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The New Year has brought little cheer for the economies of almost each and every country across the globe. The Government of India never fails to remind us that this is one of the few nations on the planet, certainly the only large country, which continues to witness reasonably robust rates of growth of gross domestic product (GDP). No man is an island. And we would be deluding ourselves if we believe that the Indian economy would remain insulated from what is happening all around us...

Maachher teley maachh bhaaja is a Bengali phrase for the culinary practice of frying a fish in its own oil. Can the analogy be extended to a set of convoluted corporate transactions? This is the story of how one of the richest men of Indian origin, who heads one of the world's biggest privately owned mining and metals conglomerates, is seeking to protect his highly-leveraged balance sheets at a time when commodity prices across the globe have collapsed. (A company is said to be highly leveraged...

Why has the Narendra Modi government apparently acted in a vindictive manner by preventing Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal from entering his office during a raid on Tuesday by the Central Bureau of Investigation on one of his senior bureaucrats? At first glance, the move appears politically damaging. Whatever be the merits of the CBI's decision to search the office and premises of the Principal Secretary to the Delhi government Rajendra Kumar, the Modi government may end up making Kejriwal...

It’s a huge story. And it’s not getting the kind of media attention it deserves. It’s a story about India’s farmers. It’s a story about the ongoing agrarian crisis in the country in the wake of two successive years of drought. If one looks only at the figures of growth of gross domestic product which tend to make headlines in financial publications, there’s no story for agriculture comprises 16-17 per cent of GDP. But this is a blinkered view. The picture is pretty grim and here’s why. At least...

After a humiliating defeat in Bihar, the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has no option but to become more conciliatory towards its political opponents. While adopting a consensual approach rather than a confrontationist one, the party will have to keep its flock together by periodically placating hardcore Hindu nationalists in the Sangh Parivar, the family of organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. This is the big challenge before the BJP. When out of power, the fact that...

The Narendra Modi government's stated intention to divest a 10% stake in Coal India Limited is aimed at establishing its reformist credentials after the humiliating defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Bihar assembly elections. While the proceeds of the divestment will help contain the fiscal deficit, by moving money from one pocket of the government to another, the move will neither help the country nor the public sector company, which is the world's largest coal producing entity. Here's...

Following the decisive victory of the Mahagathbandhan of the JD(U) led by Nitish Kumar, the RJD headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav, and the Congress in the Assembly elections in Bihar, there has been considerable specu-lation about the likelihood of political forces opposed to the BJP coming together. The convergence of all anti-BJP parties will obviously imply that there is bad news ahead for the regime headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But those supporting the BJP argue that sharp...

The trajectory of Lalu’s career in politics has not been smooth. He became a member of the Lok Sabha as early as 1977, when the Janata Party made a clean sweep of all 54 seats in Bihar riding a wave of popular anger against the Emergency which had ended barely three months before the elections were held. Yet, hardly anybody outside his constituency had heard of Lalu in this period. In fact, he had not even been a member of the Bihar assembly prior to contesting the Lok Sabha elections that year...

Lalu Prasad Yadav is back, and how. His party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal gained the most in the just-concluded assembly elections in Bihar. There's no gainsaying that without the presence of the RJD, the grand alliance or mahagathbandhan led by chief minister Nitish Kumar and his Janata Dal (United) would never have been able to decisively defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance. What is perceived as a personal victory for Lalu after his conviction and imprisonment in...

It is almost certain that the outcome of the Bihar assembly elections will disappoint investors in shares when stock markets open on Monday. Large sections of the Indian corporate sector, which were gung-ho about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party, are unhappy that Nitish Kumar will again become chief minister of the economically-backward state. Even before the Bihar elections were over, one section of businesspersons in India had turned critical of the government. This...

The collective decisions by authors, academics, activists, filmmakers and scientists to return awards given to them may be dismissed as “politics by other means” and as “ideological intolerance” by those who are “pathologically opposed” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP and its ideological parent RSS. But these protests are now taking a different turn and hitting the government where it hurts: the economy. What is worse is that leading corporate captains are hauling up the government —...

On October 15, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India answered the prime minister’s call for action. Not long after Narendra Modi criticised the countrywide phenomenon of calls drops, the regulator laid down rules to penalise mobile telephone operators in a knee-jerk reaction. From January 1 next year, according to these new rules, telecom operators will have to pay consumers Re 1 for every call dropped, limited to a cap of three call drops per day. Much of the discussion on the subject has...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a particular fondness for what are supposed to be smart cities. He wants many dozens of them across the country. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party is no different. He wants to build Amaravati, a "greenfield" capital city where four million people would eventually reside. He wants the new city to be not just bigger but "better" than Singapore. The two men together with many very, very important persons are scheduled to...

Judges have in the past castigated India's premier police investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). But the manner in which Special CBI Judge Om Prakash Saini has flayed the agency has raised more than a few eyebrows. Saini is adjudicating over a slew of criminal cases related to the mis-allocation and mis-pricing of second-generation telecommunications airwaves, popularly called the 2G spectrum scam. On 15 October, the judge, himself a former cop, described CBI's...

An article that appeared in thehoot.org in November 2013 has suddenly been attracting considerable attention. Reason: the article was about how Peter and Indrani Mukerjea sold their stake in the INX/NewsX media group of companies and how India’s biggest private corporate entity, Reliance Industries Limited, headed by the country’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, acquired control over these firms for a period of time in a convoluted manner. The Hoot stories looked into the examination of these...

The Narendra Modi government’s new scheme to unearth black money kept by Indians outside the country has yielded just about Rs 4,147 crore from 638 declarations. On average, this figure works out to a relatively small amount of Rs 6 crore per declaration — either about holding assets abroad illegally or earning income outside the country which has not been disclosed. Nearly two-thirds of this money, or Rs 2,488 will come to the exchequer by way of taxes. This measly sum is a clear indication...

Under what circumstances can the executive overrule of the judiciary? Obviously, by enacting a law to overturn a court judgment. There are a number of examples of this kind. However, in an unusual - and perhaps unprecedented - move, an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM), led by former Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, has been accused of not adhering to the letter and spirit of a judgment of the Supreme Court, in a series of draft reports prepared in the office of the Comptroller &...

The Telecom Disputes Settlements and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) recently ruled that Loop Telecom, a company controlled by the Ruias of Essar group and their associates, will not be repaid a sum of Rs 1,454.94 crore that it had claimed from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) after the firm's licence was cancelled by the Supreme Court of India. The September 16 order by the tribunal vindicates the stand adopted in a series of reports drafted in the office of the Comptroller and Auditor...

An article that appeared in thehoot.org in November 2013 has suddenly been attracting considerable attention. Reason: the article was about how Peter and Indrani Mukerjea sold their stake in the INX/NewsX media group of companies and how India's biggest private corporate entity, Reliance Industries Limited, headed by the country's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, acquired control over these firms for a period of time in a convoluted manner. The Hoot stories looked into the examination of these...

Three months before the end of the calendar year, it is already apparent that 2015 will go down in contemporary history as a watershed year for the planet’s political economy. The sharp slowdown in China, the crisis in Greece, the crash in the prices of oil and other commodities and the influx of immigrants to Europe — all make the year’s developments significant. It was exactly seven years ago this month, when the Great Recession began with New York’s Wall Street collapsing, seven decades after...

Three months before the end of the calendar year, it is already apparent that 2015 will go down in contemporary history as a watershed year for the planet’s political economy. The sharp slowdown in China, the crisis in Greece, the crash in the prices of oil and other commodities and the influx of immigrants to Europe — all make the year’s developments significant. It was exactly seven years ago this month, when the Great Recession began with New York’s Wall Street collapsing, seven decades after...

Vivek Kaul is no ordinary journalist interested in the working of the planet’s political economy. Like many “generalist” journalists, he writes on personal finance, marketing and branding. And if that were not enough, he has an abiding interest in cinema and music. But wait! He has written not one, but three books in a row, on the subject of money, credit and finance that seek to make this complicated and difficult topic more accessible to readers who may not be familiar with economics, commerce...

The amounts being sought as damages by corporate entities in India against publications which have allegedly defamed them are reaching stratospheric levels, even if the chances of recovering such sums of money appear rather remote. In what could be the biggest defamation notice of its kind, BSES Limited, a company in the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), has sought a stupendous Rs 5,000 crore as damages from Bennett, Coleman and Company Limited (BCCL), publishers of the Times of India, the...

Are prices going up or are they coming down? Is inflation or deflation the bigger problem in India at present? The answers are likely to be diametrically different depending on the person who is being asked these questions. Ask a homemaker shopping for her groceries and she will tell you that the prices of many vegetables and other food items are continuing to rise despite the fall in prices of diesel and petrol. The chief economic adviser to the Government of India in the ministry of finance...

Are prices going up or are they coming down? Is inflation or deflation the bigger problem in India at present? The answers are likely to be diametrically different depending on the person who is being asked these questions. Ask a homemaker shopping for her groceries and she will tell you that the prices of many vegetables and other food items are continuing to rise despite the fall in prices of diesel and petrol. The chief economic adviser to the Government of India in the ministry of finance...

Zee Media Corporation got merged with Essel Publishers Pvt Ltd, as cleared by the Bombay High Court on May 2, 2014 with the appointed date of April 1, 2014. Both are Essel Group companies controlled by Subhash Chandra. The scheme was made effective on May 27, 2014 and given effect to in the financial statements for the quarter ended June 30, 2014. Zee Media issued and allotted 12.23 crore equity shares of Re 1 each to the shareholders of Essel Publishers. Thus, the shareholding of promoter group...

“Speak up, it's in your DNA”, was the catchphrase used on July 30, 2005 when the English daily broadsheet Daily News & Analysis(known by its acronym DNA) was launched by Diligent Media Corporation Limited, a 50:50 joint venture between the Essel/Zee group and DB Corp Ltd, the flagship company of the Dainik Bhaskar group, two of India's biggest media conglomerates. The marriage was supposed to be an ideal one. The Essel/Zee group had financial muscle and diverse national and global business...

On 12 August 2015 the Supreme Court restrained the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from arresting former Union Minister for Communications Dayanidhi Maran till 14 September. He had earlier been summoned by the CBI for questioning after being accused of installing a “telephone exchange” with 323 lines at his residence at a cost of Rs 400 crore for the benefit of the Sun Television group led by his elder brother Kalanithi Maran. The three-judge bench of the apex court suspected “political...

One of the most distinctive features of the functioning of the Modi government has been its attempt to control the flow of information and marginalise dissent. The PM’s preference for one-way communication is well known. However, attempts by supporters of the BJP and its ideological parent, the RSS, to curb free expression by intimidating those who do not think like them are backfiring. A simple truth about the noisy democracy that is India seems to be escaping many of those in power. The more...

One of the most distinctive features of the functioning of the Narendra Modi government over the last 15 months has been its attempt to control the flows of information and marginalise dissent. The Prime Minister’s preference for one-way communication is well known. However, attempts by supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, to curb free expression by intimidating those who do not think like them are backfiring and, in fact...

It is surprising how rapidly some of the most ardent supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have become disillusioned with his government’s performance. It has been barely 15 months since the Bharatiya Janata Party government came to power with 31.5 per cent of the popular vote in May 2014. Yet corporate captains, right-wing ideologues, columnists and pubic intellectuals — many of whom were his ardent cheerleaders and welcomed his ascendancy — are today vying with one another to criticise...

Jo mera hai woh tera hai/ Jo tera hai woh mera (What is mine is yours; what is yours is mine.) o run the first two lines of the Airtel “friendship” song for young people written by Amitabh Bhattacharya and set to a catchy tune by Ram Sampath. Catchy indeed, because the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in the Government of India’s Ministry of Communications & Information Technology shares such a cosy, symbiotic relationship with the country’s largest telecom group, Bharti Airtel, that these...

Sleight of hand, circumvention of administrative norms, understating revenue to be shared with the government, securing efficient electro-magnetic spectrum for telecommunications at discounted prices or even free, sale of assets and restructuring of company holdings for unconscionable profits. This, according to a draft report of the Comptroller & Auditor General of India – the constitutional body mandated to oversee public finances – summarises the not-so-well-known story behind the incredible...

After the great recession that started in 2008, and eight decades after the first Great Depression wreaked havoc across the world in the 1930s, is Great Depression II in the offing? A day after the media interpreted statements made by the Reserve Bank of India governor, Raghuram G. Rajan, as suggesting that another ’30s-like Great Depression could take place, the RBI clarified that he had not implied that there is an “imminent danger” of the world economy slipping into the Great Depression that...

That the Monsoon Session of Parliament would literally and metaphorically be washed out is hardly a surprise. The political opponents of the Bharatiya Janata Party were determined to use the same tactics deployed by it when the party was out of power for a decade. In the coming three months, attention will be focused less on Delhi’s durbar politics and more on the battle for Bihar. The outcome of the Assembly elections in the state will undoubtedly have a significant bearing on the near-term...

His surname means a girl-child in a number of Indian languages. When asked about his family name, he clarifies that it is a version of Ghori or those who came from the Ghurid kingdom that spanned parts of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent in the 13th century. Varun Gauri, co-director of the World Development Report 2015 of the World Bank, obtained his doctorate in public policy from Princeton University in 1996 after which he joined the World Bank group. He has worked and conducted...

The Madhya Pradesh Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal (Vyapam) or Professional Examination Board scam threatens to destabilise not only the government of Shivraj Singh Chouhan (who has been chief minister of the state since November 2005), but the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party as well. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence on the issue and attempts by BJP functionaries to brazen it out may backfire on the state government in Bhopal as well as the Central government in Delhi. A superficial reading of the...

Laxminarayan yadav is a wealthy farmer. He lives in Ghumanhera village located on the Delhi-Haryana border. He grows wheat and mustard on five-and-a-half acres of irrigated land. Unseasonal rain destroyed 40 per cent of his winter (rabi) crop in March. The grain that remained edible got coloured; its price is down. He is not exactly happy, but far from despondent. Reason: the Delhi government will be paying him Rs 13,999 as compensation. “I will break even this rabi season,” says he. “I won’t...

There was no Night of the Long Knives. This time, it was boringly predictable. All but the most naive thought that an amicable solution would be found to prevent Greece from leaving the Eurozone. As "erratic Marxist" Yanis Varoufakis put in his papers as the finance minister of Greece, stock markets and currency exchanges didn't know how to react: with trepidation or relief, anger or gladness that the worst was over. Only one thing was certain: uncertainty would continue in the near future, with...

Even black humour has its ideological orientation as far as today's Greece is concerned. The capitalist version of the joke goes like this. Going Dutch means everyone sitting at a restaurant table shares the bill while Going Greek means that after everyone has eaten and drunk, everyone gets up and realises that no one has money to pay the bill. In the socialist version of the joke, those who have ordered food realise that those sitting at the next table -- who are owners of the restaurant -- are...

A loss-making company controlled by India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, who heads the country's biggest private corporate entity, Reliance Industries Limited, has successfully managed to reschedule repayments of its loans to banks. Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure Limited, the closely-held firm whose shares are not listed on stock exchanges, has a colourful and controverisal past. According to a story broken by Dev Chatterjee in the Business Standard on June 12, this is the first time...

Seven months after India’s largest bank signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a corporate conglomerate, a big question mark hangs over whether the State Bank of India will advance a first-of-its kind loan of $1 billion or over Rs 6,200 crore to a group headed by Gautam Adani to part-finance what is supposed to become Australia’s biggest coal mining project (and one of the world’s biggest as well). A section within the 14-member central board of directors of the State Bank of India is...

Around this time a year ago the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance group took over the Network18 group. Have there been significant changes since then in the popularity of the television channels run by the media conglomerate? The answer varies for the different genres of channels. Going by viewership data CNN IBN has seen a steady shrinkage of its share of viewership, but the business channel CNBC TV18 has maintained its earlier viewership. We did a comparitive review of the ratings of these channels...

What does left, right or centre mean in terms of political and economic ideology in today's India and the rest of the world? Many argue that these words associated with capitalism and socialism have become meaningless. Every politician on the planet will swear that she or he is pro-poor. But in the political economy of nation-states, particular policies either widen the gap between the rich and the poor or narrow this gap. Opportunism and rhetoric often blur the distinction between the...

In less than two decades, (from) what used to be a sleepy suburb of the national capital, Gurgaon has metamorphosed into a megapolis epitomising much that is good and terrible about urban agglomerations in India. As one of the fastest-growing cities in the country and the world, the one-time home of the mythological Dronacharya is a study in extreme contrasts: fancy shopping malls and gated colonies for the rich are a stone’s throw away from one-time villages that have become slums for domestic...

On 8 May 2015, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India tabled a report in Parliament that sharply indicted the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for providing an “undue benefit” to Reliance Jio—a telecom company owned by Mukesh Ambani as part of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL). According to the CAG, DoT did so by allowing Jio to offer voice services under the Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum it had obtained through the 4G (fourth-generation electro-magnetic spectrum)...

On May 13, 2015, a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2012, ostensibly to ensure that education of children in the 6-14 age group is not compromised. However, certain exceptions laid down in the bill to amend the law legitimise children working for their family and in family enterprises. The dilution of the Act, apparently proposed to preserve the fabric of Indian society, would...

On May 13, before the Lok Sabha passed the Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets (Imposition of Tax) Bill, 2015, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the world is no longer "willing to tolerate tax havens which thrive on secrecy". After the bill was passed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that the new law is "historic". But the government's critics argue that the new law is going to be ineffective at best or an eyewash at worst. The loudest criticism of the new law is that while it is meant...

In their election campaign in 2014, Narendra Modi and many Bharatiya Janata Party leaders had claimed that if elected, they would bring back enough black money to distribute a sum of 15,00,000 (or the equivalent of nearly $25,000) to each and every poor Indian family. Some of Modi's supporters, like Baba Ramdev, even claimed that the money would be brought back within 100 days of the new government coming to power. Having repeatedly asserted that the United Progressive Alliance government had...

The most astonishing aspect of the first year of the Narendra Modi government is how quickly the “honeymoon period” appears to have dissipated and almost disappeared. True, there is no threat whatsoever to the stability of his government. True, many of his critics who were once his ardent supporters are disgruntled. True, those who were expecting “big bang” economic reforms are disappointed with his gradualist approach. But — and there are many “buts” — wait! There is a certain inevitability...