A Feast of Vultures Quotes

“Democracy in India is only a ‘top dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic’.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“Here, all we need are Ratan Tata’s own words at a gathering in Dehradun in November 2010: ‘We approached three prime ministers. But an individual thwarted our efforts … I happened to be on a flight once and another industrialist who was sitting next to me said: “I don’t understand. You people are stupid. You know the minister wants Rs 15 crore. So why don’t you pay it?” I just said: “You can’t understand it. I just want to go to bed at night, knowing that I haven’t got the airline by paying for it.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“Politicians, banking cheats, professional scamsters, smugglers, pimps and all manner of business folk, from liquor barons to sweet sellers, have entered the lucrative business of education – a sector that is protected from slowdowns.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“The creaky government machinery moves only when the lubricant bribe is applied.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“National interest can also be an excuse to clamp draconian colonial-era rules on those trying to bring in transparency. In”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“According to a senior ED official associated with the SIT, if the Adani case reaches its logical conclusion, the group will have to pay a fine of around Rs 15,000 crore. ‘It is a watertight case,’ he said, about the trail of documents showing how the group diverted Rs 5,468 crore to Mauritius via Dubai. The Adani group vehemently denies any wrongdoing. Modi,”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“Ironically, much of the information we have on how the Indian system actually works comes from the result of investigations abroad –”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“All the schemes have grand names, mostly after famous Indian leaders from the past, but none of them assure a better future for the Indian poor.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“The Vedanta Cancer Hospital is part of Agarwal’s corporate social responsibility programme. There has been no work on the site for the past two years.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“From the bottom of Bharat Aluminium Company’s (Balco) largest fly-ash pond, I saw a thick mixture of water and fly-ash dripping into the Hasdeo river.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“According to estimates presented by scientists from across the globe at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2016, of the fifty-five lakh deaths caused by air pollution in 2013, over half were in India and China. India alone accounted for fourteen lakh of those deaths. Air pollution, scientists say, is the fourth-highest risk factor for death globally, after high blood pressure, poor diet and cigarettes. We can only hope that the dying poor of the tribal regions are at least counted in these statistics.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“Since Modi’s ascension to office, what has happened in the ED, which had registered a preliminary case against Adani in Ahmedabad and was handed details of DRI findings, is illustrative. The officer heading the Ahmedabad branch of the directorate was raided by the CBI, which accused him of possessing disproportionate assets. It failed to prove anything at all, despite months of investigation. The two senior-most officers in the Mumbai regional office, who oversaw the investigations in Ahmedabad, were forced out of the agency. The tenure of Rajan S. Katoch, who was heading the directorate when the case was opened, also ended abruptly. Apart from the Adani case, the Ahmedabad ED investigators were also pursuing some of the biggest money launderers of Gujarat.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“This is a crisis that privileged Indians are in denial about, because all of them – all of us – benefit from it. India has become a very rich country of too many poor people.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“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.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“in 2015 that even though 85 per cent of rural women are engaged in agriculture, only 13 per cent of them own land.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“In New Delhi, all discussions are now about transforming India into a manufacturing hub, building smart cities and strengthening the country’s IT power status. A new government is talking about regaining India’s past glory and its rightful place in the global order. But here in Hridaychak, those words mean nothing.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, has made it every Indian child’s right to access full-time elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality until the age of fourteen. Estimates vary, but India has a shortage of almost half a million teachers and over eight million primary school-age children still do not attend school.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“the school building had been comprehensively repaired two decades ago. ‘It was badly damaged in the rains and there was no place for our children to study. We all came together and repaired the building,’ he said. When I visited, the floors were all gone, the walls were cracked, the yellow paint long peeled off, the roof leaky, and the whole structure covered in dust.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“According to recent estimates, some 66 per cent of rural residents do not have access to critical medicines, while 31 per cent Indians have to travel more than 30 kilometres to avail themselves of any health care. Just 28 per cent of Indians in urban areas corner 66 per cent of India’s available hospital beds. Mind you, India is still largely a rural country, with around 70 per cent of its population living in rural areas.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“If you fight persistently, you can get something you deserve with a lot of difficulty. If you have money, you can get it without a fight.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) – the most dependable assessment data available – India’s share of the volume of international arms imports increased from 7 per cent to 14 per cent during 2009–13 compared to the previous five years. Informal estimates say that India could end up spending around Rs 6,70,000 crore on importing arms during this decade alone. Indigenous military production accounts for a pitiful 30 per cent of the country’s total armament requirements”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“Although the Indian government claims that the country’s forest cover has increased by 5,081 square kilometres between 2013 and 2015, beyond the statistics is the stark reality: around 2,510 square kilometres of very dense and moderately dense forests have been wiped out during that very period. And 2,254 square kilometres of moderately dense forest have now turned into non-forest lands.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“I revisited Raigarh exactly twenty years later,’ he said. ‘I was amazed at the devastation I saw, the extent to which it has been exploited. It symbolizes the whole question of what constitutes development and who benefits. There was one imagination of government when I joined the civil services in 1980; there was no doubt that the theory of government was that its primary duty was towards the poor and the disadvantaged. There were lots of deviations from that ideal, but then they were perceived and recognized as deviations from that ideal.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“The government and the mining companies are digging away in villages, virgin forests, pure rivers, and the very values of equality and constitutionality. So great was their greed that even the locals, generally ignorant of the ways of government and corporates, were galvanized into protests that continue to draw attention to the predatory nature of Indian capitalism.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“Do you think AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) will win?’ The question dripped with hope, as if an AAP victory would bring a revolution that could change his fortunes. AAP was the new pro-poor party led by anti-corruption crusaders. The unrealistic hopes he pinned on a party of amateurs was telling. In the bleakness of his situation, it was hope alone that had kept Patel going.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“During the day, Singhvi would appear in court for those companies and private interests that were suspected of defrauding the public exchequer, and by evening he would be on national television channels defending his government’s decisions.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“A large amount of India’s mineral deposits lies in a stretch across the ecologically sensitive and biodiversity-rich central region of the country. Two broad kinds of violence and protests are playing out here. On the one hand the residents and activists of these areas are protesting against the reckless industries that are making their fortunes at the cost of public health and environmental damage and on the other is the violence between armed left-wing extremists and government forces. Both movements are reflective of the desperation among some of India’s poorest people. Governments and political establishments have termed the civilian protests as anti-national efforts by foreign-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the armed rebellion as terrorism. When”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“In 2012, Vigilance Commissioner R. Sri Kumar cited an internal study to say that the CBI’s conviction rate in corruption cases was a shocking 3.96 per cent. The CBI analysed 264 corruption cases in which 698 people were accused, including 486 government officials. On an average, the CBI took more than thirteen months to conclude investigations and just eight out of the total accused were convicted after twenty-six years of investigation and trial, Sri Kumar said. ‘There is no certainty of punishment for corruption and that is why corruption has increased,’ said Sri Kumar, who, as a member of the Central Vigilance Commission, was officially tasked to supervise the CBI.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“The creaky government machinery moves only when the lubricant bribe is applied. The”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

“In the summer of 2004, another political change swept India and the Congress was back at the centre after years in the wilderness. Quattrocchi’s fortunes turned too. In December 2005, the Central government deputed a senior law officer to personally visit London and defreeze the accounts. Within weeks, both accounts were emptied out.”
― Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India