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Paranjoy Guha Thakurta: We are going through an unprecedented international crisis. The Director General of the World Health Organisation has said this is not just a pandemic but also an “infodemic” because of the way in which fake news has spread all over the world on a scale never witnessed before. In several countries, governments are making citizens give up their privacy. The argument proffered is that unless there are checks on information flows the dissemination of fake news cannot be...

भारत के प्रधानमंत्री नरेंद्र मोदी ने युवाओं के लिए रोजगार के अनेक वादे किए हैं। लेकिन वास्तविकता यह है कि इन वादों को अमल में लाने में बहुत कम या कुछ भी प्रगति नहीं हुई है। वास्तव में, पिछले एक दशक में सरकार के कई फैसलों ने देश में बेरोजगारी और अल्प रोजगार की स्थिति को और खराब कर दिया है। इनमें नवंबर, 2016 की नोटबंदी और इसके अगले साल 2017 में जल्दबाजी में लागू किया गया वस्तु एवं सेवा कर (जीएसटी) और मार्च, 2020 में आई कोविड-19 महामारी के दौरान बिना किसी तैयारी के लागू किया गया लॉकडाउन शामिल है...

Few had heard of him two decades ago. Today, at 62, Gautam Adani – a college drop-out who is very close to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi – is one of the world’s richest people. Adani’s corporate conglomerate straddles energy, transportation, cement, defense equipment, edible oils, food distribution, and much else, in the country and across the world. The market capitalization of the Adani Group, comprising a dozen-odd companies whose shares are listed on stock exchanges, is over $200...

Two of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk and Mukesh Ambani, are going head-to-head. The bone of contention: the right to provide satellite internet services in India. Ambani’s Reliance Jio, the largest telecom operator in the country, has been lobbying hard and high for more than a year-and-a-half to persuade the Indian government not to allocate spectrum for satellite broadband by merely ... Read more at: https://themorningcontext.com/business/satcom-spectrum-pits-ambani-agai… Copyright...

Mumbai: As Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her eighth consecutive Union Budget proposals on Saturday morning, did she mean what she said? Or did she say what she meant? Answer: mainly no, and a bit of yes. She didn’t say so, but the people of Bihar have every reason to rejoice. She got the longest applause when she announced changes in the personal income tax regime that would benefit a big section of the middle class, however you choose to categorize this section of the population...

Hindenburg Research founder Nathan Anderson said he was not winding up the firm because of a “particular threat” or a “big personal issue”. Why did the US short-seller Hindenburg Research shut shop? Was it on account of real or perceived pressures and apprehensions of doom and despair? Or was it simply because the firm’s founder Nathan (Nate) Anderson and his 11 colleagues just wanted to move on, having achieved what they wanted less than eight years after they were incorporated, including...

The end of Hindenburg Research’s operations has sparked a wave of discussions,especially considering the company’s deep dives into corporate conglomerates like theAdani Group.The timing is notable, with questions arising about whether this is linked to broaderpolitical events, including Donald Trump’s upcoming presidency. In an interview with TheFederal, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a senior journalist, provides insights into theHindenburg saga, its impact on global corporate practices, and the...

As India’s first – and so far only – Sikh Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh said in Parliament that he hung his head in shame because some people affiliated to his own political party were responsible for massacring members of the community in November 1984 after Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguard. He said his eyes had become weak because he studied under the light of a hurricane lantern when he was young. He was born on 26 December 1932 at Gah in West Punjab in what is today...

On 20 December 2024, United States District Judge of the Northern District of California Phyllis J Hamilton upheld the allegations levelled by WhatsApp Incorporated (the encrypted messaging service that is part of the larger Meta conglomerate that includes social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram) against NSO Group Technologies Limited (the Israeli manufacturer of the spyware named Pegasus). The court held that NSO Group had exploited a technical loophole and hacked into the WhatsApp...

In November 2024, Bangladesh’s highest court ordered the government to form a committee of experts to review the country’s power contact with Adani. This follows years of controversy over the deal, struck not long after a meeting between Indian PM Narendra Modi and the now-deposed Bangladeshi PM, Sheikh Hasina. In February 2023, AdaniWatch revealed that the contract failed to take account of generous financial concessions made by the Modi government to the relevant power plant, Adani’s Godda...

For over two years now, the Supreme Court of India has failed to question the Indian government on its alleged use of Israeli spyware, known as Pegasus, against journalists, civil society activists, and political opponents of the ruling regime. Consequently, digital security threats against opponents of the federal government in New Delhi – headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, belonging to the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – have continued unabated. In September...

Written by two investigative journalists working with the New York Times and published a little before Donald J. Trump was elected as President of the United States of America (POTUS) for a second term of four years, this book is an extremely detailed exposé of how he acquired his wealth through inheritance, fraud, and deceit. Based on 20 years of confidential tax information and business records obtained by leaks from whistleblowers and off-the-record interviews with insiders, the authors...

To contend that the indictment of Gautam Adani, his nephew, and their associates, in the United States has dealt a blow to the ambitions of one of India’s, and the world’s, richest men, would be an understatement. The prominent tycoon, whose proximity to Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the stuff of legends, has never before been hurt like this. His reputation is at stake. And with it, his business plans. The 30,000-word report of the New York-based short-selling firm Hindenburg Research...

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Ayush Joshi Nov 23, 2024 According to a government body in India, documents were falsified so that a coal mine being developed by an Adani company could proceed. The Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes Commission released a report on 6 November 2024 stating that the environmental approval given to the Parsa coal project relied on falsified documents purporting to be records of consent by village councils. When trees were felled in preparation for the coal mine in...

As early as 2015, a prominent Indian newspaper reported that everywhere that Modi went, 'Adani was sure to go'. This support has not always helped India. On the contrary, by brazenly promoting the oligarch’s ambitions, Modi has sometimes hurt his country’s relations with her neighbours as well as with other countries. The growth of the Adani Group outside India over the past decade or so has been closely aligned with the diplomatic efforts of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Many of Adani’s...

The Reliance group headed by Mukesh Ambani has been eyeing a prime plot of land in south-central Mumbai’s Breach Candy area over the last four years. In fact, so keen was it on acquiring it that, at one point, it allegedly made a “backdoor attempt” to wrest control of the family trust that owns the land. It is quite another matter that India’s biggest privately-owned corporate entity did not make much headway as the Seth Damodar Madhavji Charity Trust (henceforth, DMT), controlled by the...

Gokarakonda Naga Saibaba was born in 1967 to a family of poor farmers from Amalapuram in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. The exact date of his birth is not known, as his parents did not record it. He died on October 12, 2024, aged 57, in Hyderabad following post-operation complications after a surgery to remove stones from his gall bladder. After he was afflicted by polio, he used a wheelchair from the age of five. A brilliant student, Saibaba topped his batch of undergraduate students...

However, the government’s plans to create jobs for young Indians are unlikely to be successful because these are dependent on the goodwill of big businesses in the organised sector and not small enterprises in the unorganised sector that have created employment. On the contrary, little is being done for MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) who have been battered and bruised by first, the November 2016 demonetisation, then, the hurriedly implemented goods and services tax (GST) regime and...

On 5 December 2023, President of Kenya William Ruto met Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi at New Delhi’s Hyderabad House, the Indian government’s opulent guest house for visiting dignitaries. As the meeting between the heads of government and their officials was proceeding, there was a ‘surprise visitor’. It was Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest men and an industrialist who is perceived to be close to Modi. A person who was present at the meeting told one of the writers of this...

The PPF scheme – introduced in all head post offices of India with effect from January 1979 – is popular not only because of its relatively higher rate of interest as compared to fixed deposits, but also because the interest earned from it is free from payment of income tax. The Modi government has amended rules whereby PPF accounts held by NRIs will henceforth earn “zero” interest with effect from October 1, 2024. An order to this effect was issued on August 21, 2024, by the financial services...

Mumbai: Never in the history of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the regulator of the country’s financial markets, has its chairperson’s credibility been questioned in such a dramatic manner. Although Madhabi Puri Buch – the first woman, the first person who was not a civil servant and the first person from the private sector to head SEBI – had promptly responded to the allegations made in the second report of the US-based short-seller Hindenburg Research released on 10 August, her...

Basic facts and figures Name of coal-power plant: Godda power plant Location: Near the town of Godda, state of Jharkhand, India Adani subsidiary: Adani Power (Jharkhand) Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Adani Power Limited Capacity: 1600 MW Countries involved: India, Bangladesh, Australia Exactly a week after ousted Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, left Dhaka on a military aircraft and landed on the outskirts of Delhi on 5 August 2024, the government of India amended guidelines...

In April 2021, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), a quasi-judicial body in India that adjudicates issues relating to bankrupt companies, admitted the case of a Mumbai-based real estate company, Radius Estates and Developers Private Limited (henceforth Radius), to adjudication through the insolvency process. More than three years later, Adani Goodhomes, a subsidiary of Adani Infrastructure and Developers, acquired the bankrupt firm in a deal which certain creditors have alleged was...

Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Union Minister for Railways has had a rather unusual career trajectory. A former officer of the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS) who served former Prime Minister of India Atal Behari Vajpayee as his personal secretary, Ashwini Vaishnaw quit the civil service to become a corporate captain before joining politics. He is the only first-time member of the Rajya Sabha to hold two important ministerial portfolios, over and above that of the Railways. As a cabinet...

In the Union Budget 2024-25 presented in Parliament on July 23, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi allocated Rs.2.652 trillion (lakh crore) towards capital expenditure in the Railways. The sum is a marginal increase of roughly 2 per cent over the revised estimate for 2023-24. In what can be construed as the government’s neglect of the preferred mode of long-distance travel for the majority of India’s population, the word “railways” figured...

Despite the rhetoric that the regime’s record in employment generation has not been all that bad by citing questionable data, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has stolen more than a few leaves from the pre-election manifesto of the biggest Opposition party, the Congress, while announcing schemes such as the internship programme in the country’s top companies, the employment-linked incentive programme, abolition of the “angel tax” to spur investments and by not reducing the budget allocation...

On 4 June 2024, the day it become known that India’s ruling party, the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, would return to power for a third five-year term but as a weaker head of government, the prices of the shares of Adani Group companies collapsed amid a general meltdown of the country’s stock markets. Opposition politicians have called for an inquiry into allegations of stock-price manipulation. The story starts on Friday 31 May when there was frantic buying and selling of shares in...

More than a decade ago, when media and civil society were going gung-ho against the then UPA government for the “Coalgate” scandal, the furore was focussed on a report prepared by an independent institution, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, that revealed evidence implicating the Union government and multiple coal mining companies. The CAG had found that the government had allocated a slew of coal blocks to privately-owned mining companies without conducting fair auctions. The...

Half-way through the heat and dust of India’s general elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sprung a surprise on the country, including his most ardent supporters. He suggested during a public speech on 8 May 2024 in Karimnagar, Telangana, in southern India, that the country’s two richest men Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani were sending carloads of cash to the largest opposition party, the Indian National Congress. Opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, pledges to institute a parliamentary probe into...

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the regulator of the country’s financial markets, has sent ‘show cause’ notices to six listed companies in the Adani Group. This was revealed by the companies themselves in recent filings to stock-exchange authorities. A notice to show cause is a formal document issued to a party in a dispute that sets out details about an alleged offence or misconduct. Such a notice is usually issued by a law-enforcing authority. The receiving party has a...

A decade ago, in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi, then still the Chief Minister of Gujarat, famously declaimed: “Na khaoonga, na khaane doonga” (Neither will I take bribes, nor will I let others take bribes). He added that he would bring back illegal wealth stashed away in tax havens abroad by rich Indians and distribute the money among the poor—Rs.15 lakh for each poor family. Modi projected himself as a crusader against corruption in general and the corrupt Congress...

THE DEMOLITION, THE VERDICT AND THE TEMPLE: THE DEFINITIVE BOOK ON THE RAM MANDIR PROJECT By Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay Speaking Tiger, Rs 699 The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party, are hopeful that the ‘inauguration’ of the incomplete Ram temple at Ayodhya would consolidate the Hindu vote in favour of the incumbent regime in the run-up to the general elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi thinks that whipping up religious fervour with the pran pratishtha...

Example 1: Ajay Mishra Teni, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, is the BJP member of the Lok Sabha from the Kheri constituency in Uttar Pradesh. In October 2021, his son, Ashish Mishra Monu, allegedly drove into a crowd of protesting farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri, killing four farmers and a journalist. The junior Mishra is under trial for murder. The government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi resisted immense pressure to dismiss Teni from the Cabinet at the time and he has now been...

Sreedhar Ramamurthi was a scientist as well as an activist who worked to ameliorate the condition of those impacted by reckless mining all over India. He worked with many others who shared his ideals about the need to conserve the planet with care. He was no starry-eyed social worker who believed he could change the world overnight. He was down to earth and practical about what could be achieved and what could not, and the extent to which the government could be convinced to support the under...

Here is a tentative list of entities in corporate groups that purchased electoral bonds and the controversies surrounding some of these groups. We know that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got more than half the funds from the redemption of bonds between 2018 and 2024. One of the companies that bought the bonds is Future Gaming and Hotel Services. This company bought bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore. The person behind this company is Santiago Martin, often called India’s “lottery king.” There have...

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...