Is national security also up for sale?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi often publicly ridicules the corruption within the Congress saying that since he doesn’t have a family, the corridors of power of his government are not corrupt.

But the shocking information brought to light by the online portal has revealed that even though Modi does nott have a family, his close aides have sons and nephews and that they were tactfully selling the country’s secrets using the power at the Centre. The news website has unveiled the fact that a think-tank India Foundation run by Shaurya Doval, son of National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav with Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Commerce and Industry of India Suresh Prabhu, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha and Deputy and Minister of External Affairs M J Akbar as Directors, has been receiving financial support from foreign defence and aviation companies.

India Foundation is an organization with the blessings of the Sangh Parivar that carries out the policy-making activities and international lobbying for the BJP as is the case with the Vivekananda International Foundation started by Ajit Doval. Also, the reality is that the stances and conclusions they reach become the country’s policies. The fact that it is the foreign defence and airline companies that provide financial assistance for conducting the seminars and programs of a research institute which have a crucial influence in forming the policies in the financial sectors of the central government, is not just a serious corruption allegation. It also proves that the highly dangerous deep state which gives priority to the foreign interests in the defence and industrial sectors of the country, determines the future of the nation. Though the Opposition has demanded an extensive investigation, the government has been reluctant to respond to such a serious allegation.

It is not coincidental that it is the aviation company Boeing and the controversial Israeli defence firm which faced allegations during the tenure of the UPA government and has been facing CBI investigation since, that provides financial help to the Foundation whose directors include the Defence Minister and Minister of State for Civil Aviation . A case was registered against Boeing in May this year into its financial transactions worth Rs 70, 000 crore. The Israeli firm sponsors the seminar held related to making the country’s borders technologically advanced. It is when the proposal to build fences along the borders of Kashmir in India like the Israel model are on, that the company which has already invested in such businesses get associated with the Foundation that is headed by the son of the National Security Advisor and the Defence Minister.

The information let out by The Wire underlines the fact that it is the greed of the corporate companies and the crooked kin along the corridors of power that frame the policies for national security. In fact, other financial ties of Shaurya Doval should also be investigated. The merging of Zeus Capital, a company earlier run by Shaurya with Gemini Financial Services, a foreign firm that functions for the capital investments of rich foreign nations in developing countries, is also mysterious. Allegations have been raised over the legal issue since the Foundation, which has four Ministers serving as the board members, had received foreign financial aid in a violation of Chapter III of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. Complaints have also been raised about illegal interventions in the registration procedures for receiving foreign currency.

It is not only that funds were raised from foreign companies under allegation; also, the various programmes and the financial sources of the Foundation were extremely opaque and suspicious. It is presumed that India Foundation has been aiming at ‘systematically influencing’ the foreign capital flowing into the country. And through them the Sangh parivar interests in national security and industrial capital investments - and with them the funds received legitimately and illegitimately - were protected for the long-term. The revelations that came out via “The Wire’ is a bizarre picture of those who boast of patriotism on a daily basis and brand all opponents as traitors, now slicing patriotism and putting it up for sale. But now who can be asked to conduct a probe in order to ascertain the whole story of this case that involves all the heavy weights of those in power?