Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes talking to reporters after resigning.
The story was unveiled in grainy images on a four-and-a-half hour videotape, the product of an eight-month secret investigation. Posing as representatives of a fictitious British manufacturer of night-vision goggles, two Tehelka reporters bribed politicians, bureaucrats, army officers and business touts, paying a total of $24,000 for appointments with decision-makers and promises of future deals. Using secret videocameras, the reporters taped officials boasting about fixing defense deals while they pocketed bundles of banknotes. "It was a saga of pure greed," says Tarun Tejpal, founder and editor of Tehelka, himself the son of an army officer.
The tape, released to the media early last week, went off in New Delhi's corridors of power like a hand grenade. Among the casualties were the leader of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party, the head of the ruling coalition-partner Samta Party, Defense Minister George Fernandes and several top army officers. Another coalition member, the Trinamool Congress, withdrew its support of the government. Parliament came to a standstill as opposition politicians, smelling blood, moved in for the kill and halted all legislative business. The Prime Minister finally went on national television appealing for calm and promising a rapid and thorough investigation into the scandal. He said the Tehelka revelations had served as a "wake-up call."
Will tehelka.com become the first website in history to unseat a Prime Minister and bring down a national government? Probably not. Even after the departure of the Trinamool Congress, Vajpayee's government still commands a majority in Parliament thanks to the support of a southern Indian party that is not part of the ruling alliance. But any further erosion of support would likely lead to a snap general election, which would surely be fought on a single issue: corruption. Naturally, the incumbents would be at a disadvantage. From the point of view of the ruling BJP and its partners, it's safer to stick together in the trenches and hope no more bombshells land nearby.
While they were angered and disgusted by the Tehelka tapes, many Indians have discovered new heroes in Tejpal and his investigative reporters, Aniruddha Bahal, 34, and Mathew Samuel, 29. Bahal was mobbed by admirers on the streets of New Delhi last week. Two grown men grabbed and kissed him. "I'm amazed at the response of ordinary people," he says. "There is this whole feeling of empowerment, this feeling that somebody has struck a blow against corruption on their behalf."
Bahal was also instrumental in Tehelka's first major expos: last summer the website revealed the corruption endemic to India's cricketing establishment. With the help of an ex-player, and employing secret cameras for the first time in Indian journalism, Tehelka revealed a widespread network of match-fixing and sleaze. Subsequent investigations by federal police implicated Tehelka's own whistleblower in match-fixing. But the uproar that followed these initial revelations led to an international drive to clean up the game.
Even if the Vajpayee government survives this scandal, the Tehelka sting has altered India's political landscape. The BJP's popular appeal is based not only on its espousal of Hindu nationalism; equally important has been its reputation for honesty and integrity, a sharp contrast with the venality associated with most Indian parties. That reputation now lies in tatters. Most Indians accept corruption as a fact of political life, but draw the line at dirty defense deals that may compromise national security. The late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi suffered a humiliating electoral defeat in 1989 after being accused of accepting kickbacks from Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors. That scandal still haunts the Congress Party. Now the BJP has its own phantom.