NEW DELHI: In a book discussion on the book titled The Rafale Deal: Flying Lies, N Ram, former Editor in Chief, the Hindu Group of Publications highlighted that corruption in arms deals is of a different league. Ram said, “It’s in a league of its own. It’s inescapable. There are very few exceptions.”
The book written by independent journalists Ravi Nair and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is on the procurement of the 4.5 Generation Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) Rafale deal under which India was to procure 126 aircraft but it was changed to 36 in 2015 by the present NDA government.
An inter-governmental agreement (IGA) was signed formally by India and France on January 25, 2016 with a deal worth around Rs 58,000 crore.
Paranjoy made it clear that all the material used in the book is open source and is publicly available. The participants for discussion also included Academic Professor Srinath Raghavan, Aakar Patel, former head of Amnesty International, India, Activist Kavita Krishnan, Senior Lawyers Prashant Bhushan and Sanjay Hegde and journalist Col. Ajai Shukla. Ram quoted that at least 40% of all corruption in legal international trade happens in arms deals.