Grandstanding and rhetoric, evident in his Interpol speech, don’t match CBI chief’s impressive record
In recent times, the debate on corruption has been dominated more by spectacle than by substance. The extravagant claim, the sweeping indictment have robbed the anti-corruption agenda of rigour. This was once again on display on Monday when, addressing an Interpol anti-corruption programme in the capital, CBI director Amar Pratap Singh invoked ancient Indian scriptural wisdom to declare “yatha raja, tatha praja”, or “if the king is immoral, so will be his subjects”. Even as generalisations go, this one is farther away from home than others. After all, if you take out the recent exertions of the CBI under the apex court’s hawk-eye supervision and look at its record, would it not be more apt to say yatha raja, tatha CBI?
In the same breath, Singh claimed that nearly Rs 24 lakh crore has been stashed away illegally by Indians in tax havens abroad. We have witnessed grandstanding on black money before but it has mostly emanated from political quarters, not from the country’s premier investigation agency. Just a few months ago, in a bid to wrest the initiative from Team Anna, and to assert his own relevance, when senior BJP leader L.K. Advani embarked on a tour-athon across the nation, he quoted a similarly staggering figure he attributed to a US-based think tank, Global Financial Integrity. Advani had raised the issue even earlier, during the 2009 Lok Sabha campaign. But judging by the dwindling and disinterested crowds he drew in his Jan Chetna Yatra, he was as unsuccessful now as he had been then in investing the issue with believability. Now that Singh has thrown a new figure, the onus is even more on him, as the CBI director, to explain where he got this from. For, as this newspaper reported, the government’s draft report on black money puts the figure of undisclosed income stashed away in Geneva accounts in the realm of a far more modest Rs 565 crore.

Over the past year or so, from investigations into the CWG scam to 2G, the CBI has done itself proud and, even if under court supervision, it has showcased high standards of professionalism and tenacity. Next time Singh is tempted to quote the scriptures or pluck a figure on black money and/or corruption from what seems like thin air, he must take a deep breath. Because he has a reputation to protect.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/yatha-raja-tatha-cbi/912165/