Sir, I refuse to retire

Old soldiers never die, but unlike the lines of the ballad, they don’t just fade away either. Many of them do a brisk trade in lucratively selling their connections.
The dangerous and disgraceful controversy surrounding the Army Chief, Lt. Gen. V.K. Singh, defence minister A.K. Antony (“St. Antony” in government circles) and the Defence Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) retired director-general, Lt. Gen. Tejinder Singh, recalls a dinner party where the parents of a man who had just stepped down as an ambassador were grumbling about their son being laid off — as they saw it — in the prime of life. “He’s only 60!” his mother wailed, “and at the peak of his mental powers”. His father added that he himself had become the head of a multinational corporation well after his 60th birthday.
Both wondered what their son would do now. Others joined in the conversation. Someone suggested he could be a diplomatic adviser. “And be accused of spying for China or Pakistan!” someone else countered. I was reminded of last Thursday’s (March 29) altercation in the Patiala House courts when the two factions supporting the Army Chief and the former DIA director-general almost came to blows like the feuding Capulets and Montagues in Romeo and Juliet. When someone called a critic of the Army Chief a traitor, the man shot back, “If I am a traitor, you are a Pakistani!”
High officials, civil or military, seldom retire. Previously, perhaps they couldn’t afford to. Now that pensions have soared and are often considerably in excess of the last salary drawn, they miss the perks and privileges of office. A family friend who had been accountant-general in British India would get into his gold braided red tunic every morning, order the car and go for a drive. It made him feel he was still somebody. That was an innocent affectation. Most just want to keep on earning, and they can do so best by returning to the field where they spent their careers. It can create complications, but who cares?
I remember the door opening suddenly while I was talking to a joint secretary in South Block and a little old man carrying a briefcase striding in. Conversation stopped. My host jumped up with a deferential “Good morning, sir!” and offered the visitor a cup of tea, but the man withdrew after a pleasantry or two. Exactly the same episode was repeated in another officer’s room later the same morning. Both the officers I had gone to meet explained the visitor was a retired senior secretary who was working for a commercial firm whose contracts needed some kind of external affairs ministry clearance. Both also expressed relief at having escaped a possibly embarrassing encounter because an outsider’s presence had inhibited their former boss.
All this seemed pertinent when Gen. V.K Singh accused Gen. Tejinder Singh of trying to bribe him, and when, denying the allegation, the latter filed criminal defamation suits against five serving officers, the Army Chief, two other lieutenants-generals, a major-general and a lieutenant colonel. It isn’t for me to comment on either position. Both are sub judice though we might know more by next Tuesday (April 10) when the Delhi metropolitan magistrate has promised to record pre-summoning evidence.
But it is interesting that an aggrieved Gen. Tejinder Singh found it necessary to tell reporters at the Patiala House courts that “not for a day” had he “been associated with any business that has anything to do with the military”. Since retiring in July 2010 he had been running “two small companies” in real estate and mining. We have absolutely no reason not to accept that denial at face value, especially since another statement by the Vectra Group, described as owner of Tatra and Tatra Sipox (UK), states “categorically” that Gen. Tejinder Singh had “never been contacted by the company for any purpose” and the company did “not have any business or any relation with him”.
Vectra chairman Ravinder Kumar Rishi’s boast that his company “does not need canvassing or selling agents” needn’t be taken quite as seriously. But it, too, confirms the drift. While Gen. Tejinder Singh may have had nothing at all to do with this sordid affair, it is not uncommon for senior defence officers to take up lobbying after retiring, just like that retired senior secretary I bumped into in South Block. Indeed, for a while one of the military heroes of the Bangladesh war represented a well-known Kolkata tea firm in New Delhi. It will be remembered, too, that when the late Win Chadha was accused in the `640 million Bofors scandal, a former defence secretary was also charged. Middlemen need people with links in the government.
The Indian Army has been buying Tatra multi-wheeled all-terrain vehicles since 1986 and now has some 7,000 of them. They may be the best in the market but it’s curious there were no global tenders until a recent decision in favour of open competition. It also seems rather circuitous for an NRI firm in the UK to send complete knock-down kits of a Czech-origin vehicle to be assembled under licence by our state-owned Bharat Earth Movers Ltd. So many links may need even more middlemen with contacts.
Some of today’s retired bigwigs are sent abroad as ambassadors. Some become governors. Public-sector undertakings and the Rajya Sabha absorb some. Those with intellectual pretensions find berths in the formidable new crop of think tanks or write unreadable memoirs. The rest put their contacts to effective use through some form of lobbying. Which is all the more reason why lobbying should be identified as a formal profession and all lobbyists forced to register, as in the US and UK.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author