Are these rumbles of discontent coming together?

Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn

A PEOPLE’S movement is underway in Israel against its ultra right-wing government. Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to subvert the judiciary’s neutrality, with a selfish aim to kill the criminal cases hanging over his head and that of his colleagues. In quite a few democracies, the judiciary is or has been under assault from the right wing for similar reasons. India is witnessing it in unsubtle ways. Pakistan too has seen political interference with the judiciary at least since the hanging of Bhutto. Then Nawaz Sharif and Gen Musharraf, vicious to each other, took turns to undermine the courts. Pakistan, however, has seen mass movements too that have thrown out military dictators and restored democracy even if intermittently. Where’s that old fire in the belly for India?

Describing the unprecedented attack on India’s democracy starkly at a Cambridge University talk is one thing. Few Indian politicians are capable of speaking with conviction without a teleprompter as Rahul Gandhi recently did before an enlightened audience, while also making plenty of sense. But just as he was holding forth — at a talk called ‘Learning to listen in the 21st century’ — two unrelated landmark events were unfolding in Turkiye and Israel. Was he listening to them too?

The events might send any struggling democratic opposition to the drawing board. In Turkiye, a last-minute collapse of the alliance of six disparate parties, preparing to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election in May, holds a lesson for any less-than-solid political alliance about possible ambush on the eve of an assured victory. Equally instructive was the opposition’s ability to bury its differences promptly, something that eludes India. The Turkish groups have made compromises with each other so that their common goal to defeat Erdogan remains paramount. There are good chances they would succeed, but even if they don’t, it won’t be for want of giving their best to restore Turkiye’s secular democracy.

However, it was the coming out of Israel’s air force pilots to join the swarming protests against the Netanyahu government that is truly remarkable, and unprecedented. These pilots are usually adept at bombing vulnerable neighbourhoods, including Palestinian quarters. But their taking a stand in defence of democracy offers a lesson to every country with a strong military. There were rumblings in India once. Jaya Prak­ash Narayan, the mass leader opposed Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian patch and called for the army and the police to disobey her, an unusual quest but an utterly democratic call when democracy itself is being murdered. The RSS had supported the JP movement. The boot today is on the other foot. Does the Indian opposition have the conviction to follow in JP’s footsteps to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi? Does it at all feel the dire need to make sacrifices and compromises to rescue and heal the wounded nation?

The Israeli government may or may not succeed in neutralising the supreme court, which it has set out to do. But the masses are out on the streets to act when their nation is in peril. And India cannot exist as a nation without democracy. Secular democracy enshrined in its constitution binds it into a whole.

Rahul Gandhi has evolved as a contender for any challenging job that could help save the Indian republic from its approaching destruction. But he should also have a chat with Prof Amartya Sen perhaps who was quoted recently as saying that Mamata Bannerjee would make a good prime minister. Others have their hats in the ring. Gandhi’s talk in the hallowed portals of Cambridge bonded nicely with his 4,000-kilometre walk recently, from the southern tip of India to what is effectively the garrison area of Jammu and Kashmir. No harm if the walk served as a learning curve for the Gandhi scion, but even better if it were a precursor for a mass upsurge as is happening elsewhere, and which has seen successful outcomes in many Latin American and African states.

Rahul Gandhi spoke about the surveillance, which opposition politicians and journalists among others have been illegally put under. His points about deep-seated corruption, that shows up graphically as crony capitalism, are all well taken. Few can match the feat of mass contact across the country that he displayed recently and his declamation at the world’s premier university. The point is that Cambridge University cannot change the oppressive government in India. Only the Indian opposition can. Rahul Gandhi has the credentials to weld mutually suspicious opposition parties into a force to usher in the needed change.

There’s no dearth of issues to unite the people and the parties. To cite one, call out the BJP-backed ruling alliances in north-eastern states where its supporters assert their right to eat beef. And place it along the two Muslim boys incinerated in a jeep near Delhi by alleged cow vigilantes. The criminality and the hypocrisy of it.

The fascist assault on India’s judiciary is an issue waiting to be taken up for nationwide mobilisation. The assault comes at a time when the new chief justice is one with a mind of his own. Judges have stopped accepting official briefs in sealed envelopes as had become the practice, dodging public scrutiny, say, in the controversial warplanes deal with France. The court has set up a probe into the Adani affair, something unthinkable until recently.

The timing of the vicious criticism of the judiciary is noteworthy. The law minister described the judges as unelected individuals, perhaps implying they were answerable to the elected parliament like any other bureaucrat. This is mischievous. The supreme court set new transparent principles in the appointment of election commissioners. It’s a rap on the knuckles of an unholy system. Could anyone call it a fair election in a secular democracy when people are nefariously polarised and the election commission looks the other way? The questions are best answered by opposition parties, preferably in unison.

In Rafale Deal, Not Dassault, Perhaps Indian Govt Had Problem With HAL: D Raghunandan

The Rafale Mystery Deepens : Why did Dassault Invest in An Obscure Anil Ambani Company?

Interview with Ravi Nair - the person behind this story.

Exclusive: Post-Rafale, Dassault Investment in Inactive Anil Ambani Company Gave Reliance Rs 284 Crore Profit

Without any of the publicity which accompanied its smaller investment in a joint venture with Anil Ambani as part of the Rafale deal, the French firm has paid nearly 40 million euros for a 35% stake in an obscure Reliance company.

By Rohini Singh and Ravi Nair in The Wire

New Delhi: Even as Dassault Aviation and Anil Ambani’s Reliance group battle allegations that extra-commercial considerations drove their joint venture on Rafale, regulatory filings in France and India reveal that the French defence major followed its JV with an investment in 2017 of approximately 40 million euros in another Anil Ambani venture that is loss making and has almost zero revenues. The investment translated into a Rs 284 crore profit for the Ambani group company, Reliance Infrastructure, which sold shares in a subsidiary, Reliance Airport Developers Limited (RADL) at a premium.
It is unclear how the valuation for the RADL stake was reached between the two groups or why Dassault would buy a substantial share in an unlisted company that has little to no revenues and has nothing to do with Dassault’s core business.

Public filings by Reliance Infrastructure, a Reliance ADAG group company, show that it sold a 34.7% stake in RADL, a wholly owned subsidiary, to Dassault Aviation in FY 2017-18. The terms of the sale are not known but Reliance said it made a profit of Rs 284.19 crore on the sale of 24,83,923 shares which had a face value of Rs 10 each.

Reliance Airport Developers posted losses of Rs 10.35 lakh for the financial year ending March 2017 and earned revenues of Rs 6 lakh. In the year ending March 2016, the firm had no revenues and posted losses of Rs 9 lakh.

The company has stakes in a clutch of subsidiaries owned by the group. Most of them are loss making and are airport projects that were awarded by the Maharashtra government in 2009 for Rs 63 crore. A Business Standard report dated October 2015 quoted government officials and ministers saying that due to lack of progress in developing these projects by the company a decision was reached to take back the airports. The company also reportedly wanted to get rid of its stakes in these airports but a news report from January 2017 indicated it had changed its mind.

Ironically, while the Maharashtra Airport Development Council (MADC) was prepping to take back charge of the airports due to dissatisfaction with RADL’s progress on the projects, it speedily allotted 289 acres of its land to another group company the same year.

Dassault Aviation’s annual report for 2017 mentions the firm’s acquisition of ‘non listed securities’ including a 34.7% equity participation in Reliance Airport Developers. “In 2017, we also strengthened our presence in India through an acquisition of a 35% stake in Reliance Airport Developers Limited, which operates in the management and development of airport infrastructures,” its report said.

Oddly, the annual report of Reliance Airports posted on the Reliance Infrastructure site notes that Dassault Aviation now holds 34.79% of ordinary shares but when it comes to describing the terms and rights attached to the equity shares, the details have been blanked out.


Screenshot of RADL annual report.

The transaction finds an indirect mention in the Reliance Infrastructure annual report, buried in Note 43 under the exceptional items head, as “profit on sale of investment in Reliance Airport Developers Ltd” of Rs 284.19 crore.

In the Dassault report, the net book value of securities in RADL is stated as 39,962,000 euros. By contrast, the net book value of its securities in DRAL – the joint venture with Reliance for the Rafale – is just 962,000 euros, though presumably it will grow.


Reliance Infrastructure, Annual report for FY 2017

In a recent interview to the Economic Times, Dassault CEO Eric Trappier said Rs 70 crore had been invested in Dassault Reliance Aerospace Limited, Dassault’s JV with the the Anil Ambani group. Of this only 49% is Dassault’s stake.

Filings by Dassault Aviation in France show that besides the Rs 22 crore that Dassault pumped in as equity, it has also given a 4 million euro loan to the JV which roughly converts to Rs 32 crore in Indian rupees. This money, a source in the Anil Ambani group told The Wire off the record, was used by DRAL to pay for its hangar at Mihan. In his interview, Trappier did not mention the money spent for the purchase of a 35% stake in RADL.

How the land was acquired

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Rafale deal on April 10, 2015. In July 2015, Reliance Aerostructure applied to the Maharashtra Airport Development Council for land in its Mihan SEZ in Nagpur. It was allotted 289 acres in August 2015 for Rs 63 crore.

The company later said it would take only 104 acres. While the allotment was done in August 2015, Reliance Aerostructure only paid the dues it owed on July 13, 2017, after missing several payment deadlines.

Reliance Aerostructure was incorporated on April 24, 2015, days after Modi announced the Rafale deal. It was also given a license to manufacture fighter aircraft by the defence ministry in 2016, which opposition parties allege is in violation of government guidelines.

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Filings for financial year 2017 show that Reliance Aerostructure received an inter-corporate deposit of Rs 89.45 crore from Reliance Infrastructure, the same year that Dassault aviation bought 34.79% of Reliance Infrastructure’s stake in Reliance Airport Developers.

From the sequence, it would appear that Reliance Aerostructure used the money received from Reliance Infrastructure to settle its outstanding Rs 38 crore payment with MADC for the land allotted. The dues had been outstanding for more than a year. Filings by Reliance Aerostructure state that the company’s “net worth has been eroded” but was kept as a going concern because of adequate financial support from its promoters. In FY 2017, Reliance Aerostructure posted a loss of Rs 13 crore. The year before that, it posted a loss of Rs 27 crore.

In a recent interview to CNBC, Dassault CEO Eric Trappier had claimed his company chose Reliance ADAG as its offsets partner because it had land available next to an airport. However, the land was only given to Reliance by the state government after it had reached an understanding with Dassault to collaborate on the Rafale.

According to a Dassault press release, Reliance Aerostructure’s joint venture with Dassault Aviation – Dassault Reliance Aerospace Limited (DRAL) – was formally incorporated in 2017 but goes all the way back to April 2015.

The land contribution agreement filed by DRAL with the Registrar of Companies dated July 12, 2018 talks of a sub-lease agreement between Reliance Aerostructure, DRAL and Dassault Aviation. According to this agreement, DRAL, the joint venture partner, would pay Rs 22.8 crore to Reliance as premium for 31 acres of leased property to the joint venture. This debt was converted into “non cash consideration” for 22.8 lakh equity shares of the company. Therefore, the land allotted by the Maharashtra government was used to pay for Reliance’s equity stake in the joint venture company. Dassault aviation gave Rs 21.09 crore cash for its equity stake in the firm.

The Wire has contacted Dassault and Reliance ADAG seeking greater clarity about the land transaction and Dassault’s wider dealings with the Reliance ADAG group, including the valuation of its investment in Reliance Airport Developers Ltd. The story will be be updated with their responses when received.

Note: In an initial version of this article, the euro figure corresponding to RADL’s stated profit of Rs 284 crore was mistakenly stated as 4 million at the prevailing exchange rates in 2017. It is actually 40 million.

CBI crisis shows Modi has lost grip on administration

Who is bombing whom in the Middle East?

Robert Fisk in The Independent

Let me try to get this right. The Saudis are bombing Yemen because they fear the Shia Houthis are working for the Iranians. The Saudis are also bombing Isis in Iraq and the Isis in Syria. So are the United Arab Emirates. The Syrian government is bombing its enemies in Syria and the Iraqi government is also bombing its enemies in Iraq. America, France, Britain, Denmark, Holland, Australia and – believe it or not – Canada are bombing Isis in Syria and Isis in Iraq, partly on behalf of the Iraqi government (for which read Shia militias) but absolutely not on behalf of the Syrian government.

The Jordanians and Saudis and Bahrainis are also bombing Isis in Syria and Iraq because they don’t like them, but the Jordanians are bombing Isis even more than the Saudis after their pilot-prisoner was burned to death in a cage. The Egyptians are bombing parts of Libya because a group of Christian Egyptians had their heads chopped off by what might – notionally – be the same so-called Islamic State, as Isis refers to itself. The Iranians have acknowledged bombing Isis in Iraq – of which the Americans (but not the Iraqi government) take a rather dim view. And of course the Israelis have several times bombed Syrian government forces in Syria but not Isis (an interesting choice, we’d all agree). Chocks away!

It amazes me that all these warriors of the air don’t regularly crash into each other as they go on bombing and bombing. And since Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines is the only international carrier still flying over Syria – but not, thank heavens, over Isis’s Syrian capital of Raqqa – I’m even more amazed that my flights from Beirut to the Gulf have gone untouched by the blitz boys of so many Arab and Western states as they career around the skies of Mesopotamia and the Levant.

The sectarian and theological nature of this war seems perfectly clear to all who live in the Middle East – albeit not to our American chums. The Sunni Saudis are bombing the Shia Yemenis and the Shia Iranians are bombing the Sunni Iraqis. The Sunni Egyptians are bombing Sunni Libyans, it’s true, and the Jordanian Sunnis are bombing Iraqi Sunnis. But the Shia-supported Syrian government forces are bombing their Sunni Syrian enemies and the Lebanese Hezbollah – Shia to a man – are fighting the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Sunni enemies, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guards and an ever-larger number of Afghan Shia men in Syrian uniforms.

And if you want to taste the sectarianism of all this, just take a look at Saudi Arabia’s latest request to send more Pakistani troops to protect the kingdom (and possibly help to invade Yemen), which came from the new Saudi Crown Prince and Defence Minister Mohammed bin Salman who at only 34 is not much older than his fighter pilots. But the Saudis added an outrageous second request: that the Pakistanis send only Sunni Muslim soldiers. Pakistani Shia Muslim officers and men (30 per cent of the Pakistani armed forces) would not be welcome.

It’s best left to that fine Pakistani newspaper The Nation – and the writer Khalid Muhammad – to respond to this sectarian demand. “The army and the population of Pakistan are united for the first time in many years to eliminate the scourge of terrorism,” Muhammad writes. But “the Saudis are now trying to not only divide the population, but divide our army as well. When a soldier puts on a uniform, he fights for the country that he calls home, not the religious beliefs that they carry individually… Do they (the Saudis) believe that a professional military like Pakistan… can’t fight for a unified justified cause? If that is the case then why ask Pakistan to send its armed forces?”

It’s worth remembering that Pakistani soldiers were killed by the Iraqi army in the battle for the Saudi town of Khafji in 1991. Were they all Sunnis, I wonder?

And then, of course, there are the really big winners in all this blood, the weapons manufacturers. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin supplied £1.3bn of missiles to the Saudis only last year. But three years ago, Der Spiegel claimed the European Union was Saudi Arabia’s most important arms supplier and last week France announced the sale of 24 Rafale fighter jets to Qatar at a cost of around £5.7bn. Egypt has just bought another 24 Rafales.

It’s worth remembering at this point that the Congressional Research Services in the US estimate that most of Isis’s budget comes from “private donors” in – you guessed it – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait.

But blow me down if the Yanks are back to boasting. More than a decade after “Mission Accomplished”, General Paul Funk (in charge of reforming the Iraqi army) has told us that “the enemy is on its knees”. Another general close to Barack Obama says that half of the senior commanders in Isis have been liquidated. Nonsense. But it’s worth knowing just how General Pierre de Villiers, chief of the French defence staff, summed up his recent visits to Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraq, he reported back to Paris, is in a state of “total decay”. The French word he used was “decomposition”. I suspect that applies to most of the Middle East.