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

by Josy Joseph

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

India has become a very rich country of too many poor people.

Hotel industry veteran Ajit B. Kerkar was a member of the Air-India board, and sat on the sub-committee that decided to disinvest hotels owned by its subsidiary, Hotel Corporation of India. A day after the divestment decision was taken, Kerkar exited the board, only to return as a buyer. A company promoted by him bought it, and then re-sold it within a few years at a significant premium. That, in a nutshell, is how divestment has played out in India.

The Indian democracy works only through middlemen who know how to get the moribund system moving. Ordinary Indians in their thousands wait patiently every day at the residences of local politicians, typists, professional middlemen and such intermediaries to get the system to deliver what is justifiably theirs.

Except for a small number of privileged residents in its cities, the majority of Indians, those living in the country’s forgotten villages, have not really enjoyed the economic boom of the rising global power.

For example, in Kerala, political parties have highly developed networks right down to the grass roots, and most people are educated and vocal. Yet, these citizens too need local political leaders to play the role of intermediaries between them and the government. Every morning, outside the houses of local political leaders in Kerala, there are dozens awaiting their turn for an audience. There are two key reasons why, even in a highly literate state like Kerala, ordinary people look for intermediaries. For one, government resources are limited and thus demand far outstrips supply, like in, say, government-run hospitals. Secondly, and crucially, many government institutions, such as the police, are brutal and corrupt. The local intermediary could help someone jump the queue or soften treatment at the hands of a government institution.

The many ways in which the government can throttle an entrepreneur are mind-boggling: denying security from local police, not repairing a public road outside the factory complex, licences, electricity, imposing draconian labour laws and complex duties – the list is long. The government’s abundant help is needed not just to start and run a business but also to keep its Kafkaesque tentacles off the enterprise’s back.

Without an examination of the rise of Goyal, it would be impossible to appreciate the crisis at all levels of the Indian democracy – the oligarchy that is India’s political class, the power of money to swing decisions, the meek regulatory systems that are bent and broken regularly by business interests, the elite’s blatant disrespect for laws and norms, and eventually, the disappearance of even a semblance of morality from public life.

In the short term, too many Indians live without hope in a crony capitalist state. This monopoly of the few over the resources and will of the state must end.