The festival season of the “Mata” is around the corner. Adi Parashakti is known by different names and celebrated differently in Hindu communities in India – Durga, Amba, Bhavani, Kali, Bhairavi, Narayani, Nandini, Naina etc. The list is long and could be as many as 108 or more. Even “Santoshi Ma” who achieved fame with a movie is also supposed to be a form of Durga. For Hindus, “Ma” is the ultimate symbol of victory of the good over evil.
However, in modern times the “Mas” in the corporate and gangster world are EVIL themselves and the corporates are sponsored and supported by none other than the govts. They were innovated in America, the land of the “New Ma” and then copied by India. Even Kate Barker the dreaded female boss of a violent gang that Hoover of FBI dreaded earned the title “Ma Barker”. So, the Americans do love Matas. Ma Rockefeller, Mama Duke and Ma Bell are American Gods that have been dismantled:
Of these Mas, only “Ma Bell” was publicly called Ma Bell because unlike Standard Oil or American Tobacco, which were corporate Trusts, Ma Bell was the Mother of a conglomerate of absolute MONOPOLY of the telephony systems in the US (and Canada). It’s not just telephone lines, but its vertigal integration ensured all the cables, instruments, accessories – everything in telephony was made by “AT&T” and the entire network in the US was run by its zonal companies with differrent names but same surnames, under Ma Bell. And it had the legal support of the US govt.
All this lasted till a tiny company called “Microwave Communications Inc” was created in 1963 by one Jack Goeken who wanted to compete and provide long distance calls cheaper. Predictably, he ran out of money soon and found a friend in Bill McGowan, a Chemistry grad, Harvard grad, worked in the army, aerospace, auto industry and became a venture capitalist. You may have never heard the name of McGowan but he is the main reason that you today have optical fibers, emails, smartphones etc. He was too ahead of times. Being of Irish origin, Bill naturally had a “warrior” mindset. Thus the nickname – The Long-distance Warrior, and also for his battles with Ma Bell. McGowan became a co-founder, renamed the company MCI and long partnered Goeken before they parted ways. McGowan then took on Ma Bell with an anti-trust case and finally the US govt had to relent and break up AT&T into some 7 different cos.
It’s long story so you can read it online anywhere. But McGowan forced Ma Bell into price war on long-distance calls and made the telephone industry a lot more colourful than the bland black phones. That’s how innovations in telephony started since late 1960s. He constantly advertised everywhere on how AT&T was charging much higher than MCI and it finally woke up consumers to the fact there is life after Ma Bell and, trust me, there is also life after Ma Adani, Ma Ambani and Ma Modi too:
After McGowan died, MCI was taken over by a bunch of raiders called WorldCom (for $37 bn – for a company that was a tiny speck vs Ma Bell) which became famous during the initial Dot.Com boom but they got too greedy and the top management and its accountants fudged their books to dupe investors worth around some $11 billion. The frauds ended WorldCom and its CEO Bernard Ebbers & others who ended up in jail:
After all this, do MCI and AT&T survive in the US and do business? Fortunately, yes they both are doing quite well. MCI has since been acquired and is now famous in the US and the world as “Verizon” and AT&T increased its spread worldwide with the mobile business including in India. Some changes and mergers may have since happened but both are strong in the US markets along with 100s of smaller mobile companies that act as distributors and retailers of the bigger companies and are also doing well. That’s what competition does for the benefit for consumers:
In India, the reverse has actually happened. Instead of encouraging more players so that costs are competitive and consumers benefit, the Ponzi operator Modi has been doling out all national resources to one Ma Adani or in a few cases to Ma Ambani since he got to power in Gujarat in 2001 and then the GOI in 2014. This one tweet by someone actually made me write this post and write on how the criminal Modi-govt has created monopolies or duopolies in airports, aviation, mining, mobile service, oil and gas and snuffed out all other players or potential players:
All the businesses that Adani group is in is mostly made up of natural resources handed over to the Ma on a platter: Mining, Airports, Oil & Gas, Seaports, SEZs, Logistics parks, Rail-Road, Power, Defence, Aerospace and in businesses where there was competition, Modi used the CBI,ED, IT to arm-twist the occupant to sell to Adani like airports, Cement or Media. This is how criminal enterprises are run in India. Ma Ambani is not different – Oil, gas, mobiles, Infrastructure, Animal-trade, Healthcare and even sundry businesses of lower value competing with smaller players. Both these groups are PURE EVIL for the consumers and for India in the long run. While Ma Ambani had a lot of illegal favours from the Congress, Ma Adani has a lot of favours from the BJP. A look the growth of these two groups in wealth – corporate and personal, tells a story of its own:
Their total turnover combined is roughly 30% of India’s annual budget of 53 lakh crores. That’s just an indicator without reading too much meaning into it. These are just 2 groups that we are talking about. If you add up other big erstwhile and current giants like Tata, Birla etc, India is concentrated in very few hands and that is a CERTAIN DEATH-KNELL FOR THE WELL-BEING of the country and its citizens and consumers. Though there’s a large private economy in India the unorganized “small people” and their businesses don’t count for much.
And if at all Reservations in the future are to be brought into the private sector, the criminals of politics don’t need the consensus from all private players. They just need to arm-twist these criminal monopolies or duopolies like Ma Adani, Ma Ambani, Phufa Tata, Bua Birla and other Aunties like Airtel, Indigo and other operators of SEZs, airports and seaports. So, you know what EVIL rules this country. I have consistently stated that both Ma Adani and Ma Ambani have to be broken up into smaller pieces with divested ownerships by the public for the well-being of India:
Before I wrote this blog, I did a casual check on Google whether there was actually any similarity between Ma Bell, Ma Adani and Ma Ambani. I tried this just to make sure that the EVIL that once occupied America is now a disease that infects India. Believe it or not, Google gave me more comparisons than I could have made myself:
It is not just in these businesses that the monopolies and duopolies have to end. Even in politics there are just 2 main criminal and corrupt parties that have been mostly ruling India. Currently, the BJP under Modi has far exceeded any other party in Corruption, Gundaraj and dictatorial conduct. Every democratic freedom, electoral sanctity and citizens’ rights have been compromised and squandered. And that’s a dangerous sign for India which desperately needs new national parties to come up with greater integrity and honesty.
Tailpiece: Hindus have been gullible of any idiot that appears as a saffron-clad thug or a fraudster in white or saffron. This is not from recent times. This goes as far back as the Ramayana times. Even Sita was fooled by a thug appearing as a Rishi at her doorstep. The criminal couldn’t cross the Lakshman-Rekha so he lured the Rishi-believing Sita outside the LOC by appealing to her devotional emotions. India is still being ruled by such criminals who constantly wear saffron and fool Hindus. It will take another Ramayana against these criminals to wake them up.
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