Nexus

[muse]

From the Dawn paper




India`s cozy ties between corruption and corporate fascism
Jawed Naqvi
(8 hours ago) Today
Jawed Naqvi

What passes for resurgent religious fascism in India has in fact mutated into a cozy partnership with a new strand of “secular fascism”, also known as corporate takeover of the levers of state. There are thus two parallel stories running at this point in time in the country and they both complement each other.

The first narrative stems from the arrest of a number of rightwing Hindutva extremists in a number of places for false flag attacks they staged over several years. These people apparently carried out sabotage to blame it on Pakistani and Indian Muslims. They used false beards and moustaches with useful quantities of RDX, which was at least on one occasion evidently procured from army stores. The Samjhauta Express bombing is being investigated along this lead. All this is embarrassing not only for the Hindutva leadership but also for alleged rogue officials in intelligence agencies that are said to have colluded with the so-called nationalist extremists. The murky story of fake encounter killings of Muslim hoodlums and innocent ones too in Gujarat has already been deleted from the media’s menu.

Naturally, the Hindutva sponsors needed a quick change in the news headlines, away from their terror links. They found one soon enough when writer Arundhati Roy and Kashmiri separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani appeared together in Delhi for the first time to repeat what Ms Roy had said two years ago in an essay called Azadi. She reiterated the right to self determination of Kashmiris and also claimed what Jawaharlal Nehru and others had said dozens of times before her — that Kashmir came to India through an unusual route without consulting the people of Kashmir.

The somewhat effete call for Azadi thus became a ruse to switch the headlines, from religious fascism to cooked up charges of sedition against Roy and others. And the corporate media – be they pro-Congress or pro-BJP (and mostly you can’t tell) — colluded. A senior columnist Vir Sanghvi counselled indulgently that everyone had a right to dislike Arundhati Roy. As irony would have it he is among the two or three senior journalists whose phone was tapped by the income tax sleuths chasing a major financial cum political scandal.

This phone tapping and what it unearthed forms the hub of the second narrative doing the rounds in New Delhi. According to
this parallel strand of the main media story there has been a huge scam in the telecom ministry something to the tune of 175,000 crore rupees. Going by the taped conversations of politicians and middlemen, at the start of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s second innings in May last year, there was hectic lobbying for Mr. A.Raja of the DMK party to be given the telecom ministry. He got it and then allegedly began granting favours to his handpicked firms.

Among those whose phones were tapped were NDTV’s ace anchor Barkha Dutt and Mr. Sanghvi. I am not going into the details of the conversation as they are available on the web if you look for Open magazine and Outlook magazine. They were both involved in a conversation with Neera Radia, a woman PR representative who works for the main firms of industrialists Mukesh Ambani and Ratan Tata. Ms Radia evidently successfully campaigned to have A. Raja installed as the telecom minister.

The brief point is that following revelations of large-scale corruption by the minister, for whose job all the lobbying was done last year, he was forced to resign.

However, because the controversial minister belonged to a Tamil Nadu party which crucially shores up the Congress-led UPA coalition, there was a scare that the government would fall if an angry DMK withdrew support. The rival AIDMK party said they would step in to prop up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s minority government if he decided to eject the DMK from the ruling coalition. Somehow the Congress-DMK pact has survived the turbulence. An official secret report doing the rounds indicates that the entire episode is the outcome of a corporate war, between those who lobbied against Raja and those who favoured him, with journalists and others sought to be used as go-betweens.

The essence of the unfolding corruption tragedy is perhaps best captured in one of the tapes in which India’s most influential business tycoon is quoted as claiming that the Congress party was his dukaan, a shop. There is nothing to indicate that the BJP is not similarly regarded by the corporate world. In the secret report the main leftist party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) too is named as one of the parties whose leaders are being “managed” by the corporate mafia. The spectrum from the left to the right is thus covered by the corporate world’s reach.

Let it be recalled here that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s tenures first as finance minister and then as prime minister have been littered with huge corruption scandals, the Harshad Mehta affair being just one. In fact, the media has rarely put the spotlight on him even though the economic reforms that he is credited with would not be there had his government, when he was finance minister, not bribed a clutch of MPs to pass a trust vote. In other words, the very basis of India’s so-called reforms flows from an act of massive corruption which would have sent the prime minister of the day in any other country straight to prison. However, only the tribal MPs who accepted the bribe were jailed, not the bribe givers. Is it not corruption that the current prime minister has abused gaping loopholes in the constitution, with the help of the corporate media, whereby he has not faced the electorate to give him legitimacy during his two terms? And is he really a resident of Assam as he has claimed to find a safe seat to the Rajya Sabha from the remote north-eastern state?

Corruption is a relative issue. A majority of the impoverished masses would not be able to even connect with the huge volumes of money transacted between two parties. They are probably more worried about whether they would be able to spend the winters under a plastic sheet on the pavements of Delhi, or if something as menacing as the recent Commonwealth Games would find them being dumped in some godforsaken region on the outskirts of the city and beyond.

Corruption in India is reflected in the very basic fact that you have to be ****** rich and with massive muscle power to fight an election to claim your right as a citizen. Nobody is arguing that this is going to change without a massive political upheaval.

Nobody is arguing that such a move would not be resisted by the state with all the force at its command. That is corruption in its most naked form.

If corruption is so deeply entrenched, is the Supreme Court’s recent query asking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to explain his silence for 16 months over the goings on in the telecom ministry going to change anything? I think the battle in the garb of probity really is being fought for the next corporate agenda. The present government is perceived as ineffective to help the business community win its objectives in the forests of Chhatisgarh, in the minefields of Jharkhand and the proposed ones in Orissa.

There is a strong people’s resistance going on there. Notice has been served through the current corruption-related standoff that the next government will belong to the one who has the stomach to kill enough common people to win the next major objective for those that consider Indian politics to be their dukaan. The media will be used yet again to lobby for that mayhem.

As for Hindutva, it is already part of the corporate agenda. Arundhati Roy had figured out the nexus some time ago. She is in the crosshairs of an increasingly vicious alliance between Hindutva nationalists and their corporate patrons who may dump the Congress for a better deal with the BJP.

Caught in the pincer are a majority of Indians.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

 

[LaBong]

As for Hindutva, it is already part of the corporate agenda. Arundhati Roy had figured out the nexus some time ago. She is in the crosshairs of an increasingly vicious alliance between Hindutva nationalists and their corporate patrons who may dump the Congress for a better deal with the BJP.

Lol Arundhuti is most hated in educated middle class for her stupid anti corporate and American imperialistic nefarious design rhetoric!

It's not a bipolar society at all, as Naqvi tried to portray.

 

[Fighter488]

Corruption is a big menace in India. And yes corporate and political nexus is the root cause of majority of the problems, this golden bird, India, is affected with!

I know personally, one instance, where Dr. Manmohan Singh, PM of India, involved in corrupt practice himself. My brother, who is a media guy and have quite good relations in higher ups in media and politicians, narrated it to me, some time back.

No one is clean here!

Fighter

 

[muse]

It's not a bipolar society at all,

Sounds desperate - relax, no need to go defensive, all of Indian society is not resting on your narrow shoulders


November 21, 2010
Unlikely Person at the Heart of India’s Scandal
By LYDIA POLGREEN

NEW DELHI — He was a small-town lawyer from a regional political party in a southern Indian state. By almost any measure, Andimuthu Raja, who had no background in telecommunications or in business, seemed an unlikely candidate to be the government minister presiding over the fastest-growing cellphone market in the world.

But he had the only qualification that mattered: the ironclad backing of the political chieftain of his party, a crucial ally of the governing Congress Party. Without his party’s 16 members of the lower house of Parliament, the government cobbled together from squabbling allies would collapse.

Mr. Raja is now at the center of what may turn out to be the biggest political corruption scandal in Indian history. He is accused of using his post to sell off valuable mobile telephone spectrum licenses in 2008 at rock-bottom prices. His decisions may have cost the Indian treasury as much as $40 billion, according to a government investigative report released last week.

The widening scandal, coming on the heels of two major political scandals involving senior Congress Party officials, has eroded faith in India’s government. Last week, India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, widely regarded as a figure of unimpeachable integrity, was rapped by the Supreme Court for failing to investigate quickly. The scandal also threatens to undermine one of the cornerstones of India’s rapidly growing, technology-driven economy.

The story of how Mr. Raja rose from small-time regional politician to telecommunications minister is emblematic of how politics in India, the world’s largest democracy, really work. Small, regional parties, often formed along family or caste lines, hold outsize sway here, taking command of crucial and potentially lucrative parts of the government to fill their pockets and party coffers.

“When there is a multiparty coalition at the center, you have got to turn a blind eye to the actions of some of the less principled parties,” said Prem Shankar Jha, a political analyst.

Since 1989, when Rajiv Gandhi’s government went down in defeat in the wake of a corruption scandal involving military contracts, no party has won an outright majority in Parliament. As a result, forming a government has required complicated and often messy coalitions with smaller regional parties. These parties often have no national agenda and see power in the center as little more than an opportunity to loot.

The Congress Party has had no shortage of corruption scandals of its own. But it currently controls the most crucial government functions — internal security, foreign policy, defense and finance — and has entrusted them to seasoned leaders with unassailable credentials. But the realities of coalition politics, in which crucial allies must be given important posts, have left some large ministries in the hands of smaller parties, which have in turn put questionable politicians in important jobs.

This has led to embarrassing scandals and mismanagement in the past. In 2006, the coal minister, Shibu Soren, a politician from the eastern state of Jharkhand and an important ally of the Congress Party, was forced to resign after he was convicted on murder charges. India’s railways, the country’s largest employer, are in the hands of Mamata Banerjee, a populist leader whose sole aim appears to be defeating the Communist Party of India in West Bengal and putting her party, the Trinamool Congress, in power.

Mr. Raja’s party, the Tamil Nadu-based Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, or D.M.K., was once a liberation movement built on Tamil nationalism. But the party has largely jettisoned ideology. An octogenarian, wheelchair-dependent patriarch named M. Karunanidhi and his plentiful and perpetually feuding progeny run it, and it more closely resembles a sprawling family business empire than a political party.

When the Congress Party returned to power in 2004, it won narrow advantage over the center-right Bharatiya Janata Party, whose former ally, the D.M.K., linked up instead with Congress. The D.M.K.’s reward was the telecommunications ministry and several other posts.

Mr. Karunanidhi sent his grandnephew, a local media tycoon named Dyanidhi Maran, to Delhi to become telecommunications minister. But Mr. Maran fell afoul of Mr. Karunanidhi’s eldest son. In an effort to quiet the burgeoning family feud, Mr. Karunanidhi replaced Mr. Maran, a powerful political player in Tamil Nadu, with Mr. Raja, who was much less well known but who had a close relationship with Mr. Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi, who is also a powerful party figure.

Mr. Raja had a history of party activism dating to his college days. He had been a minister in a previous government. He was the most important politician in the state from the Dalit, or formerly untouchable, community, and giving him a big job would secure Dalit votes.

“He was loyal and he was not a threat,” said Vaasanthi, an analyst who has written extensively about Tamil Nadu politics and who goes by one name. “That was his qualification for the job.”

Mr. Raja may not have been a threat to Mr. Karunanidhi’s children, who jealously guard control of the party as their birthright. But his handling of the spectrum sale has undermined confidence in what initially appeared to be India’s most stable and competent government in years.

Even Mr. Singh, widely seen as one of the most upstanding politicians in India, has been tarred in the scandal. While no one has suggested he was involved in corruption, India’s Supreme Court criticized him last week for failing to respond to a call for an investigation into Mr. Raja’s handling of the spectrum sale.

Mr. Singh has pledged to punish anyone found guilty in the scandal, but questions linger about why he did not act sooner to remove Mr. Raja, leading some to conclude that the Congress Party will sacrifice almost any principle to hold on to its governing coalition.

Mr. Raja resigned under pressure on Nov. 14, but he has denied any wrongdoing. India’s Central Bureau of Investigation is carrying out a criminal inquiry.

The Congress Party has faced its own corruption scandals in recent weeks. The senior politician who was in charge of the disastrous preparations for the Commonwealth Games last month had to resign from a minor party position amid multiple inquiries into fraud and graft. The chief minister of Maharashtra, the state that includes Mumbai, was also forced to step down after it was discovered that members of his family had improperly received valuable apartments meant for war widows.

Such scandals, analysts say, could undermine efforts by the Congress Party’s chief, Sonia Gandhi, and her son Rahul to win an outright majority in the next election, in 2014.

 

[KS]

Sounds desperate - relax, no need to go defensive, all of Indian society is not resting on your narrow shoulders


November 21, 2010
Unlikely Person at the Heart of India’s Scandal
By LYDIA POLGREEN

NEW DELHI — He was a small-town lawyer from a regional political party in a southern Indian state. By almost any measure, Andimuthu Raja, who had no background in telecommunications or in business, seemed an unlikely candidate to be the government minister presiding over the fastest-growing cellphone market in the world.

But he had the only qualification that mattered: the ironclad backing of the political chieftain of his party, a crucial ally of the governing Congress Party. Without his party’s 16 members of the lower house of Parliament, the government cobbled together from squabbling allies would collapse.

Mr. Raja is now at the center of what may turn out to be the biggest political corruption scandal in Indian history. He is accused of using his post to sell off valuable mobile telephone spectrum licenses in 2008 at rock-bottom prices. His decisions may have cost the Indian treasury as much as $40 billion, according to a government investigative report released last week.

The widening scandal, coming on the heels of two major political scandals involving senior Congress Party officials, has eroded faith in India’s government. Last week, India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, widely regarded as a figure of unimpeachable integrity, was rapped by the Supreme Court for failing to investigate quickly. The scandal also threatens to undermine one of the cornerstones of India’s rapidly growing, technology-driven economy.

The story of how Mr. Raja rose from small-time regional politician to telecommunications minister is emblematic of how politics in India, the world’s largest democracy, really work. Small, regional parties, often formed along family or caste lines, hold outsize sway here, taking command of crucial and potentially lucrative parts of the government to fill their pockets and party coffers.

“When there is a multiparty coalition at the center, you have got to turn a blind eye to the actions of some of the less principled parties,” said Prem Shankar Jha, a political analyst.

Since 1989, when Rajiv Gandhi’s government went down in defeat in the wake of a corruption scandal involving military contracts, no party has won an outright majority in Parliament. As a result, forming a government has required complicated and often messy coalitions with smaller regional parties. These parties often have no national agenda and see power in the center as little more than an opportunity to loot.

The Congress Party has had no shortage of corruption scandals of its own. But it currently controls the most crucial government functions — internal security, foreign policy, defense and finance — and has entrusted them to seasoned leaders with unassailable credentials. But the realities of coalition politics, in which crucial allies must be given important posts, have left some large ministries in the hands of smaller parties, which have in turn put questionable politicians in important jobs.

This has led to embarrassing scandals and mismanagement in the past. In 2006, the coal minister, Shibu Soren, a politician from the eastern state of Jharkhand and an important ally of the Congress Party, was forced to resign after he was convicted on murder charges. India’s railways, the country’s largest employer, are in the hands of Mamata Banerjee, a populist leader whose sole aim appears to be defeating the Communist Party of India in West Bengal and putting her party, the Trinamool Congress, in power.

Mr. Raja’s party, the Tamil Nadu-based Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, or D.M.K., was once a liberation movement built on Tamil nationalism. But the party has largely jettisoned ideology. An octogenarian, wheelchair-dependent patriarch named M. Karunanidhi and his plentiful and perpetually feuding progeny run it, and it more closely resembles a sprawling family business empire than a political party.

When the Congress Party returned to power in 2004, it won narrow advantage over the center-right Bharatiya Janata Party, whose former ally, the D.M.K., linked up instead with Congress. The D.M.K.’s reward was the telecommunications ministry and several other posts.

Mr. Karunanidhi sent his grandnephew, a local media tycoon named Dyanidhi Maran, to Delhi to become telecommunications minister. But Mr. Maran fell afoul of Mr. Karunanidhi’s eldest son. In an effort to quiet the burgeoning family feud, Mr. Karunanidhi replaced Mr. Maran, a powerful political player in Tamil Nadu, with Mr. Raja, who was much less well known but who had a close relationship with Mr. Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi, who is also a powerful party figure.

Mr. Raja had a history of party activism dating to his college days. He had been a minister in a previous government. He was the most important politician in the state from the Dalit, or formerly untouchable, community, and giving him a big job would secure Dalit votes.

“He was loyal and he was not a threat,” said Vaasanthi, an analyst who has written extensively about Tamil Nadu politics and who goes by one name. “That was his qualification for the job.”

Mr. Raja may not have been a threat to Mr. Karunanidhi’s children, who jealously guard control of the party as their birthright. But his handling of the spectrum sale has undermined confidence in what initially appeared to be India’s most stable and competent government in years.

Even Mr. Singh, widely seen as one of the most upstanding politicians in India, has been tarred in the scandal. While no one has suggested he was involved in corruption, India’s Supreme Court criticized him last week for failing to respond to a call for an investigation into Mr. Raja’s handling of the spectrum sale.

Mr. Singh has pledged to punish anyone found guilty in the scandal, but questions linger about why he did not act sooner to remove Mr. Raja, leading some to conclude that the Congress Party will sacrifice almost any principle to hold on to its governing coalition.

Mr. Raja resigned under pressure on Nov. 14, but he has denied any wrongdoing. India’s Central Bureau of Investigation is carrying out a criminal inquiry.

The Congress Party has faced its own corruption scandals in recent weeks. The senior politician who was in charge of the disastrous preparations for the Commonwealth Games last month had to resign from a minor party position amid multiple inquiries into fraud and graft. The chief minister of Maharashtra, the state that includes Mumbai, was also forced to step down after it was discovered that members of his family had improperly received valuable apartments meant for war widows.

Such scandals, analysts say, could undermine efforts by the Congress Party’s chief, Sonia Gandhi, and her son Rahul to win an outright majority in the next election, in 2014.

And the reason for this article is ????

 

[satishkumarcsc]

Hey muse...with all this Tamilnadu is the second most industrialized and ranks number 1 in security. It has the second largest GDP and more educational facilities when compared to any other state. There are more tier 1 cities in Tamilnadu compared to other states and we also have the least central assistance.

Economy of Tamil Nadu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This was the sate that introduced mid-day meal scheme for schools and is the fastest growing state in education. Both the governments are corrupt here but when the push comes to shove they dont mind taking the extra step to lead their people out of misery.

So there is no way other states can blame the DMK or the AIADMK as these guys get the job done actually instead of building statues and painting self portraits.

 

[KS]

Hey muse...with all this Tamilnadu is the second most industrialized and ranks number 1 in security. It has the second largest GDP and more educational facilities when compared to any other state. There are more tier 1 cities in Tamilnadu compared to other states and we also have the least central assistance.

Economy of Tamil Nadu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This was the sate that introduced mid-day meal scheme for schools and is the fastest growing state in education. Both the governments are corrupt here but when the push comes to shove they dont mind taking the extra step to lead their people out of misery.

So there is no way other states can blame the DMK or the AIADMK as these guys get the job done actually instead of building statues and painting self portraits.

Vidunga boss...Ivanugala ellam solli thirutha mudiyathu......Namma aaluga kaasu adichalum vela konjam seivaanga....ivanuga oorla kaasu mattum thaan adipaanga....ellarthayum avanuga maariye ninaichutaanuga..paya pulaaiga..

And another thing I want to clarify is that it is still not proved to be the biggest scam in Indian History - the figure of 1.76 Lakh Crore is the loss to the exchequer -- not the amount Raja had swindled.

A common mis-conception.

 

[muse]

great post - but really what's this fascination Indian friends have with wiki -- if it's on wiki it must be true?

I very much take your point about getting the job done - perhaps the most corrupt politics is practiced in the US, I mean spending hundreds of millions for a job that pays less than a quarter million - but the corruption is not so crude, so in your face - so people rarely notice it.

 

[muse]

And the reason for this article is ???

Why are you so defensive Karthic? What reason other than it's interesting and informative to discuss -- don't worry India is still shining on.

 

[Vajra_Yuddh]

Another load of knowledge-less garbage. and another pathetic attempt to malign Hindu faith.

 

[muse]

Hinduism is not about "faith" in the Abrahamic sense is it? I mean Dharma is not about "faith" - is it?

And redemption, isn't that also an alien notion in Hinduism? So how can you say something like this is an attempt to malign Hindu-ism? Wht the author of the article is suggesting is that Hindutvadi and corporate interest may not be the same as the interest of the Indian peoples - is that heresy?

 

[satishkumarcsc]

As they say...."Religion is considered as true by the common man, false by the wise and useful by the leaders and politicians". Hindutva Islamism or Christian...these people give a crap about who is on top...Down south people need food in their tummy and their family. Here religion takes the last place.

 

[muse]

Down south is exactly where? Tamil Nadu?

 

[Valiant_Soul]

As for Hindutva, it is already part of the corporate agenda. Arundhati Roy had figured out the nexus some time ago. She is in the crosshairs of an increasingly vicious alliance between Hindutva nationalists and their corporate patrons who may dump the Congress for a better deal with the BJP.

Is the author sane even in the common sense? What does he means by "As for Hindutva, it is already part of the corporate agenda"?

And what is he trying to convey eventually? Is it about corruption or Hindu-Corporate nexus (God knows what that means)? If it is about the latter, why would the corporates ally with "Hindutva nationalists" when they are currently in minority at the center?

And no you do not even need an extremist nationalist to tell you that Arundhati Roy has become totally anti-national and lost her mind, or perhaps she thinks she is too clever for "bhookha-nanga" Hindustan.

 

[muse]

Such great questions, I really appreciate it --So, Hindutava nationlist and Hindu-ism is really the same thing? Cause if they are not the same thing than all the author is saying is that Hindutva nationalists have corporate sponsors and that the Indian press is part of that nexus -- he gives the example of telephone conversations intercepted and can be found on the outlook website

and listen Bkhooka nanaga is just a slogan, you understand?? If you lot can be blown away by slogans, then God help you, cause we're gonna eat your lunch.

Or is that our Indian friends are just not used to media as any other than a cheer leader?