Anil Ambani‘s decision to hitch his wagon to the Samajwadi Party and become a member of the Rajya Sabha was generally seen to have been one of the contributing factors to his split with Mukesh Ambani. Like their father Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh was rumoured to have been of the belief that, while political influence was important for the group’s business operations, there was little to be gained by openly aligning with political parties.
That bit of conventional wisdom has come unstuck in the week gone by. At least three Mukesh Ambani men—two of them (Parimal Nathwani and Y.P. Trivedi) wholetime directors of the elder Ambani’s Reliance Industries, and the third (former bureaucrat N.K. Singh) a visiting fellow at the Reliance-sponsored thinktank Observer Research Foundation—have entered the house of elders, drawing the support of BJP, NCP, JMM, JD(U), among other parties.
There is even talk that a fourth Mukesh Ambani candidate may sneak through, although one news channel which did a story on the Reliance link has reportedly been served a legal notice. With so many businessmen sneaking into the Upper House—think Vijay Mallya, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Rahul Bajaj, M.A.M. Ramaswamy, the late Lalit Suri, et al—and with so many parties helping them do so for not entirely political considerations, there were obvious questions to ask. Now, with their henchmen doing so, the circle it seems is complete.
In Jharkhand, Parimal Nathwani stood as an independent. Yet, according to unconfirmed reports, a number of cabinet ministers were willing and, in fact, did vote against the official UPA candidate while the chief minister himself abstained.
Harish Khare writes in The Hindu:
“Whether or not there was a quid pro quo, the critical aspect is that the industrialists have secured their passage with the cooperation, indulgence and votes of the established parties….
“The role of money in our public life has had a deleterious impact on the policy choices and moral integrity of political institutions. Apart from the aberrant case when an odd money-bag deemed it expedient to try to suborn the loyalty of a political or bureaucratic executive in order to sabotage or promote a policy, the business houses have over the years acquired a quasi-institutional voice for themselves. As the electoral process has become very expensive, the role and reach of money power has become all too obvious.
“However, it seems that the industrialists are no longer content with acquiring leverage in the political process by donating large sums of money during and between the election times. They seem now keen to pack the Upper House with their “men.” They want to have their agents in the middle of the action.”
Read the full story: One more invisible line crossed
What about legislators presiding over businesses? Sahrad Pawar, Rajiv Shukla, Arun Jaitley, and a whole lot of others dominate the BCCI, PR DasMunshi runs the AIFF, and so on. And what was Khare doing when the Parliament retroactively passed the Office of Profit bill? Hatching eggs. Nothing less than a comprehensive OOP bill that forbids – at the pain of expulsion from legislature – any simultaneous office of profit for legislators will do. Better still would be to dumpt our Westminster model and change over to a genuinely balance of power structure like the US one where executive, judiciary, and legislature are unambiguously separated.
If moneybags were involved in the election anyway, what does it matter if it was a Mallya or a Lalu Prasad Yadav who is being elected.
The RS is hardly a position of authority, stuffed as it is with politicians past their prime, or those who are never going to get elected through a popular vote.
Well, there is nothing new in this. Reliance has just gone a step ahead, previously they were “Managing the Enviorment” from Outside, Now they will manage that from Inside. BTW Our Vice-President Mr. Hamid Ansari has also work as Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. and as Vice President is head of RS – can we say the Reliance Has Four seats?
Exactly what kind of influence or power the upper house have other than rehabilitating disgraced or unelectable or expedient political worms?
Exactly what kind of power or influence does the upper house have other than rebahilitating disgraced, unelectable, or expeidient time servers?
There are Chinese agents too in our parliament. 51 in Lok Sabha and 14 in Rajya Sabha.
why businessmen and industrialists are not indians or human?
i never heard khare worry over the idealogues packing their men and having their agents in the middle. if communists can be packed so can the capitalists.
TS–
Our lives are about pass into the hands of industrialist-management complex from the politician-crook combo. We are damned either way. Without a literate electorate, we are done for. An electorate cannot become literate on dry throats and empty stomachs. Folks in Bengaluru and Dilli know what they are doing.