Letters: Procuring policies

Nitin Pai raises valid questions about defence item procurements in his article “Buying into superstition instead of military strategy” (April 1), but the answers provided by him need more consideration. He is right that our procurement system for defence equipments is complicated, but do we need middlemen to handle it? How will the “regulatory framework” proposed by him enable to distinguish whether middlemen are specialists or wheeler-dealers? The kickbacks in the Bofors scandal, the most deeply investigated case, were not traced to any professional specialist.

In the Indian context, a major cause for delays in procurement is the ease with which any deal can be stalled by a complaint based on half-baked information fed by interested parties or frustrated bidders. Besides, here bribes are also paid to win approval even for a sound contract. In view of this, one of the ways could be to divide the complaint into two separate parts — one, to investigate the quality of the product and the other to scrutinise the integrity angle. As long as the quality is not compromised, we could go ahead with the procurement process. If the right contract was obtained by wrong means, penal action could follow for which a suitable warning clause could be included in the contract.

 

Y G Chouksey Pune

Letters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:
The Editor, Business Standard
Nehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg
New Delhi 110 002
Fax: (011) 23720201
E-mail: letters@bsmail.in
All letters must have a postal address and telephone number