Licence Permit Raj in Armani: Regulators, Raids, and Rhetoric
Some time ago, the residence of the Hero Group’s Munjal family was raided. The next morning, newspapers screamed that assets worth twenty-five crores had been confiscated. What assets? No one bothered to say. The press release was a haiku; the social-media choir turned it into an opera. The bhakts on social media cheered as if the government had unearthed a treasure chest in Gurgaon. To anyone with functioning spectacles, however, this was theatre, not triumph. Twenty-five crores in a billionaire’s home is what a village headman might call “a tidy sum”; for the Munjals, it is pocket change. To hail such a raid as a grand haul is like boasting of catching a whale when all you’ve netted is a sardine. This memory returns because of a recent article in Business Standard with the pompous title: Time to Stop Abusing India Inc. Its author, R. Jagannathan, sermonises at length—wagging his finger mainly at opposition politicians who allegedly malign Indian business houses, while spa...