# On Leaks and Bribes: Trojans or Bibhishan’s ?

'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark'.Shakespeare in Hamlet (1.4.90)
 

In the news and centre stage is the whodunit of some government officials in cahoots with top industrial firms and caught in the act of sharing or selling proprietary/classified information. An open secret suddenly has gripped the uninformed public’s imagination of colossal wrongs or that is how some elements of the conscientious media would have us believe.

Anyone who has ever worked in a government department would know that there is an information supply chain receiving benefits from spin-offs, established gift distribution systems or more direct sharing of the bribes.(strangely, some do receive unsuspectingly and without prior knowledge, too). This labyrinthine chain begins and includes among others the Receptionist( who receives and answers calls),the Registry ,where all incoming and outgoing mail is recorded, the members of the Procurement/Tender Protocol ,the user, the administrator, the independent specialist coupled with the overarching presence  of the CEO or the Boss. This entire gravy train is oiled and nurtured by minions of the Corporations agencies or Companies, (mostly at the behest of superiors and the Company owners) that are likely to win contracts or deals.

Therefore, when Mr. Bora the then Chairman and Managing Director of ONGC amusedly remarked at the suspected penetration by Reliance Industries and the Cairn Energy firms into the bidding process and access to privileged information was a smart in-house job sounds a trifle naïve and at worse farcical. This was in 1999 when the countries for the first time had thrown open the hydro carbon reserves to private exploration. That ONGC and Oil India are fighting a losing battle (if not already lost) subsequently with the Reliance and other big fat private majors is the stuff of another episode in this deep, dark, murky tale. The recent cases of coal allotments, telecom spectrum and defense deals have all at different levels been thus compromised. The cost, distribution of the bribes or benefits would obviously have been graded. That the media too is actively a participant in this illegitimate and dastardly act is only underlined by the revelation of the Radia Tapes and Ms Barkha Dutt episode. That this kind of insidious penetration is a systematic case of planned industrial espionage to make the public sector and PSU’s defunct and facilitate a private takeover is larger part of the truth, indeed. Therefore, the nexus of the well placed bureaucrat, politicians, ministers, Company heads and directors, professional liaison agents (read thugs) and their funding agencies cannot be ever overstated. Nothing or no one is sacrosanct or an untouchable.

So why does suddenly Mr. Ajit Dhoval, country’s head of Intelligence rushes into this melting pot fuming and feather’s flying? Is he really concerned with the compromise of national security? Are the big names of Messrs Cairns Energy, Reliance Industries, ADAG, ESSAR group being highlighted to show their similar concerns or distract and deflect the real players by catching up with small time offenders? Or will the big players use their power and connections to be protect through due constructs and legalese like the unsolved case of Balasubramaniam and Reliance of 1988. These and such other questions would need to be asked, if not already done and be answered. And in their seriousness and integrity of effort shall lie the truth of sordid stories and their intriguing connections that soars northwards as always.

For more...

http://scroll.in/article/708106

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/how-leaks-oil-india-limited-1999-benefited-reliance-industries

#BCCI :Not quite cricket.

A new judgement is in place on BCCI. on cricket itself as it is today.I do not understand much of the ruling of the Supreme Court except for what I have read in edits, talk shows, discussions between friends who are as as ill-informed as me.All are hazarding guesses.Save a thing in common.All seem to be one in thinking the BCCI and Cricket are holy cows that need to be sent to the nearest cleaners.It is all corrupt and pays all that are connected with it to keep talking wherever without helping matters.In short obfuscate.The Judgement as usual does not help either.Only takes us further down the deep hole of false hopes and dark desperation.And for those men in the dark coats or whites to not change their colours but shape up for business as usual only at a different table this time round.

Some of all this one sees in the edits highlighted below.Light there is little , yet.!

It is true that many benefited by the windfall of the IPL.This was a classic case of private ownership and support giving a much needed boost and direction away from the deathly and decadent stranglehold of the government.All of the cricket greats and writers past and present sang hosannas while the bureaucrat, politician, real estate developer, share broker, Bollywood, senior cricketers and professional businessmen and other big and mighty cooperated and conspired together to put their hands into the magical cookie jar.Never were they bitten by stinging bees or hidden serpents of justice .And to hear Mr Sunil Gavaskar anointed by the Court as Mr Unimpeachable was the last straw.

http://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=8041

# Why we do not love our rich and successful

"We are really owned and run by a few corporations, who can shut India down when they want," Arundhati Roy says.

Most of us have grown up to obediently revere the rich, wealthy and the ones successful.They are the people who matter, hence to be followed or imitated.Over a period of time some uncomfortable facts or their legacies have had traces or whiffs of wrong doing.This has caused a kind of discomfort in our loyal minds.The emotional or impulsive amongst us have ranted about plunder and loot of the unsuspecting and systematic betrayal of the nation's faith.Others sober , however have preferred silence for want of adequate information or sufficient facts.Some were scared, bent and atrophied to even notice any fault.Much less the theft.All together in any case did not help much in leading conscientious people to be definite and to calibrate their ideas.Much less organise or agitate.

Into this vacuum of poverty of thought, imagination and action one is pleased to see their exist some serious writers , researchers and activists who would quite gallantly prove any  of the above to be wrong and exaggerated in the least. It is also against this background that the brief by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta & Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri on the fraud committed in perpetuity by one 'Kuber'called the Ambanis is to be read: a breath of fresh air.The duo takes you through the sketches of many intricate and devious transactions for transfer of huge sums of money in a looped manner back to India confirming ,skirting, daring audaciously but mostly obfuscating all  existing rules through the active good offices, connivance and designs of those in the Enforcement Directorate,High Commissions,Government Departments,Stock Exchanges, officials .The finances in question mostly reside in the region of crores in the four digit spectrum.

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/6500-crore-mystery-mukesh-ambani-reliance-industries-limited

Arundhati Roy too in the recent past has been crying hoarse on the rampant rapacity of the nation's celebrated rich,notably the corporations.In her book Capitalism : A ghost story she traces the murky path taken by about five score of the country's industrialist to control almost one-fourth of the nation's GDP.It would not be far-fetched to infer that to feed and nurture the misinformation machine by a conglomerate of corporations the perceptions of the 300 million of us post International Monetary Fund - Middle class- the market, that is: is being carefully managed by pruning and designing curriculum of study,funding of right wing think tanks,weaning away Dalit intellectuals to this cause of supplication, among other things.In fact the stated objective of the Observer Research Foundation (funded by the Ambanis) is to build consensus on reforms and liberalisation of the economy.

In her view, "transparency" and "rule of law" are code words for allowing corporations to supplant "local crony capital". This can be accomplished by passing laws that advance corporate interests."The corporations are all backing Modi because they think that [Prime Minister] Manmohan [Singh] and the Congress government hasn't shown the nerve it requires to actually send in the army into places like Chhattisgarh and Orissa," she says.

We oscillate between our near genetic fear (read reverence) of the rich to the modern day awakening to their culpability in the distress and suffering of the  poor and a large chunk of dissatisfied middle classes.The new mascots of truth and honesty just talk of corruption while staying away from, privatisation,corporate power or the economic policies.Crony capitalism and its many friends are being identified, selectively..New stories are being told.Many yet, still awaiting their turn.

Arundhati very dramatically poses thus: But which of us sinners was going to cast the first stone? Not me, who lives off royalties from corporate publishing houses. We all watch Tata Sky, we surf the net with Tata Photon, we ride in Tata taxis, we stay in Tata hotels, sip our Tata tea in Tata bone china and stir it with teaspoons made of Tata steel. We buy Tata books in Tata bookshops. Hum Tata ka namak khatey hain. We're under siege.

The raconteur is ever restless.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders