Taxing times of a 'Confrontationist'

Sukumar Mukhopadhyay 's engagingly written memoir, which is full of stories and lessons to be drawn, should be made a compulsory read for all revenue officers

It’s unlikely that many people outside the government, and even there only those who served till about 2010, would have heard of Sukumar Mukhopadhyay. We at this newspaper got to know him when he started writing a column in the mid-1990s.

He has now written his memoirs, which are actually a collection of his blogs. True to his personality, he calls the book just Autobiography. It’s a very valuable addition to the literature on how the government and his own department actually functioned and the difficulties that the honest people in government face.

He retired from the Indian Revenue Service with a very rare achievement: A highly regarded reputation for integrity. His last assignment was as a Member of the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC). As we can see from his book, it was a great struggle throughout.

Mr Mukhopadhyay who is now in his mid-80s, tells many stories. The book can be read from anywhere, start, middle or end. That makes it an ideal bedtime read.

His style is engagingly direct and that of a raconteur. “I am a confrontationist,” he says at the very start. He says his department, too, was confrontationist.

Mr Mukhopadhyay had a simple rule for himself and his subordinates: Don’t obey the wrong orders. That got him into plenty of confrontations with all sorts of people because if it was wrong, he wouldn’t do it, period. If it was right, no one could stop him from doing it, period. It was Confrontation with a C.

How did such an honest and inconvenient man make it to the very top? With great difficulty, it seems, because when his turn came to become a Member of the CBEC, the Prime Minister’s Office kept returning the file. This is what he says about that: “I went to him [the finance minister]. He told me ‘Higher authority thinks you are uncompromising. Why don’t you compromise? We are also running a coalition government.’”

“I replied, ‘Sir, I will not compromise’.” He adds that “these are the exact words. I have not forgotten them”. The finance minister was Manmohan Singh and he got along famously with Mr Mukhopadhyay, often taking his advice.

Mr Mukhopadhyay is also full of praise for Montek Singh Ahluwalia, then finance secretary. This is what he says about the two Singhs, under whom the finance ministry was briefly known to journalists as Gurudwara IMF Sahib. As I recall, a young member of the party had coined the phrase. “…Ahluwalia was of great vision… he was very fair and did not have any bias towards any business house… neither he nor Manmohan Singh ever had any bias for businessmen.”

Mr Mukhopadhyay was constantly being hauled up by the courts for contempt because he would not obey their order to release goods imported without the necessary licences. He always managed to win.

It is through his accounts of these instances when he refused to “cooperate” that we get a real sense of how the lobbies functioned in those days. Everything seems to have been negotiable.

The trick was to get interim injunctions which, he says, came as an “avalanche”.  “Bonds were ordered to be taken for six months validity without paying revenue. Once the goods were released the cases would never be decided.”

The problem, he says, was that the importers would hire heavyweight lawyers while the government lawyers were “puny in stature”. He sought permission to appoint equally heavyweight lawyers, which was granted by then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

But his efforts were resisted by the top lawyers who wanted to be paid the market rate, not the law ministry rate. The rule was one payment for one argument, but the lawyers wanted to bunch the cases so that they wouldn’t be wasting time. So he decided to go to the media.

Eventually, he managed to get his way. He recalls his fight with great relish, the stresses of court cases notwithstanding. His righteousness should serve as a lighthouse beacon to all tax officials.

But there can be a price to pay, as he discovered when he was tipped off by the Intelligence Bureau that some smugglers had hired a killer to deal with him. He was given police escort and also got himself and his driver a revolver.

But the intimidation continued and once there was even an attempt to kidnap his son from his school. But the fools kidnapped the wrong child. After that, his son was given police protection.

The book is full of stories and lessons to be drawn. Mr Mukhopadhyay has published it himself. I would strongly recommend to the finance minister that she make this book compulsory reading for all her revenue officers. It will show the mirror to the dishonest and buck up the honest.  At Rs 600 it’s a bargain to beat all bargains.