In view of Rajnish Rai, Gujarat-cadre IPS officer being appointed as the assistant professor at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), the HRD ministry has rejected a request from the Union Home Ministry to act against this decision of the institution saying it had wrongly appointed Rai! The HRD ministry wrote back to the Home Ministry expressing its inability to meddle with the affairs of the IIM, the institution being an autonomous body. The institution had taken legal opinion before appointing him as a faculty member in the department of Public Systems Group that promotes research in policy.

It was only after the Gujarat HC on July 23 this year made sharp remarks against such governmental interference that the MHRD had backtracked. A division bench of the court had expressed its disapproval when it emerged that the Ministry of Human Useful resource Improvement (MHRD) had earlier written to the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) concerning the institute’s choice to make use of retired IPS officer Rajnish Rai. Justice S R Brahmbhatt, heading the division bench, requested after perusing the letter, “IIM-A is an unbiased establishment; the Authorities of India is writing such letters?”

Advocate Rahul Sharma, another IPS officer turned lawyer, now practising in the Gujarat high court, representing Rai, argued that the MHRD had written to IIM-A asking why the institute had employed Rai when he’s under suspension! Rai’s petition sought instructions to the respondent events to “not intervene, straight or not directly” and “enable him to take up any employment, career or occupation that he might select to earn his livelihood, subject to limitations positioned by Rule 26 of the All India Companies (Dying-Cum-Retirement Profit) Guidelines, 1958”.

Rai, clearly not favoured by the current regime in Delhi had supervised the probe into the encounter case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, Kauserbi and Tulsiram Prajapati in 2007. He took voluntary retirement from the service (VRS) in November 2018 and was working with IIM-A as affiliate professor of Public Methods Group since March 6.

Rajnish Rai had arrested fellow officer D.G. Vanzara in connection with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case in 2007. Probing the case, he had made his first arrests in 2007, where apart from Vanzara he had also arrested IPS officer Rajkumar Pandian and Rajasthan cadre IPS Dinesh MN among others. This had led him to constantly be at loggerheads with the State government helmed by Narendra Modi, the then CM of Gujarat.

On November 30, 2018, the 1992- batch IPS, Rai took voluntary retirement after completing 50 years of age. This was under Section 16 (2) of All India Services (Death-Cum-Retirement Benefit) Rules, 1958 that grants VRS to a government servant who has completed 50 years of age, provided they are not under suspension. When Rai applied for VRS, he was posted as Inspector General, Counter Insurgency and Anti-Terrorism School, CRPF in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh.

The Union government had rejected Rai’s application for VRS and asked him to return to duty. While Rai approached the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) seeking relief, the Central Government issued a chargesheet against him and suspended him for handing over charge in an unauthorized manner.

Rai has moved the Gujarat HC challenging the suspension. The Home Ministry raised objections with the HRD Ministry about Rai’s appointment at IIM citing that he continued to be a suspended officer. The HRD Ministry has stepped away from the matter saying that the matter is still sub judice. 

Why is RajnishRai’s Appointment at the IIM such a ‘huge issue’?
In April 2007, Rai had shown exemplary courage by arresting Vanzara, Pandian and Dinesh MN in the fake encounter murder of Sohrabuddin, his wife Kauserbi and close associate Tulsiram Prajapati. Though Pandian was Rai’s batch-mate and close friend, Rai was convinced that Pandian had committed the crime of custodial murder.

He had levelled serious allegations against then Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah saying that he connived to kill Prajapati with the help of PC Pandey, a top cop whom Rai had indicted in 1992. Following the investigation, Shah, now the Union Home Minister and the most powerful man in the BJP, was jailed in connection to the case in 2010 and banned from entering Gujarat till 2012, lest he influence an otherwise fair investigation of the case.

Getting onto the bad side of the government, Rai was shipped to Chattisgarh’sJaduguda district as the Chief Vigilance Officer. Rai had then challenged this transfer saying that it had been issued with ‘mala fide intent’. While he was at Jaduguda, he had stumbled upon irregularities in the Uranium Corporation where he was posted. Conducting a probe and handing over the findings to the CBI, he was instead chargesheeted for conducting an unauthorized probe.

He was subsequently transferred to Shillong as IG, North Sector, CRPF, where he unearthed the gory practice of extrajudicial killings in Assam. After this, he was immediately shunted out to Chittoor when he pointed out that the joint encounter of two suspected militants was fake and that they had been killed in cold blood.

Prior to his appointment at IIM-A, he was prevented by the government from joining IIM-Udaipur as a faculty member.

Rai has been incessantly kicked around for exposing the loopholes and corruption in the system. All this for his belief that services should act according to the law.

Even after all these efforts, after the BJP won the national elections, charges against the arrested officers were dropped, they were acquitted in the matter and granted plum postings.
 
Related:
Punishment Transfer: CRPF DIG Rajneesh Rai who called Encounter ‘Fake’ Transferred out of North East
Kill people. Add up points. Move up the ranks: Disturbing truth in CRPF inspector general’s report
Sohrabuddin Fake Encounter: All accused acquitted, 92 witnesses turned hostile
Sohrabuddin Case File
 

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Prof Kaushik Basu (middle) with Kumaramangalam Birla, Errol D’Souza 

Without naming Modi, Prof Basu regretted, under him professionalism and morality in managing the economy are taking backseat, leading to such decisions as demonetization and manipulation of economic growth data. In sharp contrast, he praised former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for showing extraordinary degree of professionalism in revamping the economy in 1991.

Recalling his years of working as chief economic adviser under Dr Singh post-2009, Prof Basu — flanked by IIM-A director Prof Errol D’Souza, and Kamaramangalam Birla, IIM-A chairman, who called him “one of India’s most illustrious economists” — said, India was then known for its “quality and integrity of its statistical system” among World Bank circles as also top economists like Nobel laureate Angus Deaton – something it may lose now.

Excerpts:

I have, over the years, become convinced that reasoning is the most under-utilized of human faculties. Read some of the discussions and commentary on social media, and listen to television debates, and you will wonder where reason has vanished. This is a telling commentary on education and explains why we make so many policy mistakes.

Within economics game theory illustrates the power of good reasoning. One important axiom of game theory asserts: It is not good enough to be rational yourself. You must recognize that others are likely to be rational too and take that into account.

Policy mistakes, such as the demonetization, which has hurt India’s growth, would not have occurred if there were policymakers that paid heed to this simple axiom. For every policy, you have to anticipate how ordinary individuals and also bureaucrats will respond. That is the key to designing successful policy mechanisms.

How good, professional reasoning is critical for good policymaking is illustrated well with India’s foreign exchange reserve story. For more than 20 years, till 1991, India’s foreign exchange reserves used to be roughly 5 billion dollars. The years 1991 to 1993 India saw some of the most far-reaching and well-designed reforms ever undertaken.

Those were the reforms that changed India’s growth story. One of the policy changes pertains to foreign exchange reserves. For a long time, the government’s belief was that since we have so little foreign exchange, we must not let people take foreign exchange out of the country. What this missed out on was not realizing that if you don’t allow people to take foreign exchange out, they will not bring foreign exchange in.

This logic led to the conclusion that you have to make it easier for people to take foreign exchange out of the country to increase the amount of foreign exchange in the country. This was part of the policy reform package of 1991-93. The benefit was magical. The foreign exchange reserve which used to be roughly 5 billion dollars for 20 years, rose in the next 20 years to nearly 300 billion dollars. It was professionalism with fine reasoning that led to this huge success.

Traditional economics talks a lot about profit-motive and individual rationality. What is often forgotten but is actually as important for a society’s long run success is morality. Morals and trust provide the nuts and bolts of society. Without those you can get short run success but not long-run development.

In 2009, when I was Chairman of Cornell’s Department of Economics, and taking a vacation in India, I got an unexpected phone call from the Prime Minister’s office. The caller, a Joint Secretary, quickly got to the point. Dr Manmohan Singh wanted to know if I would consider being the Chief Economic Adviser to his government.

The following day, after I met Dr Manmohan Singh and had a wonderful meeting, I made a vow. I told myself that, since my life till then had been one of pure indulgence, that of the joys of research, if I were to wean myself away from that, I must do so with only one purpose, that of serving society. That is what I tried to do during the 7 years I worked as a policymaker – 3 years with the Indian Government and 4 with the World Bank. Looking back, I feel better.

In the rough and tumble of everyday life, in trying to be successful at any cost, many people push aside all morality. We see this among politicians, who try to win elections at all cost; we see this among business persons, who try to earn more profit at all cost. This is the cause of many of society’s woes. Indeed, for long-run success of a society, it is essential to have these moral anchors.

Let me briefly turn to India’s economy to illustrate some of these arguments. There are unmistakable signs of India’s economy slowing down over the last few years. The latest data on industrial growth, pertaining to January 2019, shows that India’s industry is barely growing, with the growth rate down to 1.7%.In the year 2017-18 India’s exports were a little less than what the country exported in 2013-14, which means virtually 0% growth in exports on average for 4 years, which has rarely happened in the past.

What is happening to overall growth? The official data shows that GDP growth in the last quarter has gone down. And there are analysts, such as Arun Kumar, in Caravan magazine, arguing that growth is even lower because the unorganized sector for which we do not have proper data shows signs of a massive slowdown.

Further, the agricultural sector is in recession, and the farmers feel neglected. The most worrying is the jobs situation. If you put together all the piecemeal data coming in, it is clear that our workers are suffering greatly, with unemployment rate at over 7%, according to the Center for Monitoring the Indian Economy, and youth unemployment at 16%, as per a study by Azim Premji University. It is unfortunate that data on unemployment are being held back.

The concern about this, expressed recently by 108 leading economists, is a genuine concern. When I was Chief Economist of the World Bank, it was always good to see that India stood out, not just among emerging economies but all countries, for the quality and integrity of its statistical system.

The Nobel prize-winner, Angus Deaton, in an article with Valerie Kozel in 2005, gave India tribute for its pioneering statistical work. He mentioned how India’s “NSSO surveys, pioneered by Mahalanobis in the 1940s and 1950s, were the world’s first … household surveys to apply the principles of random sampling.” We must take care not to damage this reputation. None of all this is necessary. India’s fundamentals are strong and we should be doing much better.

The two reasons why this is happening are a shortage of professionalism and a disproportionate focus on big businesses and their interests. The first pertains to reason and the second to morals. Professionalism means policymaking based on data and reasoning. The economy is too complex to be handled by hunch and gut feeling. Passion is important but you cannot have exports booming, jobs being created by passion alone. Expertise and professionalism are critical.

Make no mistake. Business and enterprise are important. Big business is also a fact of today’s world and technology. But in trying to nurture business and enterprise we must not neglect the poor and the unorganized sector. India is still largely an agricultural nation and it is sad to see this major sector suffering.

India’s is a remarkable history. Around the time that we got independence, several nations – in Asia, in Africa, in the Americas – also gained independence. Many of these nations wanted to be open and democratic. It is an amazing fact of history that the only new nation from that time that has managed to hold on to democracy, secularism, and free speech, for all this time, is India.

We were lucky to have open-minded founding fathers, like Gandhi and Nehru, and thinkers with global humanity, like Tagore. They had their own struggles but in the end they strove to build a nation that was open to all religions, all races and tried to banish divisions of caste and gender.

Did India do right by holding on to democracy, secularism, free speech and quality higher education so early? I do not have a definite answer. But I do know that nations like the United States by holding onto these qualities did phenomenally well in the long-run. In the early 20th century, Argentina and United States stood neck to neck in terms of economic status.

My point is simple, whether or not the early investment in democracy, secularism, free speech and higher education was right, having made these investments, we must not fall into the trap of narrow-minded group identities, and begin to imitate nations that do not value these qualities, and make ourselves in the image of those nations.

On February 8, 1994, on the occasion of receiving the Indira Gandhi Prize, Vaclav Havel, Czechoslovakia’s great revolutionary and, later, president, spoke about his admiration for India and its founding fathers. And how India’s victory “was a great victory for the ideas of nonviolence, tolerance, coexistence, and understanding.”

He went on say, “I am convinced that the creation of multicultural civilization I have talked about, the creation of conditions based on mutual respect and tolerance of different cultures … will always find one of the important sources of its vitality in Gandhi’s work.”

India commands a huge global respect for its polity of openness and tolerance. There are forces at work in the country that want to destroy this and make us in the image of failed nations.

Courtesy: Counter View

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