Pointing fingers

PM, FM criticise CBI, but what of the govt's own inaction?

At a conference organised by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in New Delhi this week, the agency received two successive rebukes from the highest level of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. First, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that the agency must exercise "caution" when it is investigating policy decisions, and learn to differentiate between those that had mala fide intent and those that were genuine errors of judgement. He added that "some decisions which appear sensible ex-ante may ex-post turn out to be faulty". In addition, he said that charge sheets should only be filed "after going through a rigorous process of scrutiny". Then, a day later, Finance Minister P Chidambaram warned that investigative agencies should "respect the line that divides policymaking and policing". He also hit out at the Comptroller and Auditor General, saying that "there are a number of cases in which investigating agencies and other authorities like the CAG have overstepped their limits and attempted to convert bona fide executive decisions into crimes or abuse of authority".

It is important to note that the prime minister and the finance minister have sought to draw a valuable distinction between policymaking that can be warped by the corrupt and actions that are blatant misuse of power. This is in keeping with the general belief that various agencies such as the CBI and the CAG have not been sufficiently aware of these lines in the past. But two other issues are also worth mentioning. First, the CBI, while investigating coal block allocations, for example, is largely following the guidelines set down by the Supreme Court - so any overstepping of its boundaries, if boundaries have indeed been crossed, is at the instance of the court and not entirely of the agency's own volition. Second, criticism of the agencies would sit better with the public if it were accompanied with a clear indication and admission that there is indeed much that is worthy of investigation in the changing and warping of rules to satisfy special interests.

Instead, the finance minister said that it was a "myth" that the CBI was "the Congress Bureau of Investigation" or a "caged parrot", as the Supreme Court had put it. This is denial of the highest order, and leads to the content of his speech and that of the prime minister being rightly questioned as motivated. There is enough circumstantial evidence that the UPA has used the CBI as a weapon against various political allies to ensure it retains numbers in Parliament. If it had not apparently used the CBI in that manner, there would be far less cynicism about the CBI's functioning.

Indeed, the prime minister and the finance minister should, while pointing fingers at the CBI, also ask themselves why, in the nearly 10 years of the UPA government, there has been no serious attempt to reform the CBI or place its functioning on a solid legal footing, as well as improve its chances of independence from political interference. This laxity on administrative reform has led to questions being asked about the CBI's very legal basis. It is also the root cause of its current largely unaccountable status, which has caused the concern to which the prime minister and the finance minister were giving voice. While the CBI and the CAG certainly need to be more respectful of the complexity of policymaking, the UPA must accept that its actions - or lack thereof - have contributed to the very problems it decries.