Greed Clouds Your Judgment – Contain It! II

Some readers called up to request me to continue with the sequel to my last blog post on the Weigh Bridge debacle. So here goes.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bhutan pushed hard to export our, what we called those days “Exportable Surpluses” - surplus home grown products/produces such as Gum Rosin, Gypsum, Fruit Juices, Apples, Oranges, Potatoes, Dolomite, Woven Textiles etc. What is heartwarming is that those days we exported raw lumber, including semi-processed wood products such as wood Shuttle Blocks and wooden Milled Rods, to far flung markets such as Bangladesh, India, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, the Middle East, and Thailand, to name a few. Sadly today even timber is imported into the country from producers as far away as Malaysia (Nu.3.0 billion worth during 2019), while claiming that we are a country with forest coverage ranging between 71 - 81%.

Bhutan’s highest value exports then was the Brown Jacket Cardamom. Even those early days the cardamom brought in $$ by the millions. But it was also the cause for my greatest angst! The reason was that we had to deal with the Food Corporation of Bhutan (FCB) because under the government’s support price system in place those days, FCB was mandated to purchase all the cardamom from the growers, meaning that they held the largest stock of cardamom in the country.

Brown Jacket Cardamom - highest foreign exchange earner for the country. At one point in history, Bhutan was erroneously ranked as the largest grower of this spice that did not feature in our cuisine.

In early 1980 my organization - Export Division - cut a deal with a re-exporter in Singapore for the export of a large cardamom consignment to Pakistan, to be transshipped through the port of Singapore. That was perhaps the biggest single export order Bhutan handled during those days - the Letter of Credit was in excess of US$ one million. As the head honcho of the export section of the Export Division, I began the process of gathering the export item.

My first stop was the FCB since they held the largest stock of cardamom.

Quite strangely the then Managing Director Mr. Hadi Ali refused to sell me the cardamoms - point blank - his excuse was that the FCB did not have any stock of cardamom. I countered that I was not asking him to commit any specific quantity - but that FCB commit to whatever stock they held with them so that the country might fulfill our large export commitment. He absolutely refused to budge.

In desperation, I called up the then Police Chief in Thimphu and requested him to allow two of my staff to bore through the cargo movement records maintained by them at the Phuentsholing main gate. He passed on the order that my staff should be allowed unrestricted access to the police records - in particular all of the FCB’s IN/OUT movement of cardamom consignment for the past one year. At the end of the laborious exercise, I ascertained that the FCB should have a physical stock of over 13 MT of cardamom in their central store in Phuentsholing. Through my friendship with an official of the FCB – Mr. R B Rai, I gained access into their store and quietly carried out a physical count of the bags of cardamom piled inside the FCB store.

At the end of the clandestine exercise lasting close to two weeks, I concluded that the stock in the FCB store amounted to only 9++ MT of cardamom, revealing a physical shortage of 3++ MT of cardamom, valued at over ngultrums half a million - a huge sum those days. Equipped with these facts and figures, I confronted the MD of the FCB and told him that it is not true that FCB did not have the stock – they had over 9MT. I said I want them all. He accused me of espionage - I said I don’t care. That FCB is a government institution and so is the Export Division. If the FCB was the arms, we were the legs - so it is import that each institution belonging to the same body should render support to one another, particularly during times of crisis. I reasoned that not being able to fulfill the export order is tantamount to a crisis for the Export Division, and a great loss of face for the country. I threatened that if I did not get the stock, I would report him to the Royal Audit, informing them of the shortage that remained a closely guarded secret.

Ultimately, after few more arm-twisting tactics, I got the entire stock of cardamom from the FCB and managed to fulfill our export order.  But it was in the process of all these covert activities that I stumbled onto the Weigh Bridge fiasco.

Those days the police constables were not adequately educated. Thus I was not sure that what they recorded in the registers maintained at the Phuentsholing Check Gate represented the true numbers - I was worried that they may have made mistakes in their recordings. Now since I was taking on the MD of the FCB, I could not risk a mistake. The only way I could verify was to cross check the records that should have been maintained at the Weigh Bridge Station that was installed by the Ministry of Finance. I headed for the Weigh Bride Station.

That is when I discovered the disaster of the Weigh Bridge. But in a way it was good because if I could not verify the records from the Station, no one else could. Thus it would be hard for any one to contest the veracity of my figures 😛

Those days we did not abandon ship – we stood our ground and fought our battles - without fear or favour.