From the Editor : Anil Tyagi

NIRMALA Sitharaman’s first Budget, the first under Narendra Modi 2.0, was both praised and criticised by economists and experts. Some gave it thumbs up, others thumbs down. But what most failed to grasp was this was a typical ‘Dhanda’ Budget, a policy document to clear away the cobwebs that hinder the businesses of traders, small and medium firms, and foreign investors. It was a nuts-and-bolts budget, a nitty-gritty one, to make life a bit easier for these stakeholders. In effect, Narendra Modi hopes to transform India into a land of billion entrepreneurs. Remember his interview to Zee News, where he said that the pakoda-wala outside the TV channel’s office was profitably employed. Budget 2019 hopes to encourage entrepreneurship and self-employment to create hundreds of millions of jobs.

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COVER STORY : National company flaw tribunal

Experts praised it. Former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gloated over its achievements. Several entrepreneurs hailed its efforts. But when one examines the intricacies of its decisions to resolve the recoveries of huge debts owned by India Inc to financial, corporate, and other creditors, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) seems to have largely failed. This is especially true in the cases, where the debt was huge, and the names involved were big, and publicly known. The law became flawed.

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CORRUPTION : From Raj to Rafale11:Bofors and After

 In this part of the series on corruption in modern India, we look at bribes in defence deals. We look at the secretive mechanisms used by the giant global military-industrial complexes to win lucrative deals. We look at how they use middlemen, senior government officials, and politicians, even prime ministers, to achieve their objectives. In the case of Bofors, the needle of suspicion pointed at Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. It exposed the importance of tax havens, how bribes are routed through foreign bank accounts, and how deals are struck in private conversations among the politicians.

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GOVERNANCE : The Bogey of One Nation, One Election

There is more to it than meets the eye in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s loud pronouncement of One Nation, One Election once again. For all the challenges and pitfalls that this idea poses, it could lead to a dangerous situation of One-Election-One-Party-One-Nation, subverting the basic structure of the Indian Constitution, dealing a death blow to federalism.

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GOVERNANCE : A WEB OF DECEIT: The man who pretended to know too little…

It would be wrong to suggest that Jignesh Shah, who was one of the “key managerial personnel” on the Board of Directors of NSEL, did not know what was going on there. All outward emails of NSEL were routed through an outbox, “FT outbox”. The minutes of the NSEL’s Board were regularly tabled at the FTIL board meetings, which meant that it had knowledge of the goings-on in NSEL. Otherwise, on what basis did Shah assure that the stock held in NSEL’s 120 warehouses was valued at around Rs. 6,000 crore?

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