the House that poor
> punctuality of trains was because the tracks got breached during the
> monsoons. Feroze pulled out railways' statistics and showed that in July
> when there were 38 breaches of tracks, punctuality was 78 per cent but in
> December, when there were no breaches, punctuality dropped to 75.7 per cent.
> So, the reality was just the opposite of what the Minister had said!
>
> Such was his commitment that often the Opposition looked redundant. Time and
> again, Feroze would lead the charge and the Opposition would follow in his
> footsteps. They would often begin their speeches by paying him a tribute. He
> was like the Head Boy or Prefect in a school. The only job assigned to the
> rest was to just fall in line.
>
> Over the last 50 years, there is not a single MP in the Lok Sabha's treasury
> benches who has made the Opposition look superfluous like Feroze did.
>
> The Forgotten Legacy
>
> The Gandhi family (Sonia et al) has forgotten the Gandhi who gave them their
> identity. If only they had remained loyal to the core values that this brand
> originally promised - abiding commitment to democracy, public good over
> personal gain, country above party and phenomenal grit to pursue truth - one
> would not have seen the terrible erosion in brand equity. The vote-pulling
> capacity of Brand Gandhi has slumped from around 45 per cent in national
> elections during the Indira Gandhi era to around 25 per cent or less at this
> juncture.
>
> As Tarun Kumar Mukhopadhyaya, who has done a brilliant parliamentary
> biography of Feroze Gandhi, has said:
>
> "He (Feroze) was completely free from malice and successfully avoided all
> pettiness. Indeed, Feroze's tenure in Parliament, brief though it was,
> engendered and encouraged public esteem for democratic institutions and
> faith in the integrity of public men."
>
> One can imagine how critical Feroze's contribution was because in the 1950s
> India was a fledgling democracy. But all these eulogies are nothing compared
> to the tribute the greatest Gandhi paid to him when he was a young man.
>
> "If I could get seven boys like Feroze to work for me, I (would) get swaraj
> in seven days," Mahatma Gandhi is said to have told Feroze's mother
> Rattimai, in Allahabad, in 1931, according to Katherine Frank, Indira
> Gandhi's biographer. Should we say more?
>
> The special Gandhi
>
> We all talk about how India's politicians were a different kettle of
> kurta-clads in the early days after independence. Being part of a start-up,
> they were raring to go, serious about taking a shot at nation-building,
> regardless of how their views differed on the nature of the nation that they
> were building.
>
> They were not all bright or selfless or good managers of a super-project.
> But they were different from those who would follow them in that they were
> more serious about identifying, and tackling, wrongdoings done in the name
> of public service. Not all of them owned up to their shenanigans. But if
> these misdemeanors were pointed out, passing the parcel — or making the
> parcel disappear — was far harder than it is today.
>
> In other words, our early political class was susceptible to shame.
>
> Last Tuesday, I was pleasantly intrigued to find a full-page Union ministry
> of culture advertisement (not in this newspaper) announcing the
> commemoration of the 150th birth anniversary of Motilal Nehru at a function
> in Delhi that day. But Motilal, the patriarch of the Nehru family and lawyer
> with a lucrative practice in Allahabad who went on to became a prime
> activist in the Indian National Movement and a two-time president of the
> Indian National Congress, wasn't the early politician that came to my mind.
> It was his son Jawaharlal's son-in-law Feroze Gandhi, whose birth centenary
> no one quite remembered on September 12, whom I recalled.
>
> There's a pashmina shawl covering the figure of Feroze Jehangir Gandhi. He's
> the man that Indira Nehru married in 1942 to the displeasure of her father
> and about whom Congress mythology is thunderously quiet. His corresponding
> identity as simply the father of Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi is also
> disquieting, as if his presence in history is only to serve as genetic
> material for the continuation of a national masterclan.
>
> But Feroze was much more than that. He was a Congress activist, having gone
> to jail several times in the 1930s. According to Katherine Frank in Indira,
> when his mother appealed to Mohandas Gandhi to persuade Feroze to leave
> politics, Gandhi replied, "If I could get seven boys like Feroze to work for
> me, I [would] get swaraj in seven days." In 1946, despite his tricky
> relationship with Nehru, Feroze became the director of the Lucknow-based
> National Herald that his father-in-law had founded nine years ago. He would
> become a member of the provincial parliament, and then a Lok Sabha MP for
> Rae Bareli. Not much good at running the business side of things at the
> newspaper, his roving eye and heavy drinking didn't make him much of a
> husband, leading Feroze and Indira to separate. But it was as a
> journalist-politician that Feroze showed courage that is unthinkable today.
>
> You must understand that to expose wrongdoings in Nehru's government in 1956
> — when Feroze launched an anti-corruption movement — was not the same benign
> spectator sport it is with Manmohan Singh's in 2012. The media was still
> cagey about running news that could embarrass the fledgling nation and halos
> were still firmly nailed to the heads of government. And yet, Feroze exposed
> a scam in 1958 whose trail led back to his father-in-law's government: the
> newly nationalised Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) had used premiums from
> 5.5 million policyholders to buy up shares at above-market prices in
> companies controlled by dodgy speculator-industrialist Haridas Mundhra.
>
> Nehru's finance minister, TT Krishnamachari, maintained that the finance
> secretary had been responsible for the illegal purchase of shares. But a
> transparent enquiry commission, attended by the public at large and chaired
> by former Bombay High Court judge MC Chagla, stated that the minister was
> "constitutionally responsible for the action taken by his secretary".
> Krishnamachari resigned.
>
> Sucheta Dalal, while noting the startling similarities in the LIC scandal
> with the Unit Trust of India (UTI) scam 43 years later (More Things Change,
> August 2001), pointed out with a thunderclap that the then finance minister
> Yashwant Sinha had stayed put — using Krishnamachari's defence. She added
> how a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) investigation had become the sham
> enquiry of choice. "Will politicians, especially in a multi-party JPC, ever
> allow corporate houses to be punished?" she asked knowing the answer a bit
> too well.
>
> Today, Feroze Gandhi's exposé would have raised the usual questions: Why is
> he raising the issue? On whose behest is he raising the issue? How does
> someone with dodgy personal credentials dare to accuse a government led by a
> clean and decent prime minister of wrongdoings?
>
> Which brings me back to the point of how things are different now with our
> political class and those critical of it. A nation gets the politicians it
> deserves. And the scandals. And the judgments. And sons-in-law too.
>
>
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--
With Regards

Sanjay Chaturvedi
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