FIRST STRIKE
Whistle-blowing, a casualty
ANIL DHARKER
BIJOY GHOSH
The Golden Quadrilateral ... the end of the road for Satyendra Dubey.
HUNDREDS of people are murdered every day all over India. What makes the death of Satyendra Dubey so very special? It is surely a combination of a number of factors.
There is, first of all, the heart-breaking story of Dreams Unfulfilled: the young Dubey was the bright son every lower middle-class family prays for. He was, in the best sense of the term, their ticket to the future, their only means to fulfil their aspirations. And Satyendra Dubey seemed to be all that, a bright, young man with a bright, young intelligence who went to the Indian Institute of Technology and came out with idealism intact. All children carry their parents hopes; the Satyendras of the world carry even more. So the early loss of a child, which is terrible enough, is made even worse.
Then there is idealism factor. Why was Satyendra Dubey killed? Because he did something all of us should do, but don't. Which is not to just be appalled at the loot and villainy around us (all of us are upset by corruption), but do something about it. Whistle-blower isn't exactly a felicitous term, but all of us understand what it means: someone who is an insider, wanting to expose the rot within the system. It needs courage to do that because you are risking the wrath of people you work with and much else. Like vindictiveness from the system leading to possible victimisation; the loss of job, career and livelihood.
Or, as in the case of Satyendra Dubey, even the loss of one's own life.
The third factor which makes Dubey's death so tragically special is that it exposes, once again, the callousness of our nation's administrative system.
It is now well established that Dubey's letter to the Prime Minister giving details of the corruption in the Golden Quadrilateral highway project, was routinely circulated. This in spite of the writer's earnest request that his name should not be disclosed as he feared vengeful reaction from the people involved in the scam. As it happens, Dubey's courage was not foolhardy: he anticipated trouble and wrote a second letter, again requesting anonymity. That too was ignored. Whether the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) did this deliberately or just through the usual carelessness isn't established, but the net result was that the whistle-blower's name fell into the hands of the very people against whom the whistle was being blown. With what consequences we all know.
The callousness doesn't end there. We know that the Golden Quadrilateral is the Prime Minister's own dream project, as important to him personally as Indo-Pakistan relations. We also now know that Satyendra Dubey's killing has evoked a huge response all over the country. Yet the PM has said not a word about it. No condemnation of the killers, no promise of swift justice, no anger at PMO officials, not even a letter of condolence to the Dubey family. The Dubey killing to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office is just another statistic, although it is anything but routine to the rest of the country.
This response, or rather the lack of it, is not an aberration. This is the way of the government. And when that is said, it isn't aimed particularly at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), or for that matter, any political party. That's because a government formed by any political party will behave the same way, which is to ignore injustice and corruption, look the other way and hope that public indignation will be short-lived.
The obvious reason why all parties tacitly acquiesce in this convenient blindness is that politicians across party lines have much to hide. Look at the Telgi fake stamp paper scandal. It went on for years, crossed State boundaries, deprived the government of hundereds of crores of rupees and would have continued to do so hadn't it been for a whistle-blower (in the Pune police department) and an activist with a conscience and a Gandhian approach (Anna Hazare).
This is precisely why governments of all idealogies rush through acts like the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), which gives the police powers of arbitrary detention of "other people", while ignoring proposed legislation like the Public Interest Disclosure (Protection of Informers) Bill (PIDB).
Significantly, both POTA and PIDB were drafted by the same man at the same time. Former Supreme Court Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy submitted both drafts two years ago. The response to POTA was a rare joint session of Parliament; the response to PIDB was the usual dusty shelf. If the Protection of Informers Bill had been made into law, Satyendra Dubey might still have been alive today.
All governments rely on public memory being short.
It generally is because we move on to the next scandal and to yet another scam. Perhaps that's what the PMO hopes will happen here too. But it ignores one vital difference.
Some newspapers have taken on the Dubey murder as a campaigning issue to ensure that public interest does not die out. More than that, the medium of the internet, with its instant access and its rapid multiplier effect, has come into its own in this case, and the protest signatures have begun to mount in very large numbers every day, and show no sign of abating.
Could this be the beginning of a new phase in our democracy? Our middle-class has felt emasculated because the vote — democracy's most potent weapon — has meant very little to it because of the weight of numbers. But the internet gives it a chance to make its voice heard. Maybe, just maybe, this voice will now get louder. Satyendra Dubey should not have died but in his death he may have begun a revolution.
Anil Dharker is a journalist, media critic and writer.
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