Maran hangs on amid expanding 2G
scam By Raja Murthy
MUMBAI - Like a monster growing more heads
even as they are severed, India's US$40 billion 2G
spectrum scam is continuing to deliver lessons the
hard way on how not to run the business of
governance.
The latest character to be
caught up in the scandal is Dayanidhi Maran,
former telecommunications minister and current
minister of textiles.
Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh is under pressure to sack Maran,
44, who is fighting off allegations that as
telecom minister he took decisions favoring his
billionaire elder brother Kalanidhi, owner of Sun
TV and majority stake holder in leading private
airlines SpiceJet.
The 2G scam monster has
already swallowed Andimuthu Raja, Maran's
successor as telecommunications minister and alleged
executor of the scam, who
undersold spectrum licenses instead of auctioning
them as Manmohan had advised. The sale cost the
exchequer an estimated $40 billion in lost
revenues. [1] A Raja is at present in New Delhi's
Tihar Jail.
The jail, Asia's largest
prison, with over 13,000 inmates, is also home
home to other leading lights in the 2G scam
awaiting trial: Kanimozhi, cousin of Maran and
daughter of Karunanidhi, patriarch of the
Dravidian Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a key ally of
the ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition
government that Manmohan leads; Gautam Doshi,
managing director of the $14 billion Reliance Anil
Dhirubhai Ambani Group; Sanjay Chandra, former
managing director of Unitech Wireless; Shahid
Balwa, promoter of DB Realty and the youngest in
the Forbes 100 billionaires list of 2010.
As they take a break from dining on
five-star gourmet fare with a switch to eating the
wholesome Tihar Jail lunch of dry rotis
(leavened bread), lentils and simple vegetable
dishes, the imprisoned billionaires have time to
digest the wisdom that after every feast, legal or
illegal, comes the reckoning.
Under
pressure from a growing anti-corruption movement
in India and presenting the bill with unusual
vigor, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
is probing Maran's role in the 2G affair that
supposedly earned his elder brother Kalanidhi
Maran's Sun TV a $132 million investment feast
from the Malaysian Maxis Group.
Maxis
bought a 20% stake in Sun Direct TV soon after the
Telecommunications Ministry issued long-delayed
licenses to Aircel, a leading cell-phone service
provider in south India.
Former Aircel
owner C Sivasankaran says his spectrum
applications were arbitrarily delayed when Maran
was the telecom minister in 2006. He was then
"forced" to sell 74% of Aircel stake to Maxis
Group in May 2006. Aircel received the new telecom
licenses soon after he sold the company. The new
owner, Maxis, then invested over $130 million in
Kalanidhi Maran's Chennai-based Sun TV.
The Press Trust of India news agency on
June 7 reported that Sivasankaran complaining to
the CBI that the Maran brothers had threatened to
kill him if he did not sell his company to Maxis.
Such allegations don't quite fit into
Dayanidhi Maran's biography from when we were
classmates for over a decade in Don Bosco School,
Egmore, Chennai. His character, even allowing for
vast changes from boy to man, looks unlikely to
include a willingness to mastermind India's
biggest corruption scandal, let alone threatening
folks with murder.
From what I remember as
Dayanidhi's classmate from 1974 to 1985 in Don
Bosco, this could be a Cain and Abel episode in
the 2G scam drama.
To more accurately
serve the cause of justice, the CBI probing
Dayanidhi Maran can also seek answers to the
questions: did anyone else deliberately remain in
the background, pulling well-connected strings,
raking in the loot and leaving the younger Maran
sibling out to hang? Was Dayanidhi Maran more a
victim of cunning manipulation, rather than being
the master manipulator?
Daya, as we called
him in school, was as affable, straightforward and
harmless a fellow as one could hope to meet. He
played a bit of cricket, liked participating in
school theatricals, and almost always wore a big
grin when one talked to him, as if a Charlie
Chaplin movie was perpetually playing inside his
head.
Dayanidhi and I have not met or
communicated in 20 years, but it was no surprise
to know that he got along well with political
leaders cutting across party lines, including
United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia
Gandhi.
It's not so easy to recognize a
similar harmless disposition in his elder brother
Kalanidhi, two years my senior in school, and now
one of India's fastest-growing billionaires.
Kalanidhi's low profile in the media has
more of a sinister, shadowy air to it, rather than
appearing a reclusive billionaire shy of the
limelight. The old school boy news network says
Dayanidhi is still the same unassuming friendly
fellow, but it is not too flattering of the elder
brother.
Since every issue has subtler
layers and multiple angles beyond the obvious,
there could be numerous shades of grey in the
details of the 2G scam.
The CBI and other
enforcement agencies may find interesting
revelations if they penetrate the micro details of
decision-making during Dayanidhi's days as
telecommunications minister, scrutinize the exact
source of instructions to senior bureaucrats, and
investigate if anyone was exerting pressure in a
minister's name. The CBI is better off making sure
Abel is not hanged for any crimes, if any, of
Cain.
Dayanidhi is adamant he is not a
corrupt minister, and has sued three leading
publications for suggesting he did.
Whether guilty as accused or not, the
Maran brothers episode is the starkest appearance
yet of vested business interests not merely
influencing but perhaps controlling governance at
the highest levels in India.
The Manmohan
government has already earned a reputation of
being far too business friendly. It's a coziness
confirmed by United States Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton in her WikiLeaked cable to the US
Embassy on September 14, 2009. Clinton questioned
her staff about Pranab Mukherjee being current
finance minister: "To which business groups is
Mukherjee beholden?; Why was [he] chosen over
Montek [Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of
the Planning Commission, India's top economic
think-tank]?"
On June 7, Manmohan reminded
his cabinet colleagues of their responsibility to
declare their business interests, assets and
liabilities, including that of their spouses and
dependents.
But Manmohan should have heard
loud warning bells when Maran's DMK party insisted
on cornering the telecommunications portfolio, and
did so even after Dayanidhi resigned as telecom
minister in May 2007 following an internal
squabble within the DMK. The 2G scam broke out in
2009 after another DMK man, A Raja, succeeded
Maran as telecommunications minister.
Maran has now been abandoned by his
ministerial colleagues and his political "family",
with both the central government and the DMK
shrugging their shoulders and declaring it's up to
Maran to defend himself.
But the fact
Manmohan has not yet sacked Maran, over 10 days
since investigative journal Tehelka on June 4
published the allegations, shows there could be
more to this than meets any hasty judgmental eye.
Dayanidhi can actually consider himself
lucky. With his back to the wall and fighting on
alone, he is in a better position realize his true
friend is our Don Bosco school motto Virtuis in
Arduis' - or "strength through hardships" -
and that life's most valuable lessons are learned
in the school of hard knocks. He has nothing to
fear from the 2G scam if he is as innocent as he
says he is.
Note 1. "The
entire process of allocation of Universal Access
Spectrum licenses lacked transparency and was
undertaken in an arbitrary, unfair and inequitable
manner," the Comptroller and Auditor General said
in the concluding Chapter Six of its report dated
November 8, 2010. "The Department of
Telecommunications, in 2008, proceeded to issue
122 new licenses for 2G spectrum at 2001 prices,
by flouting every cannon of financial propriety,
rules and procedures."
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