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The turmoil in Iraq has the potential to upset all plans that are being drawn up by the Narendra Modi government to revive the Indian economy. Global prices of crude oil have already risen and could go up further. If that happens, the Indian economy will be impacted badly simply because the country currently imports around 80 per cent of its total requirements of oil. With domestic prices of petroleum products creeping up and with a deficient monsoon, the government will not be able to contain...

Despite the fact that India has a vast and varied mass media, freedom of expression has been constrained and restricted from time to time on account of various considerations. Such considerations include intolerance on the part of religious hardliners or fundamentalist groups, pressures exerted by politicians and political parties, as well as the influence of corporate captains who control advertising expenditure which funds the media. Despite the diversity of the media in India, this sector...

As finance minister Arun Jaitley prepares to present his first Union Budget on July 10, there are two big question marks hanging over his head like a Damocles sword. The problem is that neither he nor any of us have precise answers to these questions. Depending on what the answers are, the Budget could be described as “soft”, “hard”, “conservative”, “forward looking” or just a “holding operation” for the next eight months. The first question: How deficient is the monsoon going to be? The second...

A distinctive feature of the recently concluded 16th general elections in India was the manner in which large sections of the mass media extended wholehearted support to the candidature of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who led the rightwing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, by winning more than a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament in the world’s largest democracy. The media, in turn, was greatly benefitted by an unprecedented advertising...

In this section, Yadav analyses the twists and turns in the media’s relationship with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). He also dwells on his personal experiences with particular journalists when he contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Gurgaon in Haryana, and the phenomenon of "paid news" as it played out in the election. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (PGT): During the India Against Corruption movement led by Anna Hazare, it was evident that much of the media was favourably inclined towards your group...

An academic-turned-politician, Dr Yogendra Yadav is an important ideologue of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). He has also made his mark as an astute analyst of Indian politics. However, his first foray into electoral politics was disastrous: he contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Gurgaon in Haryana and ended up fourth, losing his deposit. Yadav, by his own description, is "interested in the promise, practice, and prospects of modern politics". A senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of...

The decision by Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) to wrest full managerial and editorial control over the Network18 group was not unexpected given the fact that two and half years ago, RIL, the country’s biggest privately-owned company, had invested heavily in Network18, India’s biggest media organisation after its virtual amalgamation with the Eenadu group. The country’s richest man, Mukesh D Ambani, is now, formally, also India’s biggest media baron. However, what took some by surprise was the...

The report of the Intelligence Bureau on the “impact” that non-government organisations have on India’s “development” is a case of extreme paranoia on the part of a section of the country’s establishment. This section believes that those who are opposed to their notions of development — which include the proliferation of nuclear energy and widespread use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture — are not just anti-national but also acting at the behest of foreign powers who do not want...

Now that India's richest man Mukesh D Ambani is formally the head of the country's biggest media conglomerate, it is but natural that questions will be raised as to what this development means for freedom of expression in the world's largest democracy. It can be contended that the recent takeover of the Network18 group by Reliance Industries Limited, India's largest privately-owned corporate entity, does not forebode well for the media. The space for disseminating a diverse range of views could...

In the excitement of the elections and a new Prime Minister assuming power, a most unusual battle between two of the biggest companies in the country all but escaped the attention of large sections of the media. The biggest corporate entity in the public sector, the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has in a court of law accused the biggest private sector company, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), of pilfering 18 billion cubic metres of natural gas worth as much as `30,000 crore since 2009...

Why did Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) issue a notice of arbitration to the government seeking an early decision to increase the administered price of natural gas? The company, India’s largest in the private sector, claimed on 10 May that it had “no other option but to pursue this course of action” since RIL – together with its partners, British Petroleum and Niko Resources of Canada – was “unable to sanction planned investments of close to $4 billion” during this year. It can, however, be...

This columnist has to start by saying sorry. One failed to read the chai leaves, the writing on the wall. Many of us who pretend to understand the complex polity of this country knew even before the elections began that the Bharatiya Janata Party under Narendra Modi would gain handsomely and that the Congress would lose a lot of ground. But some of us — this writer included — failed to anticipate the sheer scale of the saffron tsunami and the depths to which India’s one-time “grand old party”...

India, the world's largest democracy has swung to the right, and decisively so. What was predicted as a surge of saffron - the colour favoured by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi - has turned out to be a veritable tsunami in favour of the Hindu nationalist party and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition it leads. India's incoming prime minister, who has been chief minister of the industrially-prosperous state of Gujarat since 2001, has raised aspirations which...

About 814 million voters in the world's largest democracy will elect a new government amid India's economy slowing down considerably. The outcome of the parliamentary elections will be known on May 16 and there is every likelihood that the coming summer will be long and hot for the people, in more than just a metaphorical sense. One of the biggest concerns of the electorate is high food prices. For the first time in the history of India, inflation has stubbornly refused to slow down despite...

Tehelka is up for sale. The person who controls the company which currently publishes the iconic magazine--whose founder editor Tarun Tejpal has been behind bars from 30 November facing allegations that he sexually assaulted a junior colleague--wants to sell his stake in the firm. But the seller, Kanwar Deep Singh, a controversial Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament belonging to the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), is yet to hone in on a buyer though he claims he has received various offers and...

Since much of India's mainstream media and the corporate sector is rather gung-ho about Narendra Modi becoming the country's next Prime Minister, here's a contrary point of view on why the Gujarat Chief Minister may not be able to fulfil his ambition. This article argues that the road ahead for the Bharatiya Janata Party and its prime ministerial candidate is going to be far from smooth. The chances of the BJP obtaining close to, or more than 200 seats in the next Lok Sabha is far from certain...

Given the allegations of financial misdemeanour against New Delhi Television Limited, the question arises as to whether the media group is being persecuted. Highly-placed sources in NDTV certainly believe they are, that too by individuals close to the Sangh Parivar. On April 8, 2013, during the "Think India Dialogue" organized by the Network18 group -- headed by Raghav Behl and financially supported by Mukesh Ambani's group and which is NDTV's rival -- Gujarat Chief Minister and the BJP's prime...

A serious allegation levelled by Indian Revenue Service officer S.K. Srivastava against the management of New Delhi Television Limited is that the company bribed an Income Tax officer, Sumana Sen, to allegedly influence the Income Tax Department’s assessment of NDTV’s income. Sen’s husband, Abhisar Sharma was employed with NDTV as a senior journalist. Was there a case of conflict of interest in Sen handling the tax assessments of NDTV? Were Sharma and Sen "bribed" in the form of trips to Europe...

This story is a slew of claims and counter-claims, with allegations of financial misdemeanour, money laundering and tax evasion flying thick and fast. The dramatis personae includes two political heavyweights one of whom is a cabinet minister, one of the country’s best know TV personalities who is owner of a media company, a controversial income tax official with an arrest warrant against him and two of his female colleagues accusing him of slander. Behind the allegations levelled last December...

The Indian economy is currently in bad shape, some would even say in a pretty perilous state, despite all the optimistic claims being made by government spokespersons, more of which will undoubtedly be made by Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram when he presents his government's vote-on-account in lieu of an annual budget in the Lok Sabha on February 17. The annual rate of growth of the country's gross domestic product shows no signs of rising above the 4.5-5 per cent mark. Investor...

A year that has seen a record number of working journalists lose their jobs ended with a high court setting a significant precedent. In what is a unique judicial intervention, a vacation judge of the Madras High Court at Chennai issued an interim injunction restraining the management of New Generation Media Corporation Private Limited from acting on a letter served on 35-odd employees asking them to either accept a sharp cut in remuneration or leave the company. The injunction will at least...

The Tamil Nadu-based Sri Ramaswamy Memorial (SRM) group has decided to indefinitely postpone the launch of its English television news channel. Consequently, 40-odd employees of group company, New Generation Media Corporation Private Limited, have been verbally told to leave their jobs or accept a drastic cut in salaries. Quite a few of these employees, some of whom had been waiting for a year and a half for the launch of the television channel, are predictably upset with the terms under which...

It seems the Election Commission of India is the only body in the country that is seriously trying to combat the pernicious practice of "paid news". If other organizations, including organizations that claim to represent the interests of journalists and other media professionals, played a more proactive role in curbing this corrupt practice, the phenomenon of masquerading advertisements as news could be curtailed to some extent. This is unfortunately not happening at a significant pace. On 3...

When gods have feet of clay, even believers become atheists. Tarun Tejpal, just over 50, used to be an iconic figure in Indian journalism. He was a man who led a media organisation which shook a government, unseated influential officials, broke new ground in investigative journalism using sting operations, and championed causes in favour of the underprivileged. Today he has been disgraced and humiliated, accused by his young daughter's close friend and his employee of sexual assault and abuse of...

Hartosh Singh Bal, political editor of Open, was served a notice of termination of employment on Wednesday November 13, 2013. The weekly is published by Open Media Network Pvt Ltd, a company in the RP-Sanjiv Goenka group headed by industrialist Sanjiv Goenka. Goenka has reportedly wanted Manu Joseph, the editor of the publication, to remove Bal from his position for quite some time now. Joseph resisted but finally gave in to "rebuild his relationship with the owner" and "push through an...

A report of the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) has levelled a series of allegations against India's biggest privately-controlled corporate entity Reliance Industries Limited, headed by the country's richest man Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani, accusing it of having engineered a series of allegedly illegal transactions to control a company that controlled the NewsX television channel which, in turn, resulted in "wrongful" losses to the extent of hundreds of crores of rupees. Though the SFIO...

Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated by the burst of firecrackers and hectic shopping by families across India, was subdued last weekend. The lights were dimmer, the footfalls in malls smaller and the mood less exuberant. The reason: consistently high inflation. High food and fuel prices have sharply eroded the real incomes of large sections of the world's second-most populous country, contributing to anger and social unrest that have often spilled over on to the streets. "I think twice...

The nexus between politics, big business and white-collar crime is present in myriad forms across the globe. In India, the corrupt coalition between those who have and those who wield authority — often present in the same person — is strengthened by other sections, which include bureaucrats and media personnel. If the conversations involving Niira Radia bear testimony to the role of a few influential journalists in perpetuating this nexus, what coalgate has revealed is how the cosy relationship...

As you enter Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, the Mansagar Lake is a sight to behold. One of the largest man-made water bodies in the country, it was built in 1610 by Raja Man Singh I, the then ruler of Amer, by damming the Darbhawati river. But this placid water body, built by a feudal lord for recreation as well as for irrigation, with an ornate palace (Jal Mahal) in its middle and a temple on its northwestern side, has become the subject of bitter contention in recent times. A legal tussle...

The Story so far The Mansagar lake, one of the largest manmade water bodies in India with a palace called Jal Mahal at the centre of it, a popular tourism and heritage spot in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, was handed over for redevelopment to a private real estate firm as part of what was allegedly a "sweetheart deal". The area was given on a long lease of 99 years at what was considered to be very low lease rentals. After various public interest litigations were filed against different...

Lalu Prasad Yadav is in jail. As is Rasheed Masood. Both have been disqualified as legislators. But are elected representatives now likely to be less brazen while participating in acts of corruption, even if the long arm of the law remains rather lengthy and the wheels of justice continue to grind excruciatingly slowly? Is India’s political system becoming more transparent and hence, less corrupt? One may be tempted to reply in the affirmative to both the questions raised in view of certain...

It was a reunion organised by Potty, not his real name of course, who was coming to Delhi with his family after having spent more than three decades working for the IMF. Besides yours truly—Thak to the initiated— there was Dasi, a one-time Trotskyite who, lo and behold, became a self-appointed ideologue of right-wing Hindu nationalist forces led by NaMo. Alcohol and large dollops of nostalgia were followed by a trip down memory lane to Pandara Market, now far more tony than it was in the 1970s...

Lalu Prasad Yadav has risen from being a virtual non-entity, even in his native Bihar, to arguably one of the best known political leaders in India even if he has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. True, Lalu had been 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...

For Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the irony could not have been more cruel. The man who is credited with lifting the country's economy from the brink of disaster in 1991 as finance minister in PV Narasimha Rao's government, is today facing a situation which is not very much better. In fact, in at least two respects - economic inequality and the international exchange rate of the rupee - India's economy appears to be worse off than where it was two decades earlier. India is not in danger of...

The “restructuring” at Network 18 which resulted in the exit of an editor and three senior employees is becoming something of a cause celebre. Journalists organisations are taking it up and issuing statements, the mainstream media has begun writing about it. There have been sackings before but not over ESOPs, involving business journalists employed in a joint venture with an international business magazine, floated by a high profile media house owned by one of the country’s wealthiest magnates...

Some Questions and Answers on a Tycoon, a Law Officer and an Editor Question: What is the nature of the relationship between one of India's richest men and the country's top legal officer? Answer: Good friends. Question: Can legal notices be deployed to prevent a publication from coming out with an article even before it is published? Answer: Such attempts are indeed made but these are not always successful, since not all editors and publishers are easily intimidated or buckle under pressure...

With a substantial section of the Indian media choosing to hype the upcoming 16th General Election as an American presidential style contest between Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, it is not surprising that popular interest in the controversial leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has grown exponentially in recent months. Predictably, two journalist-authors and their publishers have sought to ride the crest of this wave of interest about a...

A consultation paper prepared by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and released in mid-February makes out a strong and persuasive case for imposition of legal restrictions on cross-media ownership by corporate conglomerates. In the past, there have been several organisations, including TRAI and a committee of Parliament, that have argued why the domination of particular groups over different sections of the mass media, including print, radio and television, in specific...

The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is probing whether investments by so-called shell companies linked with Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), headed by Mukesh Ambani, caused intentional losses to the company's shareholders. The investments were made during 2009-10 in companies that were part of the INX Media (now 9X Media) group which owns and operates television channels. The ongoing investigation by the SFIO (which is part of the government of India's Ministry of Corporate Affairs...

The paradox is rather apparent. In the contemporary history of India, never have so many once-influential politicians had to spend time behind bars as they have in recent times. Yet the second UPA government, headed by a Prime Minister who was known as Mr Clean, is also being perceived as one of the country’s most corrupt regimes, packed by people with flexible ethics. Before one seeks to explain the contradiction, here’s a roll call of important politicians who were recent guests of the...

BCCL’s Newsprint Burden As the biggest publisher of newspapers in India, it is hardly surprising that BCCL is the single largest consumer of newsprint in the country. The company consumed Rs 1,246.90 crore worth of raw materials in 2010-11, the bulk of it newsprint, comprising over a third (38 per cent) of its turnover that year. The company’s imports stood at Rs 1,374.26 crore, up by as much as 2.8 times from Rs 484.91 crore in the previous financial year. In a report published in Business...

Arvind Kejriwal put it rather bluntly when he asked rhetorically: Who’s running the country, Manmohan Singh or Mukesh Ambani? After a long time, the question was posed in a manner that laid bare the ugly nexus between politics and business – the nexus which is at the root of much of the corruption that is widespread in India today and which is responsible for the ugly underbelly of economic liberalisation, that is, brazen forms of crony capitalism. That Kejriwal’s statements could not be ignored...

Private treaties: boon or bane for BCCL? BCCL was the first media company in India to accept equity shares in lieu of money for advertising space. Others followed thereafter. Here are excerpts from the April 2010 report of the sub-committee of the Press Council of India (PCI) entitled “Paid News: How Corruption in the Indian Media Undermines Democracy” which is available on the Council’s website. The writer of this article was co-author of the sub-committee’s report as a member of the PCI. “BCCL...

BCCL is one of the most profitable companies of its kind. In the financial year that ended on 31 March 2011, the company earned profit before tax of Rs 1,489.2 crore on a total income of Rs 4,749.3 crore, implying a phenomenally high profit margin of 31.89 per cent. In 2010-11, BCCL earned a net profit of Rs 968.74 crore (20.4 per cent of turnover) -- up by as much as 3.8 times from Rs 252.26 crore in the previous financial year. (This is the last balance sheet of the company that is available...

Allegations leveled by Palagummi Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu newspaper that its competing daily, the Times of India, published an article at the behest of Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech without disclosing this fact to its readers and subsequently gained financially from its publication, have been endorsed by a committee of Parliamentarians in a recently-published report. Whereas the report, prepared by a panel of MPs belonging to different political parties, does not mention the ToI by...

“For some, coal means diamonds and gold. For others, the coal signifies bread. They go underground not to take out coal but to sustain their life. They put their lives at risk. They are ready to face death at any moment. But they don’t earn much. The bulk of the profits generated by mining coal is appropriated by the mafia. This is the main reason for poverty here.” This was a perceptive statement made by Amit Raja, a talented journalist who has authored a book titled Aag mein Jharia (Jharia on...

A set of bewildering questions are being raised by industry lobbies and a section of the media about the levy of a one-time fee for excess electromagnetic spectrum fee held by India's telecommunications companies and the refarming or reallocation of spectrum in the privileged 900 MHz (MegaHertz) band that had hitherto been "reserved" for the early entrants. An impression has been sought to be created that these measures have suddenly come out of the blue and that these are both anti-industry and...

A cartoon in The Hindu (that predates the current Ambedkar cartoon controversy) depicts the West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, trying to calm down a bunch of jubilant students, saying “I banned Marx, not marks”. Trinamool Congress chief Banerjee’s ire is primarily directed towards her arch political rival, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), whose mouthpiece, Ganashakti, which she does not want the State-funded libraries to subscribe to. There are many others on her list...

IS INFLUENCE being used to scuttle a major money-laundering case against the Agarwal family, the mining magnates who control the Vedanta Resources/Sterlite corporate empire? Circumstantial evidence certainly points in this direction. On October 13, there was confusion in the Delhi High Court, where a division bench comprising Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S Muralidhar was about to hear a case: It suddenly transpired that the Enforcement Directorate (which is under the...

Is more competition what India's latest exchange for financial instruments, MCX-SX (Multi-Commodity Exchange - Stock Exchange), will be able to bring to the table and is this the key to a vibrant and more inclusive capital market? Had it just been a matter of competition between exchanges, the advent of the National Stock Exchange would have made all the difference. The NSE, however, started playing "big brother" soon after it ousted the Bombay Stock Exchange from that position. A source close...