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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...