Gen VK Singh is a hero for fighting the Enemy Within
by Venky Vembu Mar 29, 2012
It must be abundantly clear why Gen VK Singh today finds himself in an unholy mess. He has violated the Omerta Code of the Power Circle. The one that dictates that once you’ve made it to the posh club of power insiders, you don’t talk about some things, such as the gravy train that everyone rides on and feeds off.
In the posh clubs where liveried waiters hover like friendly ghosts, and where moustachioed Generals and netas in their pressed bandhgalas and babus in their pin-stripe suits guffaw and talk pussy over their Patiala pegs, it is taboo to talk about money. Particularly the kind of obscene money that everyone gets a fair share of when deals are finalised.
Into that posh club, Gen VK Singh has blundered in like a barefoot dehati.
And, worse, he declines gratuitous invitations from fellow officers for him to become “one of them” by getting suited-booted up, refuses to clamber aboard their gravy train and help himself to the goodies – and, horror of horrors, goes so far as to initiate investigations into their own conduct unbecoming of officers. All this merely because they played by the “jobs for the boys” rules of the Power Club, and feathered their own nests.
And now, he has begun focusing his Sauron eye on serving officers, who are in line to become Army Chief. Is the man mad, they wonder. How did we ever let him into the club, they fret.
Of course, there have been – and continue to be – honest men in the uniformed services, just as there are honest men in politics and in the civil service. But even when they themselves are scrupulously clean, they have all along abided by the Omerta Rule: even when they knew that other officers and netas and babu were pigging out on the trough, they chose to look the other way. Why blow the whistle and invite trouble, and risk losing their honour and their well-earned pension and the prospect of being invited to head some committee or a thinktank in the future?
Which is why the retired Lieutenant General whom Gen VK Singh accused of offering him a bribe cannot get his head around the fact that there are still a few good men in uniform. “Army chiefs before you have accepted money, and army chiefs after you will, so why do you not?” he asked Gen VK Singh, when he made the offer of a Rs 14 crore bribe.
Gen VK Singh is a hero for fighting the Enemy Within : Read more details
by Venky Vembu Mar 29, 2012
It must be abundantly clear why Gen VK Singh today finds himself in an unholy mess. He has violated the Omerta Code of the Power Circle. The one that dictates that once you’ve made it to the posh club of power insiders, you don’t talk about some things, such as the gravy train that everyone rides on and feeds off.
In the posh clubs where liveried waiters hover like friendly ghosts, and where moustachioed Generals and netas in their pressed bandhgalas and babus in their pin-stripe suits guffaw and talk pussy over their Patiala pegs, it is taboo to talk about money. Particularly the kind of obscene money that everyone gets a fair share of when deals are finalised.
Into that posh club, Gen VK Singh has blundered in like a barefoot dehati.
And, worse, he declines gratuitous invitations from fellow officers for him to become “one of them” by getting suited-booted up, refuses to clamber aboard their gravy train and help himself to the goodies – and, horror of horrors, goes so far as to initiate investigations into their own conduct unbecoming of officers. All this merely because they played by the “jobs for the boys” rules of the Power Club, and feathered their own nests.
And now, he has begun focusing his Sauron eye on serving officers, who are in line to become Army Chief. Is the man mad, they wonder. How did we ever let him into the club, they fret.
Of course, there have been – and continue to be – honest men in the uniformed services, just as there are honest men in politics and in the civil service. But even when they themselves are scrupulously clean, they have all along abided by the Omerta Rule: even when they knew that other officers and netas and babu were pigging out on the trough, they chose to look the other way. Why blow the whistle and invite trouble, and risk losing their honour and their well-earned pension and the prospect of being invited to head some committee or a thinktank in the future?
Which is why the retired Lieutenant General whom Gen VK Singh accused of offering him a bribe cannot get his head around the fact that there are still a few good men in uniform. “Army chiefs before you have accepted money, and army chiefs after you will, so why do you not?” he asked Gen VK Singh, when he made the offer of a Rs 14 crore bribe.
Gen VK Singh is a hero for fighting the Enemy Within : Read more details
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