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“On 15 June 2009, the Bombay High Court directed Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) to honour an agreement signed with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) as part of a family asset division that assured the latter supply of gas from the KG basin at a discount price of $2.34 per unit, a private deal that the Supreme Court later ruled was invalid since the gas was State-owned even though RIL was the gas field’s operator. Here, Niira Radia discusses the implications of the High Court judgment with prominent journalist Vir Sanghvi [former editor of Hindustan Times].”
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VIR: But see Anil [Ambani] can’t afford to give interviews because he will be asked about Amar Singh, so many things, so that the advantage Mukesh [Ambani] has is that he can talk and there is nothing for him to be embarrassed about. So many skeletons in Anil’s closet that he doesn’t want to clarify. If he comes on, he says, ‘Amar Singh is my close friend,’ he is fucked. If he comes on, he says, ‘I have no relations with Amar Singh,’ Amar Singh will kill him.
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VIR: What kind of story do you want? Because this will go as Counterpoint, so it will be like most-most read, but it can’t seem too slanted, yet it is an ideal opportunity to get all the points across.
RADIA: But basically, the point is what has happened as far as the High Court is concerned is a very painful thing for the country because what is done is against national interest.
VIR: Okay.
RADIA: I think that’s the underlying message.
VIR: Okay. That message we will do. That allocation of resources which are scarce national resources of a poor country cannot be done in this arbitrary fashion to benefit a few rich people.
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RADIA: I think we need to say that you know it’s a lesson for the corporate world that, you know, they need to think through whenever they want to look at this, whether they really seriously do give back to society.
VIR: So I will link it to the election verdict. The fact that there has been so much Narega, that Sonia has commit•ted to including everybody, that it should be inclusive growth. It shouldn’t just benefit the few fat cats. It shouldn’t be cronyism. It shouldn’t be arbitrary. That’s how the message for this five years of Manmohan Singh should be—that you have to put an end to this kind of allocations of scarce resources on the basis of corruption and arbitrariness at the cost of the country, otherwise the country will not forgive you.
RADIA: Yeah, but Vir, you have to keep in mind that he has been given the gas field by the Government to operate. He spent ten billion dollars on it.
VIR: Okay.
RADIA: Anil Ambani is getting the benefit without spending a cent on it…
VIR: I’ll make those points, no?
RADIA: Yeah.
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