Mr Mohan Guruswamy (see his original statement appended below) is factually incorrect in suggesting that the "meat" for "Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis" was sourced from "Anil Ambani's operation". The book has been put together over a period of four and a half years from dozens of sources, including top officials of Reliance Industries Limited. Anyone who reads the 600-odd pages of the book will surely realise this. One presumes that Mr Guruswamy has read the book since he took a copy from the office of Paranjoy Guha Thakurta in April 2014 soon after the book was published. As to why the book was self-published, anyone interested in this topic is free to go through the reviews and comments on the www.gaswars.in website.
One last point: it would have been good had Mr Guruswamy disclosed his association with Observer Research Foundation that has been supported by Reliance.
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Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
Subir Ghosh
Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri
What Mohan Guruswamy wrote:
I keep wondering as to why we seem so shocked by this. This activity is a major business in New Delhi and the sheer numbers of "independent" consultants, individual and firms, PR agencies in their glitzy offices and large cars are a testimony of its success and all pervasiveness. Every now and then one or two get caught, the newspapers, many of whose reporters function as the private sector's field intelligence agents, feign shock and soon it is business as usual. Lets not forget how editors of loss making newspapers and magazines end up with luxury hoimes in South Delhi and farm houses in Chattarpur. They trade in information and not everything reaches their readers, but ends up as "For your eyes only" stuff for their corporate clients and financiers.
All government documents are available for sale. Not long ago the MMRCA documents setting up standards and requirements for India's biggest defence contract, ended at the Boeing headquarters, where the top management, obviously more concerned by strict US laws that cover corrupt practices overseas, returned them back to the Government of India and fired its local managers responsible for it. But the French had no qualms in taking Mirage 2000 related papers obtained for it by Coomar Narain. Then remember the firms owned Nira Radia, Deepak Talwar and other prominent figures in Delhi's policy influencing machine. Ever wonder how they operate and for who they exist? The same companies such as RIL, Tatas, Essar and others who figure in this latest 'outrage".
Now a word about Shantanu Saikia. He once published excerpts of an official note on Maruti divestment which I wrote for the government to consider. He published it in the Financial Express a day after I wrote it, which means he got it it the same day I wrote it. Since I typed it on my word processor, he got it somewhere between my staff who took it to make it official with number etc and its travel to the FM. I told a sleuth friend from one our int agencies about it, and he did some sleuthing around and told me to have Saikia banned from the MoF as his main business was in selling official papers than using them to write articles. I told the then Expenditure Secretary and asked him to issue the required orders, but he did nothing. How would he, because he too was leaking documents pertaining to issues he had a contrary view. After retirement he has become a full time whistleblower and PIL litigator, something he should have done much earlier in life to make himself more useful in life.
The one interesting aspect in the latest outrage is the involvement of Anil Ambani's ADAG in buying the stolen papers. Of the firms mentioned, his is the only one not having any oil business. But he is in this oily business to collect material to mainly beat up his elder brothers company, which is a major oil industry player. It is material provided by Anil Ambani's operation in Delhi that provided the meat for the book "Gas Wars" a supposed "expose" of the many wrongdoings of brother Mukesh's company in obtaining and operating the KG basin off-shore gas fields. The book was published privately, but that is another story.
