Born on October 5, 1955 and educated at St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi (1972-75) and at the Delhi School of Economics (1975-77) in the same university from where he obtained his Master’s degree in economics, he started his career as a journalist in June 1977 and has been employed with various media organizations including companies bringing out publications such as BusinessIndia, BusinessWorld, The Telegraph, India Today and The Pioneer. He worked with Television Eighteen (now Network 18) for almost six years between 1995 and 2001 when he anchored a daily discussion programme called “India Talks” on the CNBC-India television channel. Between 2007 and 2013, he has anchored two one-hour-long weekly programmes for Lok Sabha Television (the channel owned and operated by the lower house of the Parliament of India). He has anchored programmes for other television channels.
He is (or has been) a visiting faculty member at reputed educational institutions including the Indian Institutes of Management at Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bangalore and Shillong, University of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration and Visva Bharati University.
He served as a member of the Press Council of India nominated by the University Grants Commission between January 2008 and January 2011. In April 2010, as a member of a two-member sub-committee of the Council, he co-authored a 36,000-word report entitled “Paid News: How corruption in the Indian media undermines democracy”. He is a media trainer and a consultant/adviser on India’s political economy. He was the founder director of the School of Convergence (SoC). He has been a consultant at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, making presentations and writing papers on Indian politics. He has been associated with a number of projects of United Nations organisations, including the International Labour Organization (ILO).
He served for two years (2011-13) as president of the Foundation for Media Professionals, an independent, not-for-profit organization based in Delhi. He is a member of the managing committee of the Media Foundation of India that runs the website, the hoot.org, and has written a series of articles for the website on media ownership in India. He is a member of the governing council of Common Cause, a civil society organization engaged in public interest litigation, among other activities related to redressing public grievances. He has advised various organizations, including corporate bodies (Indian, foreign and multinational), government agencies (including India’s Ministry of Information & Broadcasting) and civil society organizations.
He is a director/co-director/producer of documentary films. The films, “Idiot Box or Window of Hope” (2003), “Grabbing Eyeballs: What’s Unethical About Television News in India” (2007), “Advertorial: Selling News or Products?” (2009), “Freedom Song” (2012) were all produced by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust. Other films include “Hot As Hell: A Profile of Dhanbad” (2006-07) , “Blood & Iron: A Story of the Convergence of Crime, Business and Politics in Southern India” (2010-11), “The Great Indian Telecom Robbery” (2011), “A Thin Dividing Line” (2013) on the India-Mauritius double- taxation avoidance treaty, “Coal Curse: A documentary on the Political Economy of Coal Energy in India” (2013) and “In the Heart of Our Darkness: The Life and Death of Mahendra Karma” (2013).
He was one of the first journalists to write about the telecommunications spectrum scandal in November 2007 and was one of the petitioners in public-interest litigation on the subject in the Supreme Court of India. He has co-authored a book with Shankar Raghuraman entitled: “ Divided We Stand: India in a Time of Coalitions” (2007) and written “Media Ethics: Truth, Fairness and Objectivity, Making and Breaking News” (Oxford University Press, second enlarged edition, 2011). He has contributed articles and chapters to books (including “Realizing Brand India” edited by Sharif D. Rangnekar [Rupa, 2005], “India: The Political Economy of Reforms” edited by Bibek Debroy & Rahul Mukherji [Bookwell, 2004]) and “Journalism: Ethics and Responsibilities”: edited by Seema Mustafa [Har Anand, 2013].
Subir Ghosh is a journalist and writer who started out his career in sales before switching over to journalism in 1991. His first job as a journalist was with the eastern metropolitan desk of the Press Trust of India (PTI) in Kolkata. He joined The Telegraph daily in 1994 and was part of the first ‘region desk’ that was set up in the newspaper to bring out dedicated pages and supplements for the states of Bihar, Odisha and north-east India. It was here that he developed a keen interest in north-east affairs and started specialising in the region. He wrote and reported prolifically on the north-eastern region during his tenure in the daily.
He shifted to New Delhi in mid-1998 and joined the publications units of the leading non-government organisation on environmental issues, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). During his short stay here, he worked on the fifth edition of CSE’s flagship publication, The State of India’s Environment. He thereafter moved to the apex body of the hospitality industry, the Federation of Hotels and Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI), and served as assistant secretary-general in charge of publications. He turned around the staid black-and-white newsletter into a four-colour glossy which broke even within a year. Here, he also brought out a number of research studies on the state of the hospitality industry in India. His next assignment was with leading wildlife organisation, the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), where he was in charge of communications: handling publications, the website of the WTI and media relations. He was to have a second stint here again in 2009-2010.
In the interregnum, Subir experimented with the online media and published two ‘e-zines’: The Reviewer (one that reviewed books) and Northeast Vigil (one that aggregated news and information pertaining to north-east India). In 2005, he started a website called Newswatchwhich collated news about the media industry, press freedom issues and media ethics. The mainstay of the site were micro research studies about how various incidents and issues would be covered in the Indian media. All these studies were appreciated worldwide for their detailed analyses: each story that was selected for a study was assessed, at times, based on more than 100 parameters. He still specialises in Northeast affairs, and has served in the past as an advisory council member with the Centre for Northeast Studies (C-NES).
Subir is the author of Frontier Travails: Northeast - The Politics of a Mess published by Macmillan India in 2001 and has won two national awards for children’s fiction (including one titled The Dream Machine, co-authored with Richa Bansal, which won a prize for children’s science fiction). He is passionate about all the subjects that he writes about: conflict, ethnicities, wildlife, human rights, women, poverty, media, and cinema. He currently works with the Bengaluru edition of DNA newspaper, blogs at www.write2kill.in and tweets at @write2kill.
Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri is an independent researcher and editor. He has primarily worked in the print medium. His main interests have revolved around environmental studies, aviation and strategic affairs and now, on politicians and oligarchs who seem to have a covert grip on national life.
Born in February 1975, he was schooled in Durgapur in West Bengal, studied in Jamia Millia Islamia and the University of Delhi from where he obtained a Masters’ degree in English Literature in 2000. He began his career as a researcher and copy editor in 1997 with the publication department at the New Delhi-based non-government organisation Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) when the institution was preparing its 5th Citizen’s report on the State of India’sEnvironment. He was subsequently to work on the desk at Down To Earth, CSE’s premier environment and science fortnightly. Later, in 2012, after a walk through different woods, he re-engaged with CSE as member of a team at its Media Resource Centre (MRC) that brought to completion the mammoth two-volume 7th State of India’sEnvironment report: Excreta Matters, on India’s water and waste scenario. In this period he was also associated with other publications at CSE while assisting with media outreach. Earlier, he was associated with the Centre for Armed Forces and Historical Research at the Unit
ed Service Institution of India, New Delhi, a defence think tank where besides spending copious hours in the library, he was to copy-edit a short history on the Indian Army. Between 2007 and 2010 he was associate editor at an aviation and defence trade publication, the VayuAerospace and Defence Review. He also had a brief stint with the Tehelkagroup as a special correspondent. This book is his first extended project with Paranjoy.
STOP PRESS
On the evening of 24 March 2014, a terse four-line letter was sent to the secretary, ministry of petroleum and natural gas Saurabh Chandra by the principal secretary to the Election Commission of India K. Ajaya Kumar stating that the Commission had decided that the government should defer the hike in the price of natural gas from 1 April for a period of five years till after the results of the 16th general elections were known on 16 May. This decision, in effect, implied that the newly-elected government should take a call on the controversial decision to nearly-double the officially administered price of natural gas. The letter stated: “After taking into account all relevant facts, including the fact that the matter is sub judice in the Hon’ble Supreme Court, the Commission has decided that the proposal (to increase the price of gas) may be deferred.”
The Commission had responded to a complaint lodged by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal who had claimed that if the gas price hike was allowed, this would be in violation of the model code of conduct which comes into effect the day elections are announced. Kejriwal claimed that the government’s move could be described as a corrupt electoral practice.
A day earlier, on 23 March, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) had released a video on YouTube in a the format of a television news broadcast in which journalist-turned-company spokesperson Umesh Upadhyay sought to counter the AAP’s allegations against RIL. He said the model code of conduct was meant to ensure that “the government in power cannot take any new decision” which could result in “undue benefit to the ruling political party”. Upadhyay said the Election Commission should be kept away from what he described as the “politics of disinformation” by a political party that had a history of “ill-informed diatribe”. It was pointed out by RIL that the price of gas was sought to be increased on the basis of a decision taken by Cabinet on 27 June 2013 to accept the pricing formula recommended by the Rangarajan Committee, that this decision was thereafter notified on 10 January 2014, while the model code of conduct came into effect from 5 March 2014.
There were other voices against the decision of the Election Commission. The Economic Times on 24 March had editorialised that the Commission should stick to the smooth conduct of elections and not “stall” the roll-out of an existing policy. Kirit Parikh, former member of the Planning Commission and author of reports on India’s energy policy, saw no “logic” or “reason” in the Election Commission’s decision to “interfere now”, while former head of ONGC R.S. Sharma was “disappointed” that the “uncertainty” over the issue of the price of gas would get prolonged. The Commission’s decision, it was argued, would send wrong signals to investors. Predictably, the prices of the shares of RIL and ONGC came down the following day.
R. Jagannathan, editor, Firstpost.com bluntly wrote that the Election Commission was “wrong” and opined that if the Commission was seen as willing to intervene in economic decisions, it would open a veritable Pandora’s box with politicians “referring (to it) all kinds of sensitive decisions they want killed or delayed...” He also made the point that “...the purpose of having a code of conduct is to ensure that the government of the day does not obtain any electoral benefit from last-minute populism,” adding, “The gas price hike is, in fact, unpopular in many quarters and hardly likely to win the UPA any additional votes.” (His commentary carried the usual disclaimer at the end that Firstpost.com is published by Network18, whose promoters have received funding from the Reliance group which benefits from the new gas pricing regime.)
RIL had, in the mean time, sought to revise gas sale purchase agreements with fertiliser companies and there were a number of reports in the media that these urea manufacturing companies were concerned that the actual prices they would have to pay for gas from the Krishna-Godavari basin could be 10 per cent higher than what would be determined by the formula of the Rangarajan Committee. This was because RIL had reportedly proposed that it would bill the government on the basis of the gross calorific value (GCV) of the gas instead of net calorific value (NCV).
The Election Commission was not moved.
ENDNOTE
Sibling Strife
1‘Gold-plating’ here signifies a superfluous increase in capital expenditure or expenditure on plant and equipment. As will become evident later, the alleged ‘gold-plating’ by RIL became an important issue because it influenced the economics and the viability of extracting natural gas from the KG-D6 block.
Gas and Fire
1Amar Singh, who spent months in Singapore to receive a kidney transplant, was asked to leave the Samajwadi Party in 2010, and was jailed for a while the following year for his role in the survival of the first United Progressive Alliance government in 2008 in what became popularly known as the cash-for-votes case.
2The controversial circumstances that led to Deora replacing Aiyar as petroleum minister and the latter’s views on how government policies were shaped to favour RIL are detailed later in the book.
3For instance, the government might wish to allocate the gas first to fertiliser plants, then power plants, and finally, for residential use.
4http://exiledonline.com/one-degree-of-larry-summers-meet- larry%E2%80%99s-ex-boss-a-billionaire-with-a-blood-feud/
5The gas extracted is divided between the contractor and the government using a complex formula, about which more will be explained later.
A 21st-Century Mahabharata
11One of the officers in the Enforcement Directorate team that had raided Tina was Sandeep Tandon, who later became a cause of friction between an already estranged Mukesh and Anil. After Tandon left government service, he joined the Reliance group with Mukesh’s approval and this move predictably peeved Anil. Tandon assisted the group in several disputes it had with government authorities. He died of cancer in 2010. His wife Annu Tandon was assisted by Mukesh to set up firms and in 2009, she was elected as a Congress member of Parliament from Unnao in Uttar Pradesh. Her name figured with those of the Ambanis in a list of Indians who held accounts in Swiss banks that was released by Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party in November 2012.
2HUF is a peculiarly Indian legal entity usually set up for the purposes of tax planning.
3Sweat equity is a term used to describe an interest in a property or company that is earned by labouring for it; unlike financial equity, sweat equity is contribution for work done and is on occasions used to describe the efforts by the founders of a start-up company in exchange for ownership of financial equity shares.
4It is another matter that many consider Mukesh’s position on disclosing personal wealth hypocritical and his lifestyle relatively more ostentatious: he is, after all, the owner of a 27-storey house in south Mumbai apart from having presented his wife with a birthday gift of a corporate jet costing Rs 231 crore.
(Reliance) India Natural Resources Unlimited
1More than seven years later, on 21 February 2013, Samajwadi Party leader and brother of party head Mulayam Singh Yadav, Shivpal Yadav blamed New Delhi for the Dadri project being a non-starter and told the Uttar Pradesh assembly: ‘Nothing has been done in Dadri, nothing is going on at present and nothing will be done in the future as well’.
2In fact, the establishment of another project promoted by a company in the Anil Ambani group, Reliance Infrastructure, to set up ‘India’s biggest’ gas-based power plant at Samalkot, Andhra Pradesh, with installed capacity to generate 2,400 MW of power, at a cost of Rs 10,000 crore, was delayed because of shortage of gas from the KG basin.
3Accessed at http://ambanibrothersfight.blogspot.in/2009/07/doabia.html
4As will b
e detailed later, the price of gas became a subject of another legal battle and a highly-politicised public slanging match with the Ambanis and the government including the petroleum ministry headed by M. Veerappa Moily on the one side, civil society groups like Common Cause, former bureaucrats E.A.S. Sarma and T.S.R. Subramanian, CPI MP Gurudas Dasgupta, besides, of course the Aam Aadmi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal, on the other.
5As will be subsequently explained, the replacement of S. Jaipal Reddy as petroleum minister by M. Veerappa Moily in October 2012 will need to be viewed in this context.
6As this book was being completed in March 2014, the price of gas and the alleged favours given to the Ambanis being highlighted as an election issue by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The Left went along with AAP and said its MPs were among the first to highlight what their MPs believe is the biggest instance of crony capitalism in the country. Gurudas Dasgupta, CPI MP reiterated his contention that the hike in the administered price of gas was not only against the interests of consumers of power and fertilisers but a ‘massive scam’ to help RIL and India’s richest man. To point out that the scales are heavily tilted in favour of Mukesh Ambani is to state the obvious. That is the way it has been for quite some time(See Appendix 4: ‘Biggest Tax Break for Richest Indian’).
GAS WARS: CRONY CAPITALISM AND THE AMBANIS Page 60
