Rafale Deal – The Inside Story

The Rafale Deal – The Inside Story in Waiting

President Francois Hollande and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani have signed a 6.3bn euro ($7.02bn) agreement for the sale of 24 Dassault Aviation-built Rafale fighter jets. The contract - the third this year for Dassault AVMD.PA after deals to sell Rafale jets to Egypt and India - also includes MBDA missiles and the training of 36 Qatari pilots and 100 technicians by the French military.

Global media has started discussing Rafale deal with India and its cost and other related issues.

Any high-value deal where political people are involved is bound to attract public attention. Sooner or later this story has to come out. Nothing can remain hidden forever. Time and Tide (including political tide) wait for none.

Why political leaders get involved in large deals?

No political party has any business model which can generate enough revenue for continuous funding to bear all their 5-star expenses including party’s political expenses and cost of their round the year political rallies. In the absence of any state funding, someone has to fund all these expenses. Who will do it? Why they will do it? How they will recover the money given for political cause?

Source of funding:

An average cost of running a large political party must be about Rs. 100 crores a month. This does not include any salary or out of pocket expenses. Who will collect all this every day, that too in a transparent manner, which can be audited?

Like a sensible business person, political leaders must be saying focus on big deals in place of small transactions, because the return on effort and return on time investment will be much more.

That is why globally, defense deals or any big ticket deal are always under controversy because of their high budget and excessive political involvement. Rafale deal is no exception.

What will be the outcome of the Rafale deal?

In my view, like Bofors, this deal will also get exposed outside India where the Indian political system has no control.

Please remember - the case came into light during Vishwanath Pratap Singh's tenure as defense minister and was revealed through investigative journalism tipped off by a Reuter's news revelation on Swedish radio, followed up by a team led by N. Ram of the newspaper The Hindu. The journalist who secured the over 350 documents that detailed the payoffs was Chitra Subramaniam reporting for The Hindu. Later the articles were published in The Indian Express and The Statesman when The Hindu stopped publishing stories about the Bofors scandal under immense government pressure and Chitra Subramaniam moved to the two newspapers. In an interview with her, published in The Hoot in April 2012 on the 25th anniversary of the revelations, Sten Lindstrom, former chief of Swedish police, discussed why he leaked the documents to her and the role of whistle-blowers in a democracy.

When there is so much interest in Rafale deal in India, this will also attract many investigative journalists outside India to start their work. Any organization like Wikileaks, etc will work overtime to get the facts out.

Indian journalists with contacts in other countries will ask their friends to get some leads.

Competitors of Dassault will also be working overtime to kill this deal.

Shareholders and lawyers of France will also prefer to play some role.

Social media around the world will share every minute details because this will be good for their own publicity.

Please do not forget, many executives and lawyers of Rafale will be involved in drafting of this deal, many will write their biographies after retirement and will expose the facts.

So, in my view, it is a matter of time that facts will come in public domain. We have to wait for that day.

Then what:

Till date Bofers is a landmark case in political corruption in India, where the value of corruption was just about 63 crores.

What will be the implications, if Rafale deal was painted as corruption scandal? What is the size of the deal?

During Bofors, there was no social media or internet, but in today's world, every statement for or against Rafale deal will remain in the public domain and this will remain forever.

CEOs of companies, Ministers or Prime Ministers will not remain in this world forever to suppress the facts but their acts, omissions or commissions, whatever will be the fact,  will remain a case study for future generation.

Who will defend them when facts will be out in public domain?

What history tells us about people?

Gandhi, Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Bofors, Emergency, all are remembered in every political debate. Do you think in future Rafale and people involved with Rafale deal will not be remembered? Surely, this will also be remembered. But in positive way or negative way - let us wait for the right time.

The issues are not about the discussion but how they will be branded and projected – leadership was with or against the honesty and truth.

What is expected from the government?

In my view, the common man is only keen to know the commercial part of the deal, not technical details of the deal. Why it is so difficult to share how much taxpayers money will be given for the deal and for what purpose? 

The another big question is why HAL was kept out of the deal and a new company is introduced for the deal? There must be some reason, please elaborate on the same. 

This is expected from any government who is claiming that everything is transparent and nothing is wrong with the deal.

Internet and Social Media will be ruthless in projecting facts. Are we ready to handle all this?

If not, let us stick to Good Corporate Governance and Good Political Governance. 

History will not show any mercy for any good work done, if Rafale deal is based on ulterior motives. Rajiv Gandhi did many good things including the IT revolution in India, but people only remember Bofors.

I sincerely wish Rafale deal should not replace Bofors as an example of political corruption in the history of India after few years.

(Just now - My assessment was right that foreign investigative media will break the news - Mr Hollande's statement to a French investigative website Mediapart on Friday that the Indian government had proposed Reliance Defence as the Indian partner of French defence giant Dassault, and that France "did not have a choice" in the matter.)

"Edwy Plenel, editor of Mediapart, tells how the French investigative journal landed on a massive revelation in the Rafale deal. Probing the role of former French President Francois Hollande's partner in the multi-million dollar fighter jet deal, Mediapart got Mr Hollande to reveal that it was the Indian government that had proposed Anil Ambani's Reliance Defence as India partner for the Rafale contract, Mr Plenel said. The Indian government has already denied the charge, saying the report "is being verified". Mr Plenel, however, said his publication stood by the story and had enough evidence to back it up."