The country’s premier investigating agency is getting increasingly burdened with all sorts of cases, political and financial. It needs modern technology to keep pace with the challenges. Yet, the Government continues to starve it of money
The loss of reputation and pride of the Central Bureau of Investigation because of its questionable performance in the 2G Spectrum case and the Commonwealth Games scam has as much to do with the intra-body corruption as it to do with the budget crunch. As I read about one after the other case being forwarded to the CBI, I feel sad that none of these cases would see any justice — and it’s not just because of CBI’s jocular nom de plume being ‘Congress Bureau of Investigation’, but also because of the fact that even if the CBI wants to do something, it cannot. And the reason is straightforward. The CBI’s resources are in serious short supply as no successive Government in recent times has made any concerted effort to upgrade the agency to be a state-of-the-art investigative body like the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US. The CBI is still plagued with vacant chairs, old modules of investigation and, above all, it has no tentacles to reach the culprits directly and swiftly.
In this year’s Union Budget, a hilarious amount of Rs416.66 crore has been allocated to the CBI. In contrast, the FBI’s budget was a mind-boggling $8,118 million for the year 2012. And also consider the fact that the CBI’s domain is 1.2 billion people as against 300 million for the FBI. That makes a case for an increase of 400 times in the budget allocation for the CBI. Such a sarcastic, petite allocation of funds not only makes the CBI an inefficient and ineffective body but also reduces their ambit of control and span of investigation. The budget crunch has turned the body into a frustrated bunch of officials for whom work has got reduced to mere obligations.
The lack of funding and will for expansion make it possible for hundreds of criminals to escape the CBI’s clutches. Its stringent, centralised model doesn’t allow it to enter premises outside its jurisdiction, even in the case of grave emergencies. The CBI network is divided into 10 different zones, with two to three locations covered under each zone. The hinterland largely escapes the CBI’s coverage domain as the so-called Special Crime Zones are mostly concentrated in Delhi and Mumbai. And the less one talks about forensics, the better. If a crime takes place, the forensic team has to rush from Delhi to unearth the case because there is no other forensic office of the CBI outside the capital.
Every time there is a case handed over to the CBI — wherever the location of the case might be — the defendants, and in fact all those summoned, have to shuttle to and fro from Delhi. Really, why is the body so centralisedIJ Why can’t it have effective operations from all corners of the countryIJ The answers lie in the CBI’s weak infrastructure and the (perhaps deliberate) lack of political will. The present state of the CBI provides evidence enough about the ineffective investigative procedures that haunt the department and its handling of cases. For instance, the CBI has had to repeatedly knock at the doors of external agencies (like the FBI during the Bhanwari Devi case as Indian agency is not equipped with the latest technology to extract forensic details from human remains post-cremation).
Predictably, the financial bulwark of the agency has been largely ignored because it serves no purpose to the Government to augment the CBI’s resources — except to target the Opposition. The agency has no electoral value for the Government. The Indian electorate is not mature enough to be sensitive about the CBI’s cause; and above all, it has no idea about the way the CBI is misused and abused. Therefore, the ruling regime makes no hue and cry about the successive failures of the CBI, exemplified by its lopsided ‘success’ rate, for example in defence-related cases, where the the agency has obtained just one conviction out of the 22 cases under its purview since 2004.
With respect to the current allocation, a major chunk of the same is targeted towards establishment costs — because the CBI is not spread out enough. So, if there is a marginal increase in allocation, there will be likewise only a marginal increase in its network, and the CBI would be endlessly stuck in the same place. In contrast, the FBI is spread over 56 field offices and 370 resident agencies across the US, giving it the requisite latitude and penetration to reach every home of the country.
The already-beleaguered body can boast of a roaster whose strength is only as good as 6,590 sanctioned employees — with 924 positions still lying vacant. Worse, the salary of the staff hardly matches the per capita income of the nation. As a huge amount of money is spent on establishment costs, a very minuscule amount is left for salaries and wages. The pay-scale ladder begins at a humiliating Rs5,200 per month for constables and increases at a snail’s pace as one goes upwards. The Director of CBI, sitting at the top of the entire hierarchy, earns not more than Rs80,000 per month (which is only around $1,500). Compare this to the salary of a new FBI special agent who draws nothing less than $43,000 as his base annualised salary. And the reasons for such a pathetic allocation are also very obvious. Keeping the CBI small and confined allows the Government to dictate the working of the bureau and also allows the ‘powers that be’ to dodge investigation. Moreover, a financially crunched bureau, to a large extent, could and would facilitate (by acts of commission or omission) corporate scandals and political corruption for all the obvious reasons.
Going by the way corruption cases and scams are being exposed, the CBI needs to be made an independent, investigative body. This should start with an allocation that is at least 10 times that of the current pittance. The money must be necessarily used for the expansion of the bureau with units in almost all cities across the nation. Another huge chunk of the allocation should be dedicated towards improving the CBI’s technology to state-of-the-art standards and towards establishment of modern research labs. Finally, the salary of the staff should be made at par with their counterparts across the world. No agent would be able to do justice to his role if his life is surrounded with financial worries and an indecent living condition.
(The author is a management guru and honorary director of IIPM Think Tank)