It’s not that I don’t believe that the Prime Minister is a man of personal integrity – he most certainly is. However, something about the notion that his being honourable is the same as his having personal moral rectitude has been troubling me ever since the contents of the Joint Parliamentary Committee report leaked out.

What has been the most honourable act by a public servant in independent India? Lal Bahadur Shastri’s resignation after the Mahbubnagar railway accident in 1956? As remarkable an instance as that may have been by today’s standards, I have another contender in mind; on December 9, 1971, INS Khukri was struck by a Pakistani torpedo. The Commanding Officer, Capt Mahendra Nath Mulla, gave orders to abandon ship but refused to do so himself, because he knew he couldn’t leave his trapped subordinates in the lurch and also because “captains don’t abandon their ship, no matter what”. After supervising the rescue of the crew, one of the last things he did was to push two officers over the bridge of the frigate before handing over his life jacket to another junior officer. One of the two officers pushed over the bridge, Cdr Manu Sharma, recalled seeing his last glimpse of Khukri just as he swam to safety. He is reported to have seen the Captain hanging on the ship’s railings, smoking a cigarette. Some say he saluted as he sank with his charge. Yet others say he handcuffed himself to the railings. No version is any less soul piercing than the other.

What does all of this have to do with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? Last month I wrote a piece likening him to a historical character he shared many similarities with. This one, coincidentally, talks of a contemporary of his from whom he can take inspiration. As Maj Gen (retd) Ian Cardozo said at an INS Khukri survivors’ commemoration in 2006, “He believed that the nation comes first, that the men he commands come next, and his safety comes last”.  Words the PM could do well to heed.

If the JPC report is to be believed (rather, if the reports on the JPC report are to be believed), the PM bears no responsibility for the Rs. 1.76 lakh crore 2G spectrum loss. And oh, by the way, supposedly the loss figure isn’t Rs 1.76  lakh crore. You can stop huffing and puffing and going red in the face with enraged indignation. It’s “only” Rs 40,000 crores. Ok fine yaar, it’s Rs 40,080 crore if you reallllly want to quibble over Rs 80 crore. Even then, it was the NDA which was responsible for the scam. The JPC report also states that the PM was misled by Raja – the former Telecom Minister did not inform him (and the then Finance Minister) of the change in rules in the grant of licenses.

Here’s the problem with the “he was hoodwinked and therefore bears no responsibility” argument – if not the Prime Minister, who then is ultimately responsible for the functioning of the Cabinet of Ministers? The JPC’s job, in part, was to establish the quantum of responsibility the head of the Cabinet should bear for the decisions of his subordinates. It seems that the sole endeavour of this government seems to have been to grant MMS a clean chit instead of establishing his culpability. It’s important to note here that establishing culpability does not necessarily mean declaring him “guilty” or even pointing an accusatory finger at him. It just means establishing a level of responsibility (high or low) after having heard all of the people involved in the matter – a task at which the JPC seems to have failed miserably.

Irreparable damage may have been done to how we fix accountability in public life by the JPC by not allowing A Raja to depose in front of it (and thereby not officially hearing his version of how much the PM knew of the scam), the PM rejecting Yashwant Sinha’s letter requesting that MMS himself depose and refusing to speak on his role in the 2G fracas. This is why, a panel debate on CNN-IBN on whether or not he should “come clean” on the 2G and coal scams led me to think over the questions of honour and integrity. At the heart of the CNN-IBN debate was the question of whether or not MMS should have spoken up – either in front of the JPC, in Parliament or even in a standalone address. Just in case you’re wondering, the INS Khukri/Capt. Mulla story wasn’t meant to convey a deep philosophical message with the sinking ship being a metaphor for the state of the nation. It’s meant to illustrate something very simple – accountability for your job and responsibility towards the people you lead. Capt Mulla was faced with a decision. He could have chosen to save his skin. But captains are supposed to go down with their ship. So he did the “right” thing. In giving up his life-jacket to someone else, he showed an unparalleled sense of responsibility towards the people he led even in the face of great personal discomfort.

So here’s what. MMS was not required to appear in front of the JPC or even the nation, but he should have because it would have been the right thing to do – even if it meant possible excoriation and putting himself in a very, very uncomfortable position. It was his responsibility towards the people of this nation to do so. Going by Abhishek Manu Singhvi’s (and by extension the Congress’) arguments, there are four possible reasons for why the demand for him to speak up (and thereby validate or invalidate the JPC’s dubious findings on his accountability) is not tenable:

1)      He can’t speak up in Parliament because it is being disrupted.

2)      The PM needn’t appear before parliamentary committees when all of the documents relating to the scam have been submitted before the JPC and there are others to speak for him. Apparently, it is the “merit and content” of the answer that matters, not the person giving it.

3)      The opposition’s demand is more a tool to humiliate the PM rather than a genuine need to know the truth.

4)      Just because the conclusions of the JPC report did not fall in line with the Opposition’s expectations on the PM’s role, they are now creating a ruckus.

Apart from the initial point, Mr Singhvi appears to be on very weak ground with his reasoning. Even though the Opposition’s demand may be politically motivated, its independent validity does not stand invalidated. An answer from the PM specifically is sought not because the people want to see him humiliated or because the JPC report didn’t hang the usual suspects – it is not even that the clean chit given to the PM is resented in itself, but the manner in which it was given is to be questioned; the chairman of the committee subverted all principles of natural justice when he authorised a draft report which indicted a former Cabinet Minister without according him a fair hearing. One could question why Raja’s word, the word of a man who has spent a year in jail must be trusted over that of the Prime Minister (and Rajdeep Sardesai did bring this up). The fact is, he needed to have been heard and his testimony corroborated. The March 18 report in The Hindu leaves one in no doubt of the fact that the PM knew exactly what was happening in the Department of Telecom (DoT). So no, it is not just the “merit and content” of the answer that is important, but also the person answering. One wonders why the Opposition did not take advantage of him offering to appear before the Public Accounts Committee in 2010.

It may not be customary for the JPC to call the Prime Minister, but this wasn’t the time for custom. This was the time to let the people know that no one, not even the Prime Minister, is above scrutiny, especially when it comes to being answerable to the people of the nation who have been shamelessly looted through the 2G scam.

More importantly, and coming back to a point I raised earlier, if not the PM, who then is ultimately responsible for Cabinet decisions? The consequences of this failure to fix accountability could have disastrous consequences. Every level of the national administrative machinery has to have a command structure to prevent descent into anarchy. Think about it – if the PM is not responsible for the DoT’s policy, Modi can claim similar immunity for the 2002 riots. Even Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar can absolve himself of responsibility for policemen manhandling protestors and mismanaging rape cases.

Maybe then, honour is not just about personal integrity. If there is anything Capt Mulla’s sacrifice teaches us, it is that honour is as much about the ability to do the right thing as it is about honesty and personal integrity, which is not to say that those who don’t take on responsibility are in any way “dishonourable”. Maybe, the PM would not have been under as much fire had the politicians under his charge just taken bribes for specific contracts. Even if one were to disregard the fact for a minute that Raja seems to have brazenly circumvented the Government of India (transaction of business) rules, that a Cabinet minister allegedly hacked into the very structure of the telecom policy while the PM watched him strike blow-after-blow is what makes the latter’s silence baffling.

So yes, history books may remember Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a man with impeccable personal ethics, impressive academic credentials, an aura of not undeserved respectability and infinite patience. But if they want to make a list of honourable people in India, Capt Mulla may make for a better example.

The views expressed are personal.

Image By: Swarnabha Bannerjee