First Person

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...

Conflict is debilitating, for ordinary people. But conflict studies, on the other hand, can be fascinating. There are as many narratives as there are stakeholders, most in conflict with each other. And the truth does not always lie in the middle as many would like to believe, it often veers towards the victims. I recommend the following books, all non-fiction, for a closer, better understanding of the Kashmir narrative. There are, of course, many other excellent books on Kashmir that are...

Statement from ToxicsWatch Alliance: In a classic case of commencing a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP), legal notice has been served on the authors, publisher and distributor of the book "Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis" by Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Mukesh D Ambani, the Chairman and Managing Director of RIL. This exercise is an assault on democratic rights. SLAPP is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening...

On 7 January 2014, a committee appointed by (petroleum minister Veerappa) Moily in March 2013 to provide a ‘roadmap’ for increasing domestic oil and gas production, submitted the first part of its report to the minister. The Hindu on 8 January reported that the committee headed by Vijay Kelkar (a former petroleum secretary who had also played an important role in the design of the earlier PSCs) favoured retaining the production-sharing model for deep sea exploration. The panel held that...

On 24 May 2013, CPI MP (Gurudas) Dasgupta convened a media conference during which he circulated excerpts from a note dated 14 May prepared for the Cabinet together with a letter he had written to the prime minister. In it he alleged that the ministries of finance, petroleum and natural gas and the Planning Commission were ‘colluding’ to push the price of natural gas from the D6 wells in the Krishna-Godavari basin (that were being operated by RIL) way above what had been recommended by the...

By luck or deliberate strategy, or a combination of both, the execution of the refinery project in Jamnagar transformed Mukesh (Ambani) from an introvert into a confident entrepreneur, who no longer shied away from public appearances. He still had few friends, but interacted comfortably with the Who’s Who of India and the world and entertained them lavishly. By the end of the 1990s, Mukesh was truly convinced that he was the legitimate heir to Dhirubhai’s legacy, that he was the one chosen by...

In early 2006, when I was publishing-editing the now-moribund Newswatch, I had carried out a study on the state of freedom of expression in India for an international free speech network. The findings were not disquieting for those abreast with the state of affairs in the country; but there were some indicators that were a cause for worry, at least for me. Most journalists we surveyed were found to be grossly nescient about free speech issues, people who wouldn’t for their wretched life write...

This was sometime in the late 1980s. Summer was beginning to slyly set in. And the sight of the dry and dusty look of Agartala airport that I fleetingly caught as I peeked out of the plane’s window filled me up with disgust. Like Gollum, I was consumed by hatred – I wanted to hate everything about the Northeast – even its summer. I had been feeling disgusted the last six months anyway, and there was only one thing that I deeply desired – leave the Northeast, for good. And now that I indeed was...

The Indian government wouldn't want you to see this Channel 4 film. This is how the makers of the documentary describe the film: In the most militarised place on earth, one man is standing up to the armed might of the world's largest democracy. 'Kashmir's Torture Trail' follows a Kashmiri lawyer as he uncovers India's best kept secret. With the world's media attention focused on repression in Syria and the threat to the Euro, the Indian state of Kashmir, nestling in the shadow of the Himalayas...

Shortly after it dawned on all and sundry that what was initially thought of as only a gang war, was in fact a concerted attack by terrorists on the night of November 26, 2008, all eyes of the nation, and the world, were trained on Mumbai. The coverage of the attacks was to become a watershed in India’s television history. But hardly had the first night wore on, signs of criticism of the coverage began surfacing. Over Facebook status messages, through SMSs, and subsequently through blogs and...