Sweat Love Story - Part 2

Beni Prasad Verma was right in a way about Salman Khurshid. In the days of scams worth hundreds of thousands of crores why would a minister like Khurshid scam a measly 71 lakhs? Practices by team members usually follow those set by the bosses. The boss either indulges in or approves and overlooks corruption. It is, therefore, hardly a surprise that most cases of corruption come from Congress or Congress-ruled states.  Even the size and nature of Shashi Tharoor’s 70 crores shouldn’t usually worry the Congress.

Barter is a very old form of trade. It still exists and there are even online companies that provide barter services. As transactions get more sophisticated barter trade acquires new names and meanings. Sweat equity (SE) is really not very different from barter. Only, in the case of Sunanda Pushkar (SP) we have no idea what was being bartered. We do know of equity being allotted to her but have no idea what she delivered in return or was hoping to. A very clever barter system was devised by none other than Times of India. It fashionably called it ‘Private Treaties’ (PT). Companies used to seek and pay for publicity, pay for suppressing adverse reports and, of course, for normal advertising. The last part is fine but TOI decided since the first two parts are already being done by PR people why not legitimise it and run private treaties.

Under PT TOI picks up an equity stake in a company in return for publicity through advertisements, news reports, or advertorials in print or TV. Usually these are young but promising companies that are likely to go public in some time. So, for services provided, PT gets equity from a company. Is it any different from sweat equity? No, not really. When the public issue does come about and share prices are sky high TOI sells off the equity and makes a killing. So if 70 crores of SE were given to Sunananda, who knows, in five years it might have been worth 200 crores if everything else had gone smoothly. We’ll never know.

If you search deeper you are likely to find that under PT TOI hid many facts, passed off advertisements as news or editorials and in certain cases went much beyond. As Moneylife explains, in the case of Pyramid Saimira Ltd. journalists and the company owner colluded to forge a SEBI order and illegally made a killing with inflated prices of its shares. The persons involved have since been banned from trading by SEBI. The innocuous concept of SE does come with its own lethal doses of crimes. In another case ‘The Hoot’ discovered something unusual about an accident involving lifts at a construction site in Bangalore. The accident caused some deaths but while other newspapers named the construction company TOI didn’t mention the company at all. Well, that’s somewhat like an Indian house-wife who never mentions her ‘bread-winner’ husband by name. Turns out the builder, Sobha Developers, is a husband in TOI’s private treaties. Such sweat love, isn’t it? TOI has now made PT sound even more fashionable and stylish; they now call it Brand Equity Treaties Ltd. Brand Equity, a supplement in Economic Times, also used to conduct quiz competitions between corporate houses under the ‘Brand Equity Quiz’.

So what exactly is Sunanda so upset about the ‘50Cr’ tag? Well, not really her but the “ever-Aurat-ki-Izzat” loving media. The first one she ran to was NDTV. I have long back written a post: “Tainted? Have a chat with Barkha”. Lately in Barkha’s absence Sunetra Chaudhary fills in for her. But let’s not deviate. This NDTV is the same channel where Syed Bukhari called Shabana Azmi a “Naachne wali, Gaane wali” in a live program. Umm.. I guess both are “secular” so that can pass. This is the same NDTV who more or less painted Bhanwari Devi a money and fame-chasing whore in their article “Bhanwari Devi was determined to live a life less ordinary”. You can be forgiven for reading the article and believing BhanwariDevi sort of invited her murder. And the murderers? Oh some Congressmen are accused, so that case is likely to linger for eons. Their group editor, who else but Barkha Dutt, outraged against the ‘50Cr’ but forgot how she suggested women “self-combusted” over loutish politicians (This was around the suicide of Geetika Sharma in which politician Gopal Kanda has been accused and the other probably a reference to Bhanwari Devi). It wasn’t NDTV alone, Headlines Today and CNN-IBN didn’t lag behind. Any idea why all of a sudden these channels were so enthusiastic in letting SP, the oh so ‘Bhartiya Naari’, play ‘victim’ on TV? I leave that for you to figure out.

All this when just two years ago our media was eager to trash SP. Some headlines are quite interesting. Outlook called her a “..Girl, named Sue”. Can’t be sure, but this was probably picked up from the legendary late Johnny Cash’s country song about “A boy named Sue” who wanted to kill his father for naming him so and finally finds the reason why he was so named. Even Tehelka, the cheap tabloid, didn’t want to be left behind and headlined her a “Vamp” in an article supposedly meant to defend the woman. Sensationalism, Tehelka style! Not to be left behind Indian Express in “Jammu to Dubai…” carried a comment that shockingly casts more aspersions on the woman than any other comment you may have heard. I wonder if IE would have carried the comment today. That comment is from someone who claims to know SP but we can’t take that on face value. Mind you, I’m not in any way endorsing that comment or treating it as true or validating it. Just showing our media what they carry in their pages depending on the sign of the times.

Sweat is thicker than love. It pays! Robert Vadra bought a piece of land for 7.5 Crores. He pays for it with a cheque (A cheque? All of it with a cheque? Ha!) that is not to be presented. It’s money he never even had in the first place. He shows the amount as a ‘ghost-loan’ or OD from Corporation Bank in his books. A few months later he sells it to DLF for 58 crores. Neat! Surely, land prices didn’t go up that dramatically, did they? No! But I guess Vadra sat on that piece of land and sweated for four months to earn get the difference of over 50 crores for the same land. How did he sweat? Well, he got the Haryana govt to alter the land use privileges for that land in a jiffy and that’s the sweat he added. After being rattled from their slumber our media now reluctantly carries stories of Vadra’s land dealings. The Hindu’s latest article even reveals “Web of political links helped Vadra’s land deals”. Sweat love can be expressed in different ways. 50Crs tag for SP or 50Crs profit to Vadra.

The most intriguing aspect of the whole story is that fountain of sweat love; Rendezvous Sports. Very apt name, Rendezvous! Who or what exactly is Rendezvous? Who funds it and where did the funds come from? That’s what started the whole controversy in the first place. Ironically, it’s another Modi, Lalit Modi, who let Tharoor’s sweat out of the bag by disclosing the background through Twitter. With a 26% share in Kochi IPL team, this company handed out free gifts to many. 5% was handed out to SP for her sweat. Even Salman Khurshid stated back then that the ROC may look into Rendezvous to check if they violated rules to enter IPL. The IT Dept. stated it will initiate an investigation. Ever heard anything? Ever heard any media outlet following up on that story? The story dried up and died. Not surprising. The right question that the media cronies aren’t asking is “Who is Rendezvous and why was SP given SE in the first place?” Not even in the latest series of interviews was SP asked the question. I guess it’s not relevant for the purpose of the interviews.

While SP is a character in this story it’s not about her. She doesn’t realise how the media used her first as a “vamp” and now as a “victim” to suit their own agenda. But SP played right into their hands uttering typical victimhood rubbish. I do have a message for our media and SP. Stop teaching us we need to go to convents to learn about “cattle class” and that PDA means “Public Display of Affection”. What SP did show right through is a different type of PDA; “Public Display of Affront” and contempt for the intelligence of ordinary men and women. To indulge in opaque deals and then for the media to present certain people as “victims” is where our media becomes the first line of defence for the corrupt. Sweat Equity is a good thing; it’s a good concept for budding entrepreneurs who aren’t cash-rich. Unfortunately, in India, the powerful public figures are capable of turning any good concept into a delivery system for bribes. After all, even that DLF CEO, Kushpal Singh, called bribery “facilitating speedy disposal”. To rephrase the great, revered freedom-fighter: “Give me sweat and I’ll give you equity and endless love”.

Concluded

Sweat Love Story - Part 1

Each day I wake up I realise I’m totally out of sync with this tech-age; that I’m not fashionable. It’s just a few years ago I learned that PDA stood for ‘Personal Digital Assistant’. So when Sunanda Pushkar (SP) told NDTV “I don't know. I can only say it's very sad that in a country like ours that they don't believe in PDA because the point is we are a country...” I was totally flummoxed. I was wondering what a stupid PDA had to do with her defence of the ‘50Crs GF’ tag or Shashi Tharoor. Thankfully, Sunetra Chaudhary quickly clarified that SP’s PDA means “Public Display of Affection”. These things keep changing faster than I can learn. And hold on, I did go to a convent school for a few years of my primary education. You know, we were taught about cows and dogs.. as in 'domestic animals’. In some exams we even loved drawing pictures of animals. But hell, that convent never taught me what “cattle class” was. And SP insists only those who went to a convent school would understand that. I’m now wondering if it’s a good idea to ‘sue’ my school.

So this Sunanda was on all the English channels and all the ballerinas in the news channels were shocked over the 50Cr GF comment and how it was ‘sexist’ and an insult to ‘womankind’. All very nice! But it doesn’t alter the fact that 50 or 70crs of ‘sweat equity’ was the reason why Tharoor was sacked from the ministry earlier. Nothing had changed in between to bring him back. That was a question no news channel wanted to ask. Well, it’s election season in Gujarat so that part can wait. I’ve seen the Bachchan movie “Khoon Pasina” and even heard of the rock-band ‘Blood, Sweat & Tears’. Salman Khurshid explained the blood and tears part well. There was his ‘Ink & blood’ comment and then how SoniaG had ‘tears’ in her eyes over the Batla House shoot out.

However, it took the Tharoor-Sunanda duo to bring home the full understanding of ‘Sweat’. Theirs is a true love story as Tharoor indicated in his tweet-back to Narendra Modi. Like PDA this ‘sweat equity’ is also a concept that’s not very old. Start-up companies which don’t have lots of money issue equity shares to people like lawyers, marketers etc. in lieu of cash payments for their services. The shares, of course, are liquid assets like any other. But this sweat can also be misused to reward people as bribes under crony capitalism. And the best place to borrow capitalist concepts from? You guessed it – US of A! Nobody does it better. Every form of economic system or ideology has its evils; or should I say evil people? For instance govt officials handing over land or public facility to a private citizen or entity for a small price and then getting kickbacks. Or buy a piece of land dirt cheap, sweat over it with govt help and then sell it for an extraordinarily high value. I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably thinking Robert Vadra but we’ll get to him later.

In the meantime let’s remember what Swami Vivekanand or even Stephen Covey has talked about many times. Good is difficult to emulate but evil can and will always be exceeded. In other words, it’s hard to pick up good practices or habits but bad habits are usually exceeded from where they were picked up. If one is a smoker, chances are the person is probably now smoking more than the person from whom the habit was picked up. Remember September-October 2008? That’s the time many crony American companies with fake balance sheets and figures, companies with nothing but paper assets crashed. Those included AIG, Merrill Lynch and housing loan companies. While many in the public suffered, the owners or management members of these companies made a killing. The sweat love story is not very different. You’ve heard of Cash4Votes, of Cash4Questions in parliament. Here’s something similar: Kids4Cash. The story is old and also features in Capitalism: A Love Story by Michael Moore.

In the year 2001 a private company in Pennsylvania (PA), US offered their company, PA ChildCare, to replace a county’s Juvenile Detention home and the contract of detentions outsourced to them. The two people who offered this “social service” were as Greg Zappala and attorney Robert Powell. As it happened Powell had a friend in Judge Michael Conahan who shut down the public juvenile facility since it was “run down” and stopped its funding by end 2002. In due course the contract to run the detention centre was handed over the privately run PA ChildCare of Robert Powell. That’s not all; the contract was a $58 Million per year lease. So essentially, Powell’s company built his private detention centres with public money and had an annual lease amount too. Nice, isn’t it? But, that’s not all.

Powell’s company added a sister company to the original PA ChildCare and both started operating juvenile detentions for the govt. Powell’s business of reforming of spoilt brats of PA flourished. He even bought a private jet and yacht that was ironically named “Reel Justice”. Now that the detention business was privatised, more and more kids were convicted for juvenile offences. The number of kids being sent to the detention centres grew, business grew. In a 5 year period Judge Mark Ciavarella (seemingly a partner in crime of Judge Conahan) sentenced an astonishing 6500 kids to Powell’s detention centres. You see, the more kids they sent to the juvenile centres the more the money to the private businessmen. More money to the private businessmen meant … Hmmmm! That’s the beauty!

Both Judges Conahan and Ciavarella received up to $2.6 Mn in kickbacks and bribes. It came to be known as the “Kids for Cash” scandal which broke in 2008. Both judges also didn’t report this income and didn’t pay income tax on it. The case broke just around the time financial markets were crashing in the US. Both judges were prosecuted. On February 18, 2011, following a trial, a federal jury convicted Ciavarella and the prosecutors said the former judge used children "as pawns to enrich himself." On August 11, 2011, Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison as a result of his conviction. On September 23, 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17-and-a-half years in prison as he pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy. On November 4, 2011, Robert Powell was sentenced to 18 months in prison for failing to report a felony and being an accessory to tax conspiracy. Consequent to the frauds all the 6500 convictions by Ciavarella were also overturned. Read more at Juvenile Law Centre site.

There are only two things that separate the crony capitalism of the USA and India. One is that their media, probably equal with India’s in every other way, does not directly support crony capitalism. The other is the Justice system. The US justice system appears to be fair and is definitely far swifter. It is merciless on any criminal regardless of who the person or entity is. Out here, there is an outpouring of tears in the media for Rajat Gupta and he would have probably not been tried for another 25 years even. The concept of sweat equity was originally a good one. But as we keep observing, crony capitalism ensures equity and assets pass to hands without anyone running or breaking into a sweat.

Just about two years ago Sunanda Pushkar was a hounded woman with many media crooks painting her a “vamp”. Now, she is being painted a “victim”. For the media everybody is a victim where it concerns Narendra Modi. In her interviews she goes around saying “there’s no money on the table”. She even quotes from Jerry Maguire and says “show me the money”. Well you see, viewers are either idiots or didn’t attend a convent school to understand that the very reason for “sweat” equity is because the start-up doesn’t have enough cash. Question remains, why exactly was she given that equity for. There’s no evidence she had done anything for the Kochi IPL team, unless it’s a big secret. She didn’t run and break into a sweat. It must have been Kochi’s way of expressing affection. Sweat is thicker than love, it’s priceless. 

To be continued...