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A bureaucrat, sometimes described as a civil servant, is, more often than not, a sophisticated slave of his political masters. Not all are, however, equally supine. Among them, a minority displays a strong spine. The privileged lot belonging to the elite IAS who are supposed to hold up the proverbial “steel frame” of the country, are a mixed bunch of the subservient (the majority) and the rebellious (a few). The author of the book under review may consider himself as belonging to the latter...

A trust associated with the Reliance group inaugurated the world’s largest private zoo on February 26. The zoo is the “pet project” of Anant Ambani, son of group head Mukesh Ambani. The zoo is the venue of Anant’s pre-wedding celebrations where the world’s richest and most famous are expected to be in attendance. The project was set up under the shadow of a series of legal challenges around the country by the petitioners concerned, with allegations of illegal transfer of elephants from different...

The Supreme Court judgement on electoral bonds on Thursday is reminiscent of two apparently contradictory cliches. First, it is too little too late. Secondly, it is also better late than never. When the then finance minister, the late Arun Jaitely introduced the proposal to have electoral bonds in his budget speech, it took the government 11 months before it was formally fleshed out. Even then, the law that was struck down by the apex court had to be introduced as a money bill, which does not...

If there were some who were expecting big-ticket announcements to be made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman while presenting the Interim Budget for 2024-25, the last “budget” before the general elections, they were disappointed. An interim budget is a vote-on-account to provide a grant to the Union government to meet its expenditures for four months. However, since the Narendra Modi government has broken many a convention after he became Prime Minister in May 2014, expectations of populist...

In the wake of recent diplomatic tensions between India and Canada, New Delhi-based BLS International, a company providing outsourcing services to India’s diplomatic missions under the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), including the issuance of visas electronically, encountered operational disruptions in Canada. Then came accusations that the private firm had botched up the implementation of an e-residency programme in Estonia, a country in northern Europe. The company claims the problems...

Book: India's Experiment with Democracy : The Life of a Nation Through Its Elections Author: S.Y. Quraishi Published by: HarperCollins Price: Rs 699 Conscious that his personal life coincides with that of politically-independent India, the former chief election commissioner, guitar player, the first Muslim officer of the Indian Administrative Service from “old Delhi” after 1947, born into a family of Islamic scholars and the son of a man who insisted that his children be benefitted by “modern...

‘Geo… Jeeoh.’ The constable from the Special Cell of the Delhi Police who was interrogating me that afternoon was finding it difficult to pronounce his proper name. I gently butted in. ‘It’s spelt Geoff but pronounced Jeff.’ ‘You have been speaking to this person in Australia?’ he asked. ‘Yes. Of course, I have,’ I explained. ‘He runs a website called AdaniWatch and I am a contributor to the website.’ The constable had earlier asked me two questions: ‘Do you use Signal?’ I promptly replied ‘yes’...

A feisty opposition woman member of India’s Parliament has vowed to continue her scrutiny of the links between PM Narendra Modi and the Adani Group, despite attacks on her by a government member. Mahua Moitra has been dragged before the parliamentary Ethics Committee for alleged misdemeanours. She has responded defiantly, saying the BJP has picked the ‘wrong person’ to bully. Many of her questions in parliament pertain to Adani’s business operations. A hearing of the Committee on 2 November...

Palestine and Israel continue to dominate the news cycle. Then one learns that several Members of Parliament and leaders belonging to political parties opposed to the ruling regime in this country, those working in the office of Rahul Gandhi, a few individuals apparently on the other side of the divide, not to mention a few journalists, including Siddharth Varadarajan, one of the founding editors of The Wire, Anand Mangnale and Ravi Nair of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project...

Which Indian hasn’t heard of Chyawanprash? Who hasn’t tasted Churan before or after a meal? The first is an ancient dietary supplement that is a mixture of sugar, honey, ghee, amla, sesame oil, and various berries, herbs, and spices. Churan is a sweet and tangy blend of natural ingredients that helps digestion. The pioneer in making and selling these two products is Shree Baidyanath Ayurved Bhawan Private Limited, the flagship company of the Baidyanath Group. Baidyanath is the oldest name in the...

Over the past few years, Adani Power Mundra Limited (APML) and the state government of Haryana have been embroiled in a dispute over a power purchase agreement. After the dispute reached the courts, it seemed that it would be resolved. However, that has not happened. During the scorching heatwave that gripped Haryana in the summer of 2022, a power company of the Adani Group was accused of deviating from its contractual obligations by delivering a lower quantity of electricity to the state’s...

In April 2023, discussions took place for India’s third-largest cement producer, Shree Cements, to acquire a smaller cement firm, Sanghi Industries. On 21 June, the Income Tax Department in the Ministry of Finance conducted search-and-seizure raids at five locations in the country where Shree Cements had offices and manufacturing plants. On 19 July, Shree Cements abruptly withdrew from the race to acquire Sanghi Industries. On August 3, the Adani company Ambuja Cements succeeded in a bid to take...

A recent column by Bloomberg Opinon’s Andy Mukherjee focussed attention on potential issues of conflict of interest arising out of the position held by Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani’s daughter-in-law Paridhi Adani in a top Indian law firm that frequently advises companies in the Adani Group. On 2 September, AdaniWatch examined this issue further, detailing 12 cases in which Paridhi’s law firm had advised on major deals between Adani companies and other parties. In this story, AdaniWatch...

A recent column by Bloomberg Opinon’s Andy Mukherjee focussed attention on potential issues of conflict of interest arising out of the position held by Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani’s daughter-in-law Paridhi Adani in a top Indian law firm that frequently advises companies in the Adani Group. In this article, AdaniWatch asks why the group appears not to have disclosed potential conflicts of interest in certain major deals. The absence of disclosure could impact the interests of minority...

Book: Shadows At Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century Author: Joya Chatterji Published by: Viking Price: Rs 1299 This is a history teacher’s magnum opus. Running into almost 850 pages, the book is a sprawling, impressionistic, and opinionated journey through a century and half of the trajectories of countries in the Indian subcontinent, mixing personal diaries and anecdotes with historical accounts and analyses. As the author herself describes at the outset, the “structure of the book is...

New Delhi/Bhubaneswar: When India’s premier police investigative agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), started a probe into the June 2 Balasore train tragedy, it was termed as an attempt by the Narendra Modi government to find a “political solution” to the inherent technical shortcomings in the country’s railway system that had caused the man-made disaster. Less than 48 hours after the accident, which left at least 275 people dead and 1,000 injured, Union Minister of Railways...

Title: Hurt Sentiments: Secularism And Belonging In South Asia Author: Neeti Nair Publisher: Harvard Pages: 699 While this book explains and contextualises the meanings and the interpretations of the word, ‘secularism’, and the political practices followed in its name over the last eight decades in the Indian subcontinent, its immediate relevance cannot be overemphasised. Neeti Nair offers a historical context of how claims of hurt religious sentiments have been weaponised by majority...

Title: India Is Broken—And why it’s hard to fix: A People Betrayed, 1947 to Today Author: Ashoka Mody Publisher: Juggernaut Pages: 512 Price: ₹899 For an academic and international civil servant to write a magnum opus that takes a broad sweep of India’s contemporary history and political economy, in a language that is understandable to the lay reader, is not an easy endeavour. When Professor Ashoka Mody was asked by an interviewer why he published his book at this juncture, nearly nine years...

The outcome of the elections to the Karnataka legislative assembly has predictably led to euphoria in the Congress and other political parties opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Some have gone to the extent of arguing that Saturday’s results signify the beginning of the end of the authoritarian rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It would be premature to jump to such a conclusion. The next Lok Sabha elections are ten months away. Much could happen in this period. Still, Karnataka is...

During a heat wave in the Indian state of Haryana in 2022, the Adani Group supplied less power than it was contracted to and also diverted power away from Haryana to the state of Gujarat. This summer, Adani Power can officially supply less power to Haryana and get paid more for each unit, despite a Supreme Court judgment which said there is no justification for hiking tariffs. Here, we report on how Haryana’s chief minister has overridden a long-term, binding power contract with Adani, even...

Gurugram/London/Bengaluru: In 2018, the Congress party had alleged that the Narendra Modi government had turned a blind eye to Jatin Mehta’s alleged misdemeanours, allowing him to leave India and delaying the filing of cases against him. It had asked whether the “protection” for him had anything to do with his “close relationship with an industrial house closest to Narendra Modi through marriage of his son”. This industrial house is, of course, the Adani Group. In Part 1 of this two-part series...

Long before allegations of fraud levelled by banks against Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi made headlines in the media in India and the world, another diamantaire from Gujarat, Jatin Mehta, and his group of companies had caused a major loss to Indian and international banks and became the one of the largest wilful defaulters of loans, together with Kingfisher Airlines headed by Vijay Mallya – all four of them are currently outside India. Unlike the cases of Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya...

Book: Guru to the World: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda Author: Ruth Harris Publisher: Belknap Price: ₹799 This nuanced and detailed account of the life and times of Narendranath Datta (1863-1902), better known as Swami Vivekananda, by a professor of European history at the University of Oxford has come at a time when the century-long target of achieving a Hindu rashtra by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is arguably at its closest. Ruth Harris’ book on the saffron-robed ascetic, who inspired...

criminal investigation against Adani Enterprises Limited and others registered in India’s capital New Delhi by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been pending for three years. The filing of a first information report (FIR) by the CBI in the designated CBI court in New Delhi relates to allegations about rigging of tenders for procurement of coal for power stations owned by the Andhra Pradesh Power Generation Corporation that involve a 'proxy' company named Vyom Tradelinks, which has a...

There is evidence indicating that an entity linked to the Adani Group financially supported a company that violated sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on trade with North Korea. The sanctioned company was owned by sons of Chang Chung-Ling, an Adani Group associate who appeared in the Hindenburg report due to his directorship of Adani entities under scrutiny in that report. At the heart of this issue is a tanker that transferred oil products to a North Korean ship in...

Book: Imprints Of The Populist Time Author: Ranabir Samaddar Publisher: Orient BlackSwan Price: ₹1,105 One dictionary definition of the word, ‘populism’, is that it is a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by elitist groups. In other words, the word signifies the quality of appealing to, or being aimed at, the proverbial aam admi. The political thinker, Ranabir Samaddar, writes several thousand words in his elaborate attempts...

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, the journalist who found prominent mention in the Hindenburg Research report that triggered turmoil in the share prices of the Adani Group and cast international glare on Indian probity in corporate governance, breaks his silence two-and-a-half years after a court in Ahmedabad issued a gag order asking him not to speak or write anything that may go against the interests of the Adani Group. Guha Thakurta said he was not willing to hazard a guess on the future of the Adani...

The very first paragraph of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s relatively short speech presenting the Budget for 2023-24 made it amply clear that this was her last full-fledged budget before the next general elections. She talked of envisioning a “prosperous and inclusive India, in which the fruits of development reach all regions and citizens”, especially the youth, women, farmers and those belonging to the other backward classes (OBCs), Scheduled Castes (Scs), and Scheduled Tribes...

On December 9, the Defence Ministry suspended Defsys Solutions Private Limited from its list of vendors preventing it from doing business with the Indian military. The blacklisted firm, owned by infamous arms dealer Sushen Mohan Gupta, was involved in the alleged scandal relating to the purchase of AgustaWestland helicopters by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. The Narendra Modi government hopes to embarrass the Congress-led UPA with its investigation into the so-called...

Book: Ideology and Organization in Indian Politics: Polarization and The Growing Crisis Of The Congress Party (2009-19) Author: Zoya Hasan Publisher: Oxford Price: ₹1,495 Can the Indian National Congress sink to lower depths? Will the Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Rahul Gandhi revive the electoral fortunes of India’s Grand Old Party? Will 2024 witness something unexpected to keep Narendra Modi’s government in power in the way the Pulwama-Balakot episode did in 2019 by successfully diverting attention...