It is interesting to note that no one is talking about the person culpable for leaking the Confidential Memo sent by Army Chief General V K Singh to the PM regarding India's Defence Preparedness, or rather the lack of it.
An initial attempt was made to discredit the Army Chief by insinuating that he was responsible for the leak, but when he strongly refuted the allegation and indicated that the person responsible for the leak should be tried for treason, the whole issue died down.
And it pays to find out why the issue (in fact the letter leak is the lesser of the two issues, the main one being the contents of the letter - as to how unprepared Indian Army is!!) was brushed under the carpet.
Coming from Kerala, and having watched our Defence Minister A K Antony over the past 35 years, I can vouch for his personal probity. You can hardly see a politician who lives such a spartan life as Antony, and that includes Manmohan Singh. He is personally clean, possess assets that would shame even a lower middle class government employee. But make no mistake. Antony is street smart. He has come up the hard way through the students wing of Congress- KSU, in an era when KSU was not the mess it is today. He also had to fight a pitched battle with the other giant of Kerala politics K Karunakaran, for a space in the Congress political arena. And taking on the Leader, as K Karunakaran is fondly called, is no mean task. But Antony survived and grew. And no one has been able to even think of throwing the corruption muck on Antony, a significant achievement in our tainted political scenario.
Many have accused Antony of indecisiveness. Antony is a careful decision maker by nature. He likes to err on the safer side. While there are many analysts who go to the town about how weak he is as a Defence Minister, they forget that he has been making an effort to crack down on the nefarious business dealings in Defence procurement. But since the first family is involved in most of the Deals, which is an open secret, Antony's hands are tied.
Antony respects the current Chief, and his honesty. And to be fair to him, he took the right decision to deny the Chief his request to revise his DOB. Even the Supreme Court upheld his decision. But throught the period when the Media was going gaga over the fight of V K Singh on his DOB issue, Antony maintained his decorum and never spoke out against the Chief or commented on the matter. For that matter, neither did the Chief. Even after the Supreme Court verdict, Antony kept his counsel and did not gloat over his decision being vindicated, but respected both the Court and the Chief's right to approach the Court for Grievance Redressal. The low profile maintained by Antony went a long way in diffusing the situation.
But Antony was indeed decisive. In the Cabinet meeting, post the letter leak, when everyone was baying for the Chief's blood, Antony stood his ground, backed his Chief, and virtually single handedly took the decision to not take any action against the Chief, thus showing his leadership. He also backed the Chief and the Army on the stupid Coup story, and made the PM issue a statement denying the story.
In fact, both the Defence Minister A K Antony and the Chief of Army Staff General V K Singh has behaved in exemplary manner during the last few months, while pursuing what both felt was right. They had a professional disagreement which went through the necessary redress channel and was resolved. Both maintained high degree of level headedness and propriety.
We should be thankful to them for that.
But the unanswered question remains - Who are the real culprits who created the DOB, Coup and the leaked letter Controversies?
The finger of suspicion points to people close to the First Family and to couple of powerful Cabinet Ministers, who are on the take with respect to Defence Kick Backs. This is evident from the brazenness with which these middle men work, their ability to manipulate the media and the public discourse, and finally the lack of progress on the investigation (if any!) to find the real culprits.
