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On 16 May, it was reported that the privatisation of the government-owned helicopter service provider Pawan Hans Limited had been “put on hold.” Just 17 days earlier, on April 29, the government had declared Star9 Mobility Solutions Private Limited’s Rs 211 crore bid as the winning bid for the government’s 51% stake in the helicopter company. On the day reports that the deal had been put on hold appeared, these reporters had published in The Wire and NewsClick an article investigating the...

On 16 May, these reporters published in The Wire and NewsClick an article investigating the antecedents of a consortium of three companies that came together to set up Star9 Mobility Solutions Private Limited, which was announced as the winner of the auction to acquire Pawan Hans Limited, the public-sector helicopter service provider. The article pointed out that little information was available in the public domain about the Cayman Islands registered Almas Global Opportunity Fund (AGOF), the...

New Delhi: On April 29, 2022, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved Star9 Mobility Private Limited’s bid to buy the government’s 51% stake in public sector helicopter service provider Pawan Hans Limited for Rs 211 crore. Two weeks later, several questions about the privatisation of this once-iconic public sector company remain unanswered and there are questions about the identity of its new owner. Star9 Mobility is a consortium of three different entities – Maharaja Aviation Private...

Shivnath Thukral, a public policy director, India, at WhatsApp Inc (owned by Facebook, now known as Meta) since March 2020, had once owned a stake in Opalina Technologies – a company that has provided software solutions for India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, the prime minister’s office, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the ministry of textiles in the union government. Thukral, who remains one of Meta’s top lobbyists in India, gave up his stakes in Opalina before joining Facebook on October 24...

Book: Tryst With Strong Leader Populism Author: P. Raman Publisher, price: Aakar, Rs 695 Why was February 19, 2013 a crucial day in the political life of Narendra Modi? That was the day when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh decided to place the might of the ‘social organization’ behind its pracharak, the then chief minister of Gujarat, as the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The head of the RSS set two conditions for Modi, who reportedly had had a ‘love-hate...

It’s a cliché to say that the road to Delhi starts from Lucknow. There can be various views on what the outcome of the ongoing assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh will be. While we will know on March 10 whether the Bharatiya Janata Party will return to power in India’s most-populous state, what is indisputable is that the results of the elections will have a far-reaching impact on the future of the country’s politics and the contours of Indian democracy. One out of six Indians live in UP. Its...

Book: Nabokov and the Real World: Between Appreciation and Defense Author: Robert Alter Publisher, price: Princeton, £14.99 Vladimir Nabokov has been, and remains, one of the most controversial and polarizing writers. His critics describe him as a self-indulgent stylist, who was deliberately elitist, obscure and, worse, a purveyor of sophisticated pornography. His admirers — this reviewer is among them — consider his large body of work as brilliant and visionary. As Robert Alter puts it, “The...

New Delhi: India’s premier investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has, for over five years now, been probing the alleged complicity of certain senior officials of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) –– that oversees the administration of the small but important part of the National Capital Territory (NCT) in which India’s most influential individuals reside ––with the owners of the fancy, five-star Hotel Le Meridien, to evade statutory dues. The CBI seems to have...

Senior advocate and member of the Rajya Sabha Abhishek Manu Singhvi has found himself in the midst of a controversy for raising a question in Parliament allegedly on behalf of a private firm he has represented as a legal counsel in the Karnataka High Court. Singhvi’s question on government rules and regulations about online “gambling” games had been listed for an answer on December 16. But he withdrew the question after the controversy. The Congress MP has represented Gameskraft Technology, a...

Book: The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do Author: Erik J. Larson, Publisher: Bellknap Price: £23.95 When the Industrial Revolution spread from Europe to North America and then across many parts of the planet in the last decades of the 18th century, it spurred colonial rule and, with it, the rush for cheap raw materials from the Global South. Many argued then that humanity had progressed by leaps and bounds as machines were replacing animal power and human...