The events in Tamil Nadu leading to the imprisonment of AIADMK leader V.K. Sasikala have dominated media headlines across India for the past few days, and rightly so. The scale of the corruption for which she and her close associates were charged were staggering and brazen in its impunity. But the law had the last word. Justice was done and seen to be done. The Supreme Court of India upheld the authority and integrity of the nation’s judiciary and the rule of law. This fundamental principle of Indian democracy entails the further moral imperative that no person, however high or wealthy, is above the law, that wrongdoing will bring just and proportionate sentence on the guilty.
The first trial judge Michael D’CCunha deserves high praise for the integrity of his original sentence, confirmed without hesitation by Justices P.C. Ghose and Amitava Roy on the basis of the damning evidence before them. That certainly was the positive and desired outcome of the self-correcting mechanism of democratic governance; however, a deeply troubling fact remains, and it needs to be addressed by the country at large. This was laid out by Justice Roy who, in a supplementary comment to his judgment. He drew attention to the spread of a cancerous corruption in the India’s public life.
The facts of the case, he said, ‘demonstrate a deep rooted conspiratorial design to amass vast assets without any compunction and hold the same through shell entities to cover up the sinister trail of such illicit acquisitions and deceive and delude the processes of law Novelty in the outrages and the magnitude of the nefarious gains as demonstrated by the revelations in the case are, to say the least, startling.’ He warned that the spread of corruption had left the honest citizen dumb, dejected and disillusioned. No truer have been uttered for quite a while. They should be heeded by one and all.
The Supreme verdict should serve as warning shot across the bows of West Bengal Chief M inister Mamata Banerjee and the scams that have tarnished her government’s reputation. The same goes for the Akali regime in Punjab. There are lessons to be learned from the fate of Sasikala.
Even as sleaze was the nation’s talking point, came the uplifting, inspirational report that Indian science and engineering had set a world record in sending 104 satellites into space from a single rocket. The international media were agog at the achievement. The BBC coverage was better than the casual reports of much of Indian television channels fixated by crime and scandal. The Indian print media stepped into the breach with full and comprehensive reports and analyses of the event.
The facts are as follows: All the satellites were placed in their allotted orbits within thirty minutes of the launch. One large Indian satellite and two nano-satellites were first in orbit, followed by 96 nano-satellites from America, one each from Israel, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands and Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. The total payload was 1,378 kg – all in all, a truly extraordinary feat of which can be proud..
The Indian print also reported on the Indian Space and Research Organization’s (ISRO) plans to launch satallites to Venus and Jupiter and its ambitious, collaborative ventures with NASA of the United States. Indian high-tech companies and software entities are spreading their wings across India and the world beyond.
Materially India has never been stronger in its long and often turbulent history. At this high tide of jubilation the country’s political life is at an abysmal low. If the truth be told, the nation’s politicians generally command little respect and are often objects of withering contempt. They are widely perceived as self-seeking crooks with little regard for public service.
The paradox is that at independence and the decade after, when India was weak the stock of its leaders was high in public esteem.
The subsequent mismatch between the high achievers in science and industry and brawling politician in Parliament and on the street in mutually abusive mode is, alas, the ordinary citizen’s perception of present-day reality. It may be summed up as cohabitation of shame and pride.
Vodafone merger has foreign banks scrambling
Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Standard Chartered are some of the foreign banks scrambling for places as advisories in the merger of Vodafone India, a subsidiary of Britain’s Vodofone Group, with Idea cellular in an all share deal.
The merger will create India’s largest mobile phone operator with around $12 billion in sales. The banks contracted to advise the parties on the transaction, could scale up the shared jackpot to $40 million, according to Freeman Consulting. That is roughly 10 per cent of the investment banking fee pool in India last year, where advisory fees are among the lowest in the world when compared to other global markets.
Vodofone is in talks with Merrill Lynch, UBS and merger and acquisition boutique firm Rothchild for advisory roles. Merrill and UBS had earlier been consulted by Vodofone on a planned Indian listing.
Morgan Stanley has already been picked for an advisory role in the proposed merger. The total fee for such services, including mergers and acquisitions, in India at $462.6 million is high by Indian standards but small by those in the global marketplace.
That said, the critical issue here is the merger of Vodofone’s India operations with Idea Cellular in the country’s mobile market and the estimates sales in mobile operations.
Melinda and bill Gates: Wealth no bar to caring for others
Few couples, singly or together, have caught the imagination of the international community as Melinda and Bill Gates have done. Bill, a Harvard University dropout, starting Microsoft on its journey to fame and fortune.
Today it is among the tallest of the IT giants who bestride our increasingly narrow world. The Gates’ are rich beyond compare, and have been so for as long as one can remember. Bill has left the running of Microsoft to other capable hands, to enable fresh minds to innovate and take the company forward to still greater heights of endeavour and achievement. The current Microsoft CEO is Indian-born Sundar Picchai who worked his way up the ranks of the company’s software engineers.
The India connection for the Gates commenced long years ago with Bill’s first visit to the country when economic reforms had broken the shackles of licence-and-permit raj, and the bracing winds of competition were blowing away the cobwebs of the past. Bill’s visit was in essence exploratory in a land of a billion souls; the pent up entrepreneurial energies in India eager to embrace the beckoning brave new world met its greatest single embodiment. Thus began a journey into a rewarding and exciting future that shows little sign of abating. The best of America and India clasped hands and pooled brains to mutual benefit, a win-win situation that ever was and is.
The Gates’ discovered a pyramid of poverty, disease and deprivation in India. The Gates Foundation set out to make a strategic contribution to making hardship for millions of Indians a little easier to bear, to introduce rays of light into a bleak and forbidding darkness. The Gates Foundation partnered the Indian Government in mass vaccination campaign across the country to eradicate polio; Melinda and Bill were personally witness to the miracle of organization and dedication that left hardened sceptics gob-smacked.
Since then Melinda and Bill Gates have toured some of the most deprived corners of India helping to introduce and improve, where necessary, basic education among the rural poor, introduce and improve public health and hygiene, and much related good work such birth control and the uplift of women. They have taken their Indian experience to Rwanda and other places in developing countries.
The Gates publish an annual newsletter of their philanthropic work. In the latest one they acknowledge the largest-ever gift to their Foundation by Warren Buffet, a fellow American believed to the world’s richest man.
Melinda and Bill take it turn to compose the Newsletter. Here is a sample of B ill’s multiple extracts. ‘We’re funding a study now in India that started with a checklist of practices. That got some improvement.
But the real gains came when the trained health care workers with the right tools attended the births. Rwanda doubled the percentage of children attended by a skilled worker.’
Blessed are the pure in heart…
