CBI is DDT
IT can happen only at a time when the politicians are busy with elections. The Central Bureau of Investigation- CBI was celebrating the concluding part of its 50th anniversary and in a rare gesture they invited Gopal Krishna Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and now the Chairman of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Whether the CBI Chief and other dignitaries were prepared for the acidic speech of Gandhi is not known, but he had them.
Excerpts:
The CBI has a very mixed image. Not all of it is flattering. It is seen as Government's hatchet, rather than honesty's ally. It is often called DDT - meaning not dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, the colourless, tasteless, odourless insecticide it should be, but the Department of Dirty Tricks. This perception, however valid, needs to change.
The Director of the CBI, like an Army or Air Force or Navy Chief, should be totally independent professionally but not a loose cannon. (He) should be a phenomenal instrument, not a self-operating robot. He and his Bureau should be guardians of the law, never a law unto themselves.
There is justified criticism of CBI highhandedness and lack of sensitivity to loss of reputation of senior members of the bureaucracy against whom needless inquiries can get initiated... there is a temptation to bring down reputation of civil servants through unethical leaks to the media in real time during the course of the investigation. This is despicable.
At times the CBI is used as a tool to force civil servants to fall in line. No political party is a saint in this matter. But the CBI cannot afford to be complicit in this capriciousness. It must resist the unethical overtures.
At present, the CBI and the people of India are poles apart. The CBI is clothed in opacity, then ornamented by secrecy and finally perfumed by mystery, the triple wrappings of opacity, secrecy and mystery made it move to be taken out of the purview of the RTI Act. This is a great pity.