Shiban Khaibri
Union Petroleum minister Veerappa Moily has made a startling yet stunning revelation that there are threats from the oil importing lobbies who do not want government to stop oil imports. They persuade policy makers and ministers against legislations, regulations or any type of slicing of imports “which would harm their masters’ interest”, the Minister goes on to say. Not only this, says Moily, every petroleum minister who occupies the post of petroleum ministry is “threatened” by the import lobbies. He further said that decision making process and power is being obstructed and aborted on many occasions. Moily also said that such elements want to disrupt the domestic exploration in order to achieve self sufficiency in the demand for the oil. This revelation is not to be taken lightly and made to lose its impact in totality in the current din of building of vote bank equations or the clamour of the so called looming threat of the (imaginary) polarization of politics in 2014 elections, wave of Bharat Nirman adds, secularism -et al.
Does it not look unimaginable making one increasingly aghast to get to know that a union cabinet minister of the world’s biggest democracy is threatened by some elements from taking any step for the betterment of the country like cutting on costly oil imports and to go in for massive find of the precious oil and gas in the country itself? Who prevents the present minister from, or who stopped the previous ministers to, use all the power, authority, force, and all that which the union minister has in its quiver, to neutralize such lobbies and those who “roamed the corridors of power “? It is not that a straight forward person like Moily is not conscious of the consequences of what he openly said and not that, he did not feel mortified saying so, but what is intriguing is that willy – nilly, such a system has been in operation without a whimper in the petroleum ministry, much to the detriment of the interests of the people .It is shocking and damning both and at the same time, a big reason to feel concerned about. Alarm bells must ring loud, not at the doors of the powers that be, but right at their office tables to act fast.
Is it because of such pressures and threatening that S. Jaipal Reddy was shown the door from the ministry which he appeared to run comparatively satisfactorily? Is it because of this reason that we watch helplessly a stagnant oil and gas exploration projects domestically going unheeded by the UPA2 government? Is proposed passing of food security bill for obvious reasons and prospective electoral returns more important than saving money on imports of oil which could go a long way in fighting poverty itself in this country and that too, not on ad-hoc basis ? Not only that, how it can be otherwise ensured that implementation of social welfare measures and poverty alleviation programmes would not be subverted by such elements appearing to have become so much emboldened? Is it because of this reason that we are not taking head on, the “other hindrances” which the Minister referred to? Is it because of this pressure and threat that though the “country is floating on a sea of oil and gas “, as mentioned by the Honb’le Minister, we are least worried to tap the same, to save our very precious foreign exchange spent on the import of oil? Is it because of such pressures which contribute to our current account deficit made to hover around 5% of our GDP since an equivalent to more than half of the country’s total earnings from exports, are spent on oil imports?
There are many questions that the people would like to ask as such pressures are aimed at preventing this country from conserving foreign exchange, explore its own resources. These pressures are therefore contributing towards creating humps in the path of our becoming an economic giant by the year 2020. We spent as much as $160 billion or nearly more than Rs.96000 crores on the import of oil during last fiscal. With the Rupee hitting all time low of Rs.60 against Dollar, the import bill this year is likely to be more with inherent higher inflationary spiral going to hit the common Indian. The Minister, however, deserves kudos for mustering courage in at least telling the nation about the style of the performance of the UPA2 that appears to be wedded to succumbing to the pressures and pulls of the “Coalition Dharma ” on the one hand and to the lobbies and pressures of “those who roamed the corridors of power “, on the other. We, however, have moment to feel assured by the Minister that “I refuse to buckle under pressure and cannot be threatened”. He has, at the same time, not come forward to name and expose such lobbies and influential elements vis-a-vis his ministry. On this, the left party leader Gurudas Dasgupta has gone to the extent of accusing him to work in the interests of the big corporate houses, citing the instance of how on account of revising the gas prices, Reliance stood to immensely gain. He is reported to have written to the Prime Minister about this “new find” which Gurudas calls as a “big scam” and has said that it means that the functioning of the ministry is not transparent and that the Minister should name the culprits. Ram Naik who was holding the charge of the ministry under the NDA rule has washed his hands off in having been subjected to any sort of pressure during his tenure. Then the question is whence has this virtual “remote control” to influence the sensitive decision taking processes in the ministry been in operation and whether any loss has been caused to the nation? If we could have saved on oil imports only to the extent of 10%, it would have brought in a lot of economic development in many a deserving area of the economy. Who will clear the mist and the haze over the issue of such sensitivity to facilitate more skeletons tumbling out of the cupboard?
The interesting thing to note is that the Congress party which leads the UPA2 coalition and of which Moily is one of the senior ministers, has come forward to say that it is for the concerned minister to explain and not the party. Party spokesman Shakeel Ahmed has said that whatever the issue and its contents, only Moily can say about what action, he has taken to isolate such lobbies. He “denied” any such pressure behind removal of the previous minister S. Jaipal Reddy from the oil ministry. While Shakeel Ahmed hailed Moily as a “very competent, very transparent and very straight forward minister”, he stood otherwise in total denial mode. The PM should have taken due cognizance of the matter and taken immediate proper action but it appears that these days priorities have slightly shifted towards avoidable abstract matters like certifying as to who is “secular” and who is not, the latest recipient being the Bihar CM who recently got “secular credentials” from no less a person than the Prime Minister himself. Priorities have to be identified and attended to, which alone can ensure good governance in our country.
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