As a rule gfiles does not report on current affairs or politics. We are a niche product and so we steer pretty clear of the material that appears in general interest magazines and daily newspapers. So why, you may ask, have we featured the Lalgarh “Maoist” insurrection in the state of West Bengal as our cover story? And do the business affairs of Mukesh and Anil Ambani merit such prominent display in the July issue of the magazine? Isn’t gfiles supposed to focus on governance and the performance and state of the bureaucracy? But, of course.
And that’s precisely the reason that we have highlighted two subjects that penetrate the very core of how India is administered and how faulty governance, rather than simply ideology or politics, can cause a mega wattage disconnect between the people and those holding the reins of administration; a cut off that can, and has, caused dislocations of national dimensions. The two subjects in question are the governance of rural India where 70 per cent of our population resides, and the governance of Big Business that has gained primacy in post-liberalization and post-globalization India.
Diptendra Raychaudhuri’s passionate chronicle of the “liberation” of the “liberated zone” in Lalgarh, helps promote a unique understanding of what’s really at stake. Far from being a violent Maoist peasant revolution, it is, in essence, a protest by the weakest segment of our citizens against waste, fraud, neglect, and corruption in government. These cadres have little or no knowledge of Mao or Marxism. As the writer points out: Lalgarh has added a new dimension to the deep-rooted problem of non-governance in rural areas.
Veteran journalist Naresh Minocha’s account of the triangular tussle between the competing business empires of the Ambani Brothers and the NTPC merits serious attention from all Indians because it goes to the heart of whether the government is equipped in dealing with what smacks of price fixing and market-cornering in the larger, vital national interest of energy security and the potential loss of state revenues to vested interests when financials and budget deficits stare India in the face.
Without resorting to specious casuistries, Minocha excoriates the government in no-nonsense language for copping out under pressure on a key imperative. He observes that the Empowered Group of Ministers handling the gas pricing policy “has made a mockery of production sharing contracts that it signed with Reliance Industries Ltd for the Krishna-Godavari basin and with other such New Exploration Licensing Policy licensees and contractors.”
Inderjit Badhwar
Inderjit Badhwaris a veteran journalist, novelist and the former editor of India Today. He has written for various Indian and American newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times and Outlook. Now based in New Delhi, Badhwar heads gfiles, India's first magazine on the Civil Services of India.
