Book review: Vinod Rais officious book recalls the big CAG reports

This book was in the offing for some time. Although its contents were anticipated, the release of Not Just an Accountant has rekindled some old memories, or nightmares, about the last five years of the UPA government, a period that is almost coterminus with Vinod Rai's tenure as the comptroller and auditor general (CAG).

In the meantime, some of the other leading actors and prominent witnesses of those fateful years have come out with their accounts. They are, of course, too close to the events and too involved to inspire great confidence in their objectivity. However, among the four highly publicised books released this year-Sanjaya Baru's The Accidental Prime Minister, P.C. Parakh's Crusader or Conspirator?, K. Natwar Singh's One Life Is Not Enough and Rai's Not Just an Accountant-the last one stands out for its factual matrix, based as it is on an authoritative analysis of published government records.

It is written in a style and manner that would find more resonance with civil servants than with the general public. Except for some occasional homilies, obviously intended for younger civil servants, including audit and accounts officers, the contents of the book are already in the public domain and have been discussed and critiqued. Going through the book is like re-reading these stories, but Rai, like an experienced reporter of a financial newspaper, explains many complex economic and technical issues regarding spectrum, coal allocation and civil aviation for ordinary readers.

Not Just an Accountant has an unusual structure: it is one quarter autobiography and three quarters management studies. Although the cover describes it somewhat hyperbolically as "The Diary of the Nation's Conscience Keeper", it is not exactly one. After a brief preface explaining why he wrote the book, Rai gives a very quick survey of his life and career in the IAS in several interesting anecdotes. Then he abruptly introduces the reader to five case studies from his tenure as CAG. This long section of the book assumes a very different tone, far from a diary's: it is formal, defensive and argumentative at the same time. Even professorial. That is, to some extent, its weakness also as it reads in many places like painstakingly elaborate notes in government files by an upright and proud civil servant who must reply to his critics, some of them his superiors, and explain and justify what he did and why.

One cannot disagree with Rai when he strongly pleads for greater transparency and accountability in both society and government. Having read about ministers and civil servants-often in concert with corporate players-depriving the country of its valuable resources for private gain, one finds it difficult to quarrel with the former CAG. Even if one concedes that policymaking is the government's exclusive prerogative, Rai has shown with extreme clarity how outdated policies were deliberately allowed to persist to benefit vested interests. The stories of 2G spectrum and coal-block allocation have uncanny similarities in this regard.

Since the CAG had access to the entire range of government records and files, Rai has been able to piece together a very convincing account of how ministers and civil servants in these ministries had their way in full view of the then prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and other oversight ministries such as of law and finance. It is almost frightening to think that in this day and age people would have the temerity to perpetrate such acts with apparent immunity till, of course, the nemesis caught up with them. It is ironical that much of what emerged in the public domain about these infractions- even before the publication of the CAG reports-was made possible by the Right to Information (RTI) Act enacted by the very same government.

I can say with conviction that honest and proactive disclosure of information by the government is a sure way to prevent the kind of gross and often blatant violation of policies, rules and procedures pointed out by Rai. After all, an audit carried out by the CAG is, by its very nature, postfacto. It could not have prevented the occurrence of the wrongdoing retrospectively. It is the RTI Act that has the potential to throw open government records to citizens, thus making them witness the act as it unfolds.

The case studies of the Commonwealth Games, civil aviation and gas exploration, as presented by Rai, are not much different. These three cases show how collusive planning by people in charge can result in colossal loss to the exchequer. The case of the Commonwealth Games is particularly sad because though these were, as Rai points out, conducted flawlessly, with India winning its highest-ever medal tally, they brought only disrepute and scorn to the government. He points to how the organising committee, set up as an autonomous body to conduct the Games, went rogue in the absence of an overarching oversight authority and how there was little coordination among the entities responsible for putting in place the necessary infrastructure in time.

Another story that Rai has elaborated in his book is the systematic enfeeblement of Air India by the government-by taking commercially unviable decisions, such as the procurement of 100 or more new aircraft almost entirely on loan, while simultaneously depriving it of many profitable routes in favour of foreign carriers. The detailed letter which the then CMD wrote in anguish to the cabinet secretary, listing the many instances of ministerial interference, has been quoted extensively to highlight what was wrong with the system. It must be noted that this letter came to light because of the persistence of an RTI activist. One can only wish that the contents of the letter were revealed to the public when it was first received.

This brings us to the contentious figures of presumptive losses that have remained etched in the public mind and which led to the undoing of the UPA government as the media equated presumptive losses with the loot of public money. The figures trotted out in the CAG reports on 2G spectrum and coal-block allocations were staggering by any standard. It is in astrophysics that you usually come across such figures; light, for example, travels at 186,000 miles per second, not very different from what we might have lost in rupees in the coal-block allocations!

Even though Rai has tried to vigorously justify those figures, many have argued that presumptive losses should not be cited as they have a speculative connotation and can have a certain melodramatic effect on the system without necessarily being true. I would strongly recommend this book to all civil servants.

Satyananda Mishra is a former chief information commissioner