Name of Faculty: Parinita Malhotra.
Title: “Satyendra Dubey” The whistle blower.
Topic Covered: Professional Ethics and Values.
Subject : Human Values.
Objective of Case:
1).To overview need of professional ethics.
2).To study requirement of whistle blower.
3). Legal aspect of whistle blower.
Overview: The case study is related to an IIT passed out Engineer Satyendra Dubey.He was killed by mafia for simply doing the right thing because he reported corruption to PM office.In this case Dubey has been taken under study as whistle blower in professional ethics.
About Satyendra Dubey
Satyendra Dubey (1973–2003) was an Indian Engineering Service (IES) officer. He was the Project Director in the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) at Koderma. He was murdered in Gaya, Bihar after fighting corruption in the Golden Quadrilateral highway construction project.
Early life
Satyendra Dubey, was born at the village of Sahpur in the Siwan district of Bihar, India. The family of five children three girls and two boys subsisted on a small piece of land, and Bageshwari also held a low-paying clerical position in a nearby sugar mill. Until the age of 15 he studied at the Gang Baksh Kanodiya High School in Sahpur and then joined junior college at Allahabad, about three hundred kilometres away. Satyendra was the topper of the state in 10th and 12th board exams. He got admission to the Civil Engineering Department of IIT Kanpur in 1990 and graduated in 1994. Subsequently, he did his M. Tech (Civil Engg.) from IIT Varanasi in 1996.
Professional life
After his masters, Satyendra joined the Indian Engineering Service (IES) and in July 2002, went on deputation to the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). Dubey became the Project Director at Koderma, Jharkhand, responsible for managing a part of National Highway 2 (The Grand Trunk Road). This highway was part of the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) Corridor Project, the Prime Minister's initiative, which aimed to connect many of the country's major cities by four-lane limited-access highways totalling 14,000 km. During this period, Dubey got the contractor of the project to suspend three of his engineers after exposing serious financial irregularities. At one point, he had the contractor rebuild six kilometres of under-quality road, a huge loss for the road contract mafia.
Detailed Case Study
Satyendra Dubey was one of those rare young men who was completely and uncomplicatedly honest. He didn't know he was a hero. An engineer probably never knew the word but died for simply doing the right thing. He was gunned down by the mafia in Gaya on early November 27 mornings, nearly a year after he had complained of corruption on the Golden Quadilateral project to the Prime Minister's office. Dubey was returning from a wedding in Varanasi, and called his driver to meet him at the station. He reached Gaya railway station at three in the morning, and found that the car was not able to come because of a battery malfunction. It appears that at this point Dubey decided to take a rickshaw home. When he didn’t reach home, his driver went to look for him and found him dead by the side of the road in the suburb of A.P. Colony.
Before his murder, Dubey had written a letter to PMO.Knowing the dangers that surround honest people bucking the whole corrupt system, in his letter, Dubey had requested that his name be kept secret, a request that wasn't honoured-the letter was sent from the PMO to the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways and then to the National Highway Authority of India, with which Dubey was working as Deputy General Manager.
Letter to the Prime Minister
Meanwhile, faced with the possibility of high-level corruption within the NHAI, Dubey wrote directly to the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, detailing the financial and contractual irregularities in the project. While the letter was not signed, he attached a separate bio-data so that the matter would be taken more seriously. Despite a direct request that his identity be kept secret and despite the letter's sensitive content, accusing some of Dubey's superiors, the letter along with bio-data was forwarded immediately to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. Dubey also sent the same letter to the Chairman of the NHAI. Soon Dubey received a reprimand: the vigilance office of NHAI officially cautioned Dubey for the impropriety of writing a letter directly to the Prime minister. In the process, through connections in the NHAI and the Ministry. The letter said the NHAI officials showed a great hurry in giving mobilization advance to selected contractors for financial consideration. "In some cases the contractors have been given mobilization advance just a day after signing the contract agreement."
"The entire mobilization advance of 10 per cent of contract value, which goes up to Rs 40 crore in certain cases, are paid to contractors within a few weeks of being awarded the work but there is little follow up to ensure that they are actually mobilized at the site with the same pace, and the result is that the advance remains lying with contractors or gets diverted to their other activities," it said.
Dubey also highlighted the problems of sub-contracting by the primary contractors like Larsen and Toubro.
"Though the NHAI is going for international competitive bidding to procure the most competent civil contractors for execution of its projects, when it comes to actual execution, it is found that most of the works, sometimes even up to 100 per cent are subcontracted to petty contractors incapable of executing such big projects," he said. "A dream project of unparalleled importance to the Nation but in reality a great loot of public money because of very poor implementation at every state." wrote Dubey. Finally, he ends: "I have written all these in my individual capacity. However, I will keep on addressing these issues in my official capacity in the limited domain within the powers delegated to me," the letter said.
His death speaks volumes about the growing nexus between politicians and mafia and also highlights the illegal procedures/ways involved in awarding contracts and also the allegedly fraudulent pre-qualification bids in connection to big development projects.
India has recently passed a federal Freedom of Information Bill in 2003 however it does not have a Whistleblowers Act recommended by the Constitution Review Commission in 2002. Moreover a draft bill on public disclosures recommended by the Law Commission lies in cold storage. Satyendra Dubey's death merits attention and a subsequent Public Interest Litigation urges the Supreme Court to direct the Centre to evolve a system to ensure protection to anybody who complains to the Government against corruption.
Corruption exists all over the world and thrives at all layers of government. Officers who refuse to enter the bandwagon are victimized. In India, the Tehelka expose involving defense deals had not only victimized the reporters involved in the undercover operation but also harassed virtually anybody associated with the portal. In this case, the owner of the Global capital who owned a share in the portal was imprisoned without any concrete charges framed against him. All this was due to the fact that the expose had caught some of the high ups in the ruling coalition taking bribes on camera!
The need and urgency of a whistle blowing act cannot be overemphasized even as Satyendra Dubey's death sparked off widespread public protest. Both in unlettered societies with meager resources as also in the developed world, there is an urgent need both for access to information by the public along with an act that would provide protection to all those who blew the whistle. It is time that the authorities took the fact that money associated with development works that usually comes from the tax payers pocket lands up in corrupt hands. In the process development takes the back seat. India cannot afford to lose its money nor its resources. The real heroes of today's world are honest people. They are few and far between. They are the ones society is longing to follow. But everywhere it sees them fail. Yet the world, and developing countries especially cannot afford to lose its honest officers who stand up against all odds and risk their lives. It is time the government thinks about cleaning its system by providing protection to all those ordinary people who dares to bare open facts and has a stake at country's future. Mere assurance from the Prime Minister that the guilty wouldn't be spared is not enough---either to the citizens or to Dubey's family. If the government really means business it has to go about demonstrating that there are systems in place for good people to rely on. We need a fast and efficient judiciary to handover judgments in fair and impartial manner with or without political and social pressure, and a clean and unbiased police that will come to the aid of those working on the right side of the law; we also need public knowledge about the constitution and rule of law; and laws that will encourage people in both urban and rural areas to come forward without any fear to usher in an era of transparency, accountability and participation in the governance of the country. We need a system, a society where a person can do its duty without fear and the head held high. If the government really intends to deliver such a nation, then it is time the government pulled up its sleeves and makes concrete efforts to pass a whistleblowers act. It follows that no measure to curb government and corporate transgressions in India or elsewhere will bear fruit unless legal immunity and protection against retaliation is given to responsible and conscientious whistle blowing.
Questions related to case:
Q1. What are professional values which make us fearless?
Q2. If you face similar situation in your professional life how would you react and why?
Q3. Do you think laws framed for safeguarding whistle blowers in India are sufficient?
References:
1 "Training & Placement Cell, IIT (BHU) Varanasi". Retrieved 6 January 2015.
2. "DNA Syndication article". DNA Syndication.
3. "6 yrs on, 3 petty thieves convicted for murder of NHAI whistleblower". The Times of India. 23 March 2010.
4. "Veejaypee demands murder enquiry" BBC 10 December 2003
5. "Suicides in Indian Murder Case" BBC 2 February 2004 press release CBI 14 June 2004 .
6. "Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)". Retrieved 6 January 2015.
7. GQ: Howrah highway stretch caves in". Indian Express, 10 February 2006
8. "Three convicted in Satyendra Dubey murder case". Indian Express, 22 March 2010
9. announcement of Satyendra K Dubey Memorial Award, IIT Madras Archived