Quoted for Truth

Mr.Ratan Tata on the dangers of crony capitalism & Banana Republic on Walk the Talk with Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24×7

Banana republics are run on cronyism. People of great power wield great power, but people of lesser power or people who have fallen out of power go to jail without adequate evidence or their bodies are found in the trunks of cars. The danger is that you could degenerate into that kind of atmosphere unless the necessary parts of government play their role in upholding the law and fine, let no one be above the law. I would happily have that happen, various other people would not like to see that happen but I would feel very happy to see that, I would feel very proud. So I think it can happen, I mean a Banana Republic kind of an environment could emerge, if we don’t put an end to this kind of thing and under the guise of freedom of speech or the guise of many other numbers of so-called rights of democracy abused, the luxury of a democracy.

On Dr.Manmohan Singh

I think what has happened in the last few weeks is an indication of what can happen anytime… then we are really going down the route into a banana republic. I would have no hesitation of telling the PM this because I don’t believe the PM is contributing to this. I think he should be concerned about the nation going in that direction. And he’s a tremendously good man. We are lucky to have him as a PM. I want to say that it has hurt me to see what he has gone through in the past weeks… in Parliament… the pressure… the innuendoes and the pressures he’s been going through to resign and so on. He is one person who is truly above any of the allegations thrown at him… the person whom we are lucky to have to because it’s his face that has been the face of transforming India. And it is this person who has commanded the respect of the leaders in major countries. He doesn’t deserve to face this kind of humiliation.

On Parliamentary attendance;

And here again I think this is the responsibility of the Parliamentarians to transact, to govern the country and not to adjourn the Parliament everyday to meet some.

On the 2 G scam – Raja & Radia

I really don’t know. When it started, I thought it was Mr Raja’s alleged deeds, then it seemed the scam related to Niira Radia’s conversations with various people, which were more innuendos than anything else, and Mr Raja’s scam was the loss to the exchequer. I don’t want to comment on the rights or wrongs, but loss to the exchequer was computed on the basis of 3G auction. 2G spectrum was allocated before the auctions, so it looks somewhat like a hindsight issue but the media has said that he robbed the nation of X… (Shekhar Gupta: $40 billion) OK, so if that is so, somebody will need to show that there has been a sort of visionary view before the event took place that cost him to cause that much loss to the exchequer. These are things I think the media has blown up. What is unclear to me is what really is the scam? Was it the manner in which he implemented the policy?

And finally,

…the point is I think there be an inquiry to go into what has really happened and it should go back to 1999 or 2003 when policy were embedded in certain areas, and whoever the minister or the Government was at that time. It should be a holistic view because the industry deserves a consistent policy, not a chop-chop policy – not a kind of review of what Raja did and what Maran did.

Finally someone with the courage of conviction, to call it as it is … see and hear the rest of the interview.