A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

271 Pages·1.513 MB·English

by  Josy Joseph

A FEAST OF
VULTURES
THE HIDDEN BUSINESS OF
DEMOCRACY IN INDIA
JOSY JOSEPH
HarperCollins Publishers India
To
My daughter Supriya and her generation
May you inherit a better India
Contents
Introduction
Prologue
Section One
THE MIDDLEMEN
1. Mr Fix-it Down the Street
2. The Mighty Typist
3. Arms and the Middleman
4. The Insiders and the Outlaws
Section Two
THE VERY PRIVATE PRIVATE SECTOR
5. Battle for the Skies
6. Anatomy of a Murder
7. The Fly-by-Might Operator
Section Three
THE BIG LEAGUE
8. Masters of the Game
9. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
10. A House for Mr Ambani
Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgements
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
Introduction
T
he multi-lane highway, the metro that emerged from the
bowels of the earth, posh residential colonies and glittering
shopping malls, all of these receded in my rear-view mirror.
The unauthorized village began where the road ended. I was
on the northern fringes of Delhi.
A narrow pathway linked this large spread of single-
room shanties to the outer world. It had rained recently, and
little children in rags splashed in the puddles. Several men
stood around aimlessly by small shops. I began what was to
be a futile search.
Delhi was to play host to the Commonwealth Games
(CWG) of 2010. According to company filings, several
investors of a sports marketing company that was scooping
up lucrative contracts in connection with the CWG were
residents of this village of Karalla. I was looking for those
lucky men.
The XIX CWG, with over 6,000 athletes from seventy-
one countries competing in twenty-one disciplines and 272
events, was the biggest sporting meet India had ever
hosted. The Central government, led by Prime Minister Dr
Manmohan Singh, wanted to make it a grand coming-of-age
show, with a total spend of almost Rs 50,000 crore by
various estimates.
Multi-lane elevated roads were built over congested
parts of Delhi, new metro lines snaked in fresh directions
under and over the city, dedicated apartments for athletes
rose up on the Yamuna river bed, shabby stadiums received
impressive facelifts, and as the games inched closer, the
ugly parts were covered with view blockers and thousands
of beggars were carted away to government-run hostels
outside the city. A sanitized India welcomed foreign visitors.
Jubilee Sports Technology Private Limited, many of
whose promoters claimed to live in Karalla, played a critical
role in getting the city ready for the games. I began to get
curious about the company when I found out that it was
floated by a man arrested in the past by government
investigators for accepting a bribe on behalf of his late
father, then a senior government official. After hours of
searching, with active assistance from local residents, I still
couldn’t find the men behind Jubilee Sports, and returned to
file a news story about the missing men.
This was, of course, far from exceptional. Over the
years, almost every major financial transaction in India has
been made by fictitious shareholders and proxy directors
through shady deals, cash movements to tax havens and,
often enough, outright criminal conspiracy. In fact, this
modus operandi is not just limited to the financial world.
If you are able to summon the forensic skills necessary
to detect the real powers behind fictitious shareholders and
proxy voters, it will get you an intimate, revolting view of
India’s underbelly, one that will swallow the sanitized,
democratic India of impressive achievements and global
ambitions.
This book grew out of my anguish at the staggering size
and scale of that underbelly, the dilapidated state of Indian
institutions and the deep immorality at the heart of our
democracy. Collectively, these factors drive the majority of
India’s citizens to a permanent state of helplessness, and
many of them to suicide. The monotony of reading about
those deaths and the insensitivity of India’s elite set me out
on the path to researching this book sometime in 2007.
The rules of the game in modern India are very simple,
even if the structure it creates is a horribly tangled maze. In
this country, it is okay to do practically anything: use fake
promoters, accept bribes, commission murders, intimidate
media, manipulate courts and grab power. The one big rule:
don’t get caught. This book is about the reality every
citizen, and all visitors, experience in myriad ways. For
years, I struggled to find a structure to write about that
India, and even this narrative remains an incomplete
rendition of a complex web.
Every individual in that web has a stake in the
perpetuation of the system, and each one of them
contributes to denying poor access to instruments of
democracy. The courts in the world’s largest democracy are
crowded and expensive, the police corrupt and cruel, the
powerful television and English-language media far too
urban, and the political class busy plotting to grab power.
When you attempt to unmask the appalling double
games of the people that run India and drive its economy,
and put together evidence of their duplicity, they will deploy
ingenious methods to silence you. It is not always crude
intimidation.
I was meeting a former journalist in a coffee shop on the
first floor of Delhi’s Khan Market, one of the most expensive
retail markets in the world. The winter sun poured in
through the tall glass window, making it a very pleasant
afternoon. That didn’t help put my companion at his ease,
though. Until recently an employee of a Hindi news channel,
he had just taken up a well-paying new assignment as the
spokesperson of a controversial Mumbai-based billionaire.
The mild February weather had no tempering influence
on national politics, where things were boiling over. Yet
another scandal had erupted, and the United Progressive
Alliance (UPA) government led by Dr Manmohan Singh was
lurching from controversy to controversy. It was 2011, and
the government still had three years to go, but there was a
heavy sense of hopelessness in the air. In a few months, the
country would witness a huge eruption of anger against
corruption through protests in various cities.
The billionaire’s spokesperson had taken a two-hour
flight from Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, that morning
to meet me. Only days earlier, his boss’s lawyers had
served me and my newspaper a criminal defamation notice
after I reported that he was directly in contact with the
criminal underworld. We responded to the legal notice,
saying we were in possession of official documents to prove
our claims, and would produce them in the appropriate legal
forum.
Our calm reply appeared to have prompted the business
magnate to change strategy. The PR manager started with a
profuse apology on behalf of his boss. ‘It was a mistake. The
boss had in fact told his legal team not to send you the
notice,’ the young man said.
Both of us knew it wasn’t a mistake but the standard
operating procedure of India’s rich and famous when an
article critical of them appears. Over the years, I have
received dozens of notices from some of India’s biggest
corporates and most powerful people. For publishing a
secret audit report that accused Delhi’s electricity
distribution companies of massive financial irregularities,
one of them served a notice demanding compensation
worth almost a billion dollars. A former army chief would
shoot off defamation notices every time I wrote something
critical of him. Mumbai Congress leader Kripashankar Singh,
whose astonishing metamorphosis from vegetable vendor to
multimillionaire was part of an official probe, was equally
trigger-happy when it came to defamation notices. When I
reported on a member of parliament (MP) who abruptly left
a parliamentary committee meeting on serious security
matters, which he was chairing, he sent across a notice
accusing me of breaching his parliamentary privilege.
The protection of shaky reputations is a flourishing
industry. There are PR consultants whose brief is to alert the
rich and famous about any possible adverse reports brewing
against them in newsrooms. There are lawyers drafting
defamation notices and then there are those who manage
the situation if nothing else works. All of them make a killing
out of the potential embarrassment of a famous client.
As we settled down after the apology, the spokesperson
said, ‘He wanted me to request you not to write anything
more about his links because our efforts to raise FDI (foreign
direct investment) have suffered a huge setback due to your
article.’ Their company – which had manipulated its way to
procuring the licence and radio spectrum to operate second-
generation mobile networks, and was facing a criminal
investigation – was in the market to raise about Rs 3,000
crore from an investor in the Arab world.
The spokesperson then scanned the surrounding tables
and, with sweat trickling down his forehead, whispered: ‘The
boss wanted me to tell you that he can take care of
whatever your needs are – car, house, whatever.’
I let the silence build, then pointed to a sprawling
colonial bungalow across the road. ‘Do you mean one of
those houses?’
Back on familiar ground, he responded: ‘Don’t
underestimate my boss. He can take care of anything.’
I don’t remember who paid for the coffee, but I called off
the meeting soon enough.
Not everyone in New Delhi is uncomfortable about
making such offers. On another occasion, a famous lawyer
met me at Hotel Ashoka, the gym members of which
include, among other notables, the Gandhi family. The
lawyer had been spending a pretty penny to exercise next
to New Delhi’s influential lot. He was meeting me on behalf
of one of his clients, a company I was investigating for
allegedly misusing the police to harass its rivals. The
company was backed by a political family that ruled one of
the northern states, and had been accused of money
laundering and other criminal activities. ‘If you write the