Posts
Somebody has called us Traitors. The stone has been cast at us. A relevant article. More to follow.
Adulteress
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Change - It Cannot happen isolatedly
Change my dear friends cannot happen in an isolated manner. We cannot expect the Media to listen to us or the Babus to be sympathetic to us or the 'Aam Admi' to worry about whether we have got our hikes. We live in a society with its ample problems. Every aspect of our Indian Society has problems of its own. If we continue to think that we can close our eyes to what is happenning around us and live, let alone get our rightful demands met, then my dear friends we are living in a fool's paradise. All that you are saying is wrong with the Oil Sector- be it from a nexus between Pvt Players and Govt, be it disinterested Elected Members of India, be it draconian laws that prevent you from your right to strike when your reasonable demands are not being listened to, it all boils down to the one single fact- we do not have the right people at the right places! . Would you not like to change this all?? I ask this specially of the youngsters who are here, the Youth out there who are the majority today- massive 70% below 35 yrs age, you should know your power. So please think!
So when there are other groups out there fighting in each of their areas to make these things right, let us all Join Hands and build a common group of Indisns who care-- OilMen; too, who care, about everything. After all that happens to us is a manifestation of all the wrongs against us. I give one small example to you. Supposing the Country was rich and the so called "Aam janta" was not so Aam do you think they would have grudged you your salary hikes today? It is JUST because they are burdened with so much day to day problems that one more heaped upon them by our strike caused such a hue and cry.
I therefore post a mail from one gentleman who is fighting for a campaign to reform the JUDICIARY. Let us start our journey of connecting with the world first by outting our names to the online petition of his group. Once you join hands with others then only you can expect others to join you. Rather then asking them to listen first listen to theirs.
Quote:-
From: Ravindran Major
To: Shantanu Das
Sent: Wednesday, 14 January, 2009 6:21:48 AM
Subject:
Dear Mr Das
I have nothing against you or your friends. Whatever comments you had made had been responded to and there ends the matter. This is a country where even MPs have asked in Parliament what the armed forces do in peace time. Ignorance can't always be bliss.
Even before going through your website I can see that it pertains to the oil sector only. I am NO expert in this field. But I am sure that it doesn't need any expertise to smell injustice whenever and wherever there is one. I have no doubts that in the oil sector too there will be plenty of cases of exploitation of the many by a handful.
In fact if you look at the national scenario nobody with common sense can miss the fact that only ONE family had got freedom on 15 Aug 1947. It continues to be so even today. Some people who have the money and can manipulate the system also have a certain degree of freedom compared to the masses. For the masses themselves nothing has changed.
There is no point wasting our efforts in localised issues. We need big changes. We need the people whom, technicaly at least, we have put in offices of authority to manage the comon resources for the common good and reducing disparities, to be accountable to us. In this matter the courts are the worst. Even a bill- the judges inquiry bill, a shadow of the actual requirement- is not getting cleared because we have filled our law making bodies with criminals who are at the mercy of the judges and would dare not support any legislation to bring transparency in the affairs of the courts. The police and the judiciary are two set ups we have created for citizens to approach for getting justice. But as per Transparency International surveys the police is the most corrupt and the judiciary the second most corrupt institution in our country! So where do we go?
To my mind atleast there seems to be no legally effective course of action open to us. Anyhow, I am persisiting on a campaign for reforming the judiciary first by having national judicial commission to try and punish judges as per laws applicable to ordinary citizens. An online petition, addressed to the President and PM of India, is available at
http://www.petitiononline.com/jrandac1/petition.html
I request you to support it and also motivate your friends to support it.
Regards and best wishes
ravi
Endquote
Please all go to the link and sign the petition like responsible, thinking Citizens of India remembering that we are Indisns first and Oilmen later.
Also somebody had requested me to start an online petition for reinstatement of sacked employees. Let me see if we too can do something like this.
So when there are other groups out there fighting in each of their areas to make these things right, let us all Join Hands and build a common group of Indisns who care-- OilMen; too, who care, about everything. After all that happens to us is a manifestation of all the wrongs against us. I give one small example to you. Supposing the Country was rich and the so called "Aam janta" was not so Aam do you think they would have grudged you your salary hikes today? It is JUST because they are burdened with so much day to day problems that one more heaped upon them by our strike caused such a hue and cry.
I therefore post a mail from one gentleman who is fighting for a campaign to reform the JUDICIARY. Let us start our journey of connecting with the world first by outting our names to the online petition of his group. Once you join hands with others then only you can expect others to join you. Rather then asking them to listen first listen to theirs.
Quote:-
From: Ravindran Major
To: Shantanu Das
Sent: Wednesday, 14 January, 2009 6:21:48 AM
Subject:
Dear Mr Das
I have nothing against you or your friends. Whatever comments you had made had been responded to and there ends the matter. This is a country where even MPs have asked in Parliament what the armed forces do in peace time. Ignorance can't always be bliss.
Even before going through your website I can see that it pertains to the oil sector only. I am NO expert in this field. But I am sure that it doesn't need any expertise to smell injustice whenever and wherever there is one. I have no doubts that in the oil sector too there will be plenty of cases of exploitation of the many by a handful.
In fact if you look at the national scenario nobody with common sense can miss the fact that only ONE family had got freedom on 15 Aug 1947. It continues to be so even today. Some people who have the money and can manipulate the system also have a certain degree of freedom compared to the masses. For the masses themselves nothing has changed.
There is no point wasting our efforts in localised issues. We need big changes. We need the people whom, technicaly at least, we have put in offices of authority to manage the comon resources for the common good and reducing disparities, to be accountable to us. In this matter the courts are the worst. Even a bill- the judges inquiry bill, a shadow of the actual requirement- is not getting cleared because we have filled our law making bodies with criminals who are at the mercy of the judges and would dare not support any legislation to bring transparency in the affairs of the courts. The police and the judiciary are two set ups we have created for citizens to approach for getting justice. But as per Transparency International surveys the police is the most corrupt and the judiciary the second most corrupt institution in our country! So where do we go?
To my mind atleast there seems to be no legally effective course of action open to us. Anyhow, I am persisiting on a campaign for reforming the judiciary first by having national judicial commission to try and punish judges as per laws applicable to ordinary citizens. An online petition, addressed to the President and PM of India, is available at
http://www.petitiononline.com/jrandac1/petition.html
I request you to support it and also motivate your friends to support it.
Regards and best wishes
ravi
Endquote
Please all go to the link and sign the petition like responsible, thinking Citizens of India remembering that we are Indisns first and Oilmen later.
Also somebody had requested me to start an online petition for reinstatement of sacked employees. Let me see if we too can do something like this.
Expenditure on Govt Officials by Oil Sector-2
Ixpress 12-01-09
Since there is something wrong with the pdf document display (though it downloads ok) we attach the content below
Page 1 of 1
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Austerity? Rs 65,000 a month on taxi rental, hotel bills, airline tickets... ask ONGC
Amitav Ranjan
Posted online: Jan 12, 2009 at 0102 hrs
New Delhi : Former ONGC chairman Subir Raha had once complained that the Petroleum Ministry was treating the public sector undertaking as its “fiefdom”. He was shown the door after a five-year term even though he had two more years to go before superannuation.
Three years later, documents show that many bureaucrats in the ministry are using the country’s most-profitable PSU for benefits like chauffeur-driven cars, payment of mobile bills, air fare and hotel stay, collectively running into lakhs of rupees.
Documents show that the state-run oil and gas exploration firm had provided vehicles “for the duties of the officers of the ministry on regular basis” paying monthly rents between
Rs 35,000 and Rs 65,000 on each car. Some of these taxis have been deployed for more than a year and were still continuing, ONGC records show.
What is disquieting is that the bureaucrats were utilising these
facilities from ONGC while collecting Rs 1,800 or more as transport allowances in their paycheck even when the Department of Expenditure had clearly defined that “the
allowance will not be admissible to those employees who have been provided with the facility of government transport”.
As for mobile phones, almost all directors, joint secretaries and the ministry’s only additional secretary had been provided a connection, with ONGC having paid Rs 2.30 lakh as usage bills until September 2008, while the officials were collecting Rs 1,500 plus per month as reimbursement on mobile/residential phone.
The navratna company also footed air tickets, five-star hotel accommodation and cars at Chennai, Mumbai and Ahmedabad for the ministry staff as well as their relatives.
While one director ran up a bill of Rs 6.3 lakh for 16 nights stay at different times in hotels of Mumbai and Chennai, a former Petroleum Secretary chalked up more than Rs 2 lakh for five nights in different hotels of Mumbai and Chennai.
The ONGC also shelled out Rs 1.35 lakh on airline tickets for
officials in the Mumbai-Delhi sector and Rs 1.99 lakh in taxi bills for ministers and officials travelling in and around Gujarat.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story_print.php?storyid=409610
18/01/2009
Since there is something wrong with the pdf document display (though it downloads ok) we attach the content below
Page 1 of 1
Print Close Window
Austerity? Rs 65,000 a month on taxi rental, hotel bills, airline tickets... ask ONGC
Amitav Ranjan
Posted online: Jan 12, 2009 at 0102 hrs
New Delhi : Former ONGC chairman Subir Raha had once complained that the Petroleum Ministry was treating the public sector undertaking as its “fiefdom”. He was shown the door after a five-year term even though he had two more years to go before superannuation.
Three years later, documents show that many bureaucrats in the ministry are using the country’s most-profitable PSU for benefits like chauffeur-driven cars, payment of mobile bills, air fare and hotel stay, collectively running into lakhs of rupees.
Documents show that the state-run oil and gas exploration firm had provided vehicles “for the duties of the officers of the ministry on regular basis” paying monthly rents between
Rs 35,000 and Rs 65,000 on each car. Some of these taxis have been deployed for more than a year and were still continuing, ONGC records show.
What is disquieting is that the bureaucrats were utilising these
facilities from ONGC while collecting Rs 1,800 or more as transport allowances in their paycheck even when the Department of Expenditure had clearly defined that “the
allowance will not be admissible to those employees who have been provided with the facility of government transport”.
As for mobile phones, almost all directors, joint secretaries and the ministry’s only additional secretary had been provided a connection, with ONGC having paid Rs 2.30 lakh as usage bills until September 2008, while the officials were collecting Rs 1,500 plus per month as reimbursement on mobile/residential phone.
The navratna company also footed air tickets, five-star hotel accommodation and cars at Chennai, Mumbai and Ahmedabad for the ministry staff as well as their relatives.
While one director ran up a bill of Rs 6.3 lakh for 16 nights stay at different times in hotels of Mumbai and Chennai, a former Petroleum Secretary chalked up more than Rs 2 lakh for five nights in different hotels of Mumbai and Chennai.
The ONGC also shelled out Rs 1.35 lakh on airline tickets for
officials in the Mumbai-Delhi sector and Rs 1.99 lakh in taxi bills for ministers and officials travelling in and around Gujarat.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story_print.php?storyid=409610
18/01/2009
IAS - Open the Clubhouse to everyone Outside
An article TITLED "OPEN THE CLUBHOUSE TO EVERYONE" in The NEW INDIAN Express Friday May 9, 2008, Bangalore says that IAS people comprising of just 4200 serving officials stand to gain an edge over non-IAS officers in the Govt and how IAS subjugates all other cadres.
Write Up on IAS Lobby
Write Up on IAS Lobby
Aam Admi -- Are we not too- I ask the Media!!
A billion in UK, a Billion is a Million million meaning 12 zeros after 1. But Americans known to shorten english words have also shortened this number. For them it is Thousand Million or 9 zeros after 1. Now I am not sure which we Indian Scientists and Economists use and this becomes all the more confusing when we insert our own unit The Crore, which is 10 million or 7 zeros after 1. So let us just keep to the full number.
As per the last Census (2004-- if anybody has later one pls tell me) says Indian Population total was 1,065,070,607 or 106 crores. In 2004, an estimated 250 million (300 in 2006) people are below the poverty line (BPL) and approximately 75 per cent of them were in the rural areas. Allow for increase till date. This makes it 25% of the total population.
[The BPL is defined as an earning of Rs. 300/- per month. Even here the Govt tried to play recently by changing the definition.. i.e. reducing the amount so that no. of people BPL get reduced! IMAGINE!!)
I do not think they are the "Aam Admi" the media is referring too. Because in any case these poor people are "dying" every day strike or no strike, terrorist attack or no terrist attack, Congress or BJP or Mayavati or Amar Singh, INDO-US ties or Indo-Pak war, China occupying parts of Arunachal Pradesh or Karunanidhi asking PM Monmohan Singh to intervene in Sri Lanka on behalf of the Tamilians.. These people are in any case never looked after and are only worried every day when the sun is yet to rise, that they have to wake up before sunrise and the women folk will trudge miles to get pails of drinking water and men will go to the fields to till to farm and have only one worry in their daily life. whether they will get their two rotis. Certainly these are not Aam Admis!!!! Are they?
Then take out the Utterly Dirty Rich people. the Sharukhs, the Amitabhs, The Sanjay Dutts, the Mayavatis, the Mallyas, the Amabanis, whose lives are in anyway never affected come flood or Tsunami or Stikes or Terrorists (till recently). If the trucks are not running and their kitchens go dry (which they do not, because they have kitchens the size of halls of our own houses) they can just go to London and have breakfast, then do a bit of sight seeing and just drop by at Paris to have dinner.. and come back the next day.. No no I am sure Media do not call them the AAM ADMI.. If they do then their TRPs will drop.
Then who are the AAM Admis? The Ministers? noo.how can they be.. they are having power, they have money, they have the goondas, they have the police, they have the gullible public also with them to vote them every time back to power.. So when they have all this how can their lives be affected? Nahh. they too are not Aam Admis!!
Then the Babus? Haha! Have you ever seen how they flaunt their red lights and we have to give them way in traffic jams? Have you ever entered one of those hallowed IAS Officers' Messes built on Taxpayers' money during a Cricket Match? pls do .. you will find a huge Plasma TV Screen in the restaurant or whatever it is called and the babus relaxing away on a working day with subsidised Pina Coladas..I heard even the IPS officers are not allwed membeership to these clubs and they have to maintain separate ones. Ministers may come and go but the Babus remain forever.. after all they need time to retire.. . They are the ones who run the show in this Huge Country.. so how can they be AAM Admi? Can king be a subject too?
Friends what remains then? Guess? Why do you think all the western business groups are coming to India? To sell their products and services. But why? Because we have a huge middle class. Our Middle Class is so large in numbers that we are an attractive proposition for those who are in dried out markets out in the Western World. Here in India we have a large market because of the huge Middle class segment. I will talk on what Middle Class means as per the Economists and Statisticians at a different post (will be linked here too). But for my argument wrt "Who is Aam Admi" I say the middle class are the Aam Admis.. those who are affected by everything that happens around us, from strikes to terrorist attacks, from VIP Traffic through the Delhi Roads making them stop their cars and bikes wasting their valuable time, to paying high taxes through their noses, from dying in the hands of Ajmals of this world at a Mumbai Railway Station to dying in heat strokes in the Hot Delhi roads, from waiting in queues in crowded Hospitals (Govt and Private alike) to jostling among themselves on roads, buses, queues, airport terminals, railway platforms, markets, malls.
This is the Middle Class. The Middle class who they need to make the rich richer by buying their products and watching them dance (in Films) to voting them to Power to just being there. These are the MIDDLE class. These are the subjects of the Rulers. If the Middle Class was not there then who will the Rulers rule? THESE are the AAM ADMIs that the Media was portraying..
But in their eagerness to get TRP ratings, when they were shrieking their voices out they forgot that we 55,000 too make up a part of the same Middle Class-the same "Aam Admi"- because we too face the same problems day in day out all over India. They forgot that the fight is not between Oil Sector Officers and the Aam Admi but between Aam Admis and the Rulers!!
Media talked of "Aam Admi" Suffering due to Our Oil Sector Srike. But little did they realise that we are "Aam Admi" too. And we too have suffered for 12 years of crying at the wooden chunks, who sit in the Parliament and the Secretariats. Wooden because there was no response at all. Media forgot that after we suffered for 12 years, they have now inflicted further pain on our familes too by their Hitlerian Style of handling the Situation. What harm would it have made if Respected Prime Minsiter had just met the leaders for 10 mts? I am sure that OSOA would have called off the Strike.. I know they were breaking down.. things would have settled down and we would have gone back waiting for the GOM report and another Strike would not have come.
But what is the lesson that needed to be taught to us? I will talk on this aspect later. You cannot break the morale of 55,000 officers and more (considering all PSUs) like this and expect Efficiency, Quality, Service at the same time. This will be discussed in subsequent posts.
Here I will now Thank TNN, for showing India that we too are the Aam Admis and we too are suffering and not just we but our families.
So I thank Sri Sanjay Dutta of Times News Nework (TNN)for bringing out the human angle of our struggle too in the following news item of his on 14th January 2009 in Times of India, Delhi Edition as below and also for giving correct facts of oil sector salaries. When you have sent so many mails asking media to apologise I suggest you all at least send Thank you mails to him (and also Lok Sabha TV) for their balanced reporting Styles.
Shantanu Das
Oil Sector Families Suffer- TOI 14th Jan 2009
As per the last Census (2004-- if anybody has later one pls tell me) says Indian Population total was 1,065,070,607 or 106 crores. In 2004, an estimated 250 million (300 in 2006) people are below the poverty line (BPL) and approximately 75 per cent of them were in the rural areas. Allow for increase till date. This makes it 25% of the total population.
[The BPL is defined as an earning of Rs. 300/- per month. Even here the Govt tried to play recently by changing the definition.. i.e. reducing the amount so that no. of people BPL get reduced! IMAGINE!!)
I do not think they are the "Aam Admi" the media is referring too. Because in any case these poor people are "dying" every day strike or no strike, terrorist attack or no terrist attack, Congress or BJP or Mayavati or Amar Singh, INDO-US ties or Indo-Pak war, China occupying parts of Arunachal Pradesh or Karunanidhi asking PM Monmohan Singh to intervene in Sri Lanka on behalf of the Tamilians.. These people are in any case never looked after and are only worried every day when the sun is yet to rise, that they have to wake up before sunrise and the women folk will trudge miles to get pails of drinking water and men will go to the fields to till to farm and have only one worry in their daily life. whether they will get their two rotis. Certainly these are not Aam Admis!!!! Are they?
Then take out the Utterly Dirty Rich people. the Sharukhs, the Amitabhs, The Sanjay Dutts, the Mayavatis, the Mallyas, the Amabanis, whose lives are in anyway never affected come flood or Tsunami or Stikes or Terrorists (till recently). If the trucks are not running and their kitchens go dry (which they do not, because they have kitchens the size of halls of our own houses) they can just go to London and have breakfast, then do a bit of sight seeing and just drop by at Paris to have dinner.. and come back the next day.. No no I am sure Media do not call them the AAM ADMI.. If they do then their TRPs will drop.
Then who are the AAM Admis? The Ministers? noo.how can they be.. they are having power, they have money, they have the goondas, they have the police, they have the gullible public also with them to vote them every time back to power.. So when they have all this how can their lives be affected? Nahh. they too are not Aam Admis!!
Then the Babus? Haha! Have you ever seen how they flaunt their red lights and we have to give them way in traffic jams? Have you ever entered one of those hallowed IAS Officers' Messes built on Taxpayers' money during a Cricket Match? pls do .. you will find a huge Plasma TV Screen in the restaurant or whatever it is called and the babus relaxing away on a working day with subsidised Pina Coladas..I heard even the IPS officers are not allwed membeership to these clubs and they have to maintain separate ones. Ministers may come and go but the Babus remain forever.. after all they need time to retire.. . They are the ones who run the show in this Huge Country.. so how can they be AAM Admi? Can king be a subject too?
Friends what remains then? Guess? Why do you think all the western business groups are coming to India? To sell their products and services. But why? Because we have a huge middle class. Our Middle Class is so large in numbers that we are an attractive proposition for those who are in dried out markets out in the Western World. Here in India we have a large market because of the huge Middle class segment. I will talk on what Middle Class means as per the Economists and Statisticians at a different post (will be linked here too). But for my argument wrt "Who is Aam Admi" I say the middle class are the Aam Admis.. those who are affected by everything that happens around us, from strikes to terrorist attacks, from VIP Traffic through the Delhi Roads making them stop their cars and bikes wasting their valuable time, to paying high taxes through their noses, from dying in the hands of Ajmals of this world at a Mumbai Railway Station to dying in heat strokes in the Hot Delhi roads, from waiting in queues in crowded Hospitals (Govt and Private alike) to jostling among themselves on roads, buses, queues, airport terminals, railway platforms, markets, malls.
This is the Middle Class. The Middle class who they need to make the rich richer by buying their products and watching them dance (in Films) to voting them to Power to just being there. These are the MIDDLE class. These are the subjects of the Rulers. If the Middle Class was not there then who will the Rulers rule? THESE are the AAM ADMIs that the Media was portraying..
But in their eagerness to get TRP ratings, when they were shrieking their voices out they forgot that we 55,000 too make up a part of the same Middle Class-the same "Aam Admi"- because we too face the same problems day in day out all over India. They forgot that the fight is not between Oil Sector Officers and the Aam Admi but between Aam Admis and the Rulers!!
Media talked of "Aam Admi" Suffering due to Our Oil Sector Srike. But little did they realise that we are "Aam Admi" too. And we too have suffered for 12 years of crying at the wooden chunks, who sit in the Parliament and the Secretariats. Wooden because there was no response at all. Media forgot that after we suffered for 12 years, they have now inflicted further pain on our familes too by their Hitlerian Style of handling the Situation. What harm would it have made if Respected Prime Minsiter had just met the leaders for 10 mts? I am sure that OSOA would have called off the Strike.. I know they were breaking down.. things would have settled down and we would have gone back waiting for the GOM report and another Strike would not have come.
But what is the lesson that needed to be taught to us? I will talk on this aspect later. You cannot break the morale of 55,000 officers and more (considering all PSUs) like this and expect Efficiency, Quality, Service at the same time. This will be discussed in subsequent posts.
Here I will now Thank TNN, for showing India that we too are the Aam Admis and we too are suffering and not just we but our families.
So I thank Sri Sanjay Dutta of Times News Nework (TNN)for bringing out the human angle of our struggle too in the following news item of his on 14th January 2009 in Times of India, Delhi Edition as below and also for giving correct facts of oil sector salaries. When you have sent so many mails asking media to apologise I suggest you all at least send Thank you mails to him (and also Lok Sabha TV) for their balanced reporting Styles.
Shantanu Das
Oil Sector Families Suffer- TOI 14th Jan 2009
The Nexus of Corruption: Reliance and Government
There is a gnawing feeling in the minds of every OIL Men of the Public Sector why they kept on deferring the issue for two years and then pushed us into a strike and THEN by refusing to budge an inch and accept minimum legitimate demands their real intention was to show Oil PSUs in a bad light so as to pave the way to hand over the assets of the country to one power Private group. And we all know where power flows from ? The gun barrel or money?
See this link which seems to be talking of some nexus much earlier. We are of course not experts at commenting on national issues and neither should we be drawn into them. But friends let us read what some experts are already saying.
http://desicritics.org/2008/09/09/005819.php
Some excerpts from the website :-
Quote
The Nexus of Corruption: Reliance and Government
September 09, 2008C R Sridhar
A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.’ - Amos Bronson Alcott, American Educator.
One of the common myths circulated in Indian mainstream media is about the inherent dynamism of the Private sector, which offers a refreshing contrast to the venal, corrupt and mendacious class of politicians and government officials. The Captains of Industries are sympathetically portrayed as dynamic, hard working and enterprising people who are thwarted by soul stifling regulation imposed by the Government. Unlike the moribund Public Sector, say the business friendly media, the Private Sector is efficient and creates a big pie in the economy. But unfortunately, like all myths, it has elements of truth but deceives us by not presenting the whole picture.
.................
One of the most remarkable books to emerge in the Indian publishing scene in recent times is Reliance- The Real Natwar written by Arun K. Agrawal.
.......
The spotlight of the book is on the alleged involvement of Reliance Petroleum Limited (RPL) in the Iraq oil-for-food scam. As the author says in his book,
‘This book has its origin, in the compulsion, born of exasperation, experienced by the author to record the failure- or, more accurately, the self-serving refusal – of the Indian political and administrative system to investigate the award of extremely lucrative oil contracts under the United Nations- administered Oil- for-Food programme in Iraq to RPL in transactions manifestly driven by kickbacks/ bribery and bipartisan political patronage.’
...................... Tip of the iceberg: The Oil for Food scam was not an isolated instance of Reliance Petroleum Limited walking away from corruption unscathed. There are also other scandals involving the Reliance Group. One of which was the deal involving Panna-Mukta- oil fields - given to Reliance during the Congress government by Captain Satish Sharma who was the Minister of oil and Natural Gas and a close friend of Rajiv Gandhi.
............... A dangerous collusion:
When the interests of Big business coincide with the personal interests of politicians and bureaucrats of the government, then it can be safely assumed that public good or national interest would be in an irreversible terminal decline. As Timothy P. Carney in his book The Big Rip-off: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money says,
‘Today's largest corporations have mastered the art of working with government officials at every level to stifle market competition. They reap billions through a complex web of higher taxes, stricter regulations, and shameless government handouts.’
Endquote
Need we say more? The truth is out there for all to see. It is time now for us to direct the attention to the real malady of the system.
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