Your Move Or Mine

Niira’s Universe

In the 140 conversations in the 2G tapes, Radia speaks to a variety of individuals on a slew of issues, innocuous and otherwise

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Unanswered Questions

• What’s the story behind the rent-free property, courtesy a Tata subsidiary, that comes up in a talk with Kanimozhi’s mother?
• Was the “going rate” fixed for iron ore mines in Jharkhand by the then CM Madhu Koda Rs 150 crore?
• What’s the truth behind Radia saying there was large-scale manipulation of stocks to favour journos and companies?
• Who is the unidentified man who secures a bank guarantee for Tata Motors’ Jaguar-Land Rover, something he says “no one in the world could have done”? Radia also mentions him as “somebody I knew who was in the banking community in UK, very up with the Credit Suisse group”.

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While we still await answers on who is behind these 140 taped conversations of Radia’s, a parsing of the tapes gives us some pointers on the larger games being played out. The manipulation around government formation in 2009 is well documented. (There are some interesting asides, like a conversation with Kanimozhi’s mother and a DMK worker that hint that Radia was helping the party get a rent-free property courtesy a Tata subsidiary). In general, much of the focus has been on individuals, and less on the issues at stake. Perhaps a look at these will shed some more light.

The Gas Wars

The desire to trounce a common foe—Anil Ambani—after the Bombay High Court verdict in the KG basin gas case brought corporate giants Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani together. It was in their common interest to swing government decisions on energy matters. Tata Power’s turf war with ADAG’s Reliance Infrastructure in Mumbai had Radia influencing the media and policymakers in a bid to help Tata access cheaper gas supplies from RIL’s KG basin to ramp up power generation. That’s why Radia sought to create anti-Anil sentiments, saying he was trying to hoard the country’s precious “natural resources” like coal (referring to the Sasan project where Anil was allowed to divert coal to his other plants and the Tatas were not), iron ore in Jharkhand without having a steel plant and spectrum by manipulating application dates with Raja.

The media management post the high court verdict shows how RIL’s concerns are projected to journalists as “national” interests, while “the compelling argument” against Anil Ambani in Radia’s conversation with Shalini Singh of the Tata group is that “his only way of survival is to access the system to get national resources allocated, be it coal, be it gas, be it iron ore now or spectrum”. From ghost writing, creating doubts in journalists’ minds and suggesting the line of arguments to take, no effort was spared by Radia to promote the interests of her principal clients, the Tatas and RIL. For this, she spoke to influential journalists like Prabhu Chawla, Vir Sanghvi, Jehangir Pocha and M.K. Venu and corporate lobbyists like Tarun Das and Suhel Seth.

Similarly, advising Tata Power executive director (operations) S. ‘Paddy’ Padmanabhan to play the consumer card to pressurise the power ministry to ensure KG gas supply to its power plant, Radia stresses that “Tatas’ writing to the government right now will be very critical”. While the letter was indeed written to the government, Outlook could not verify its contents.

Radia’s tete-a-tete with JD(U) Rajya Sabha member and ex-bureaucrat N.K. Singh is particularly interesting. Not only does he hint at the ability to manoeuvre politicians, but also to influence Parliament. In 2009, the finance ministry decided to include gas for a tax holiday but only for exploration blocks awarded from NELP VIII (thereby robbing RIL of an estimated Rs 81,000-crore in tax savings retrospectively on its KG basin gas production). “We managed to kill (reports of estimated RIL profits from such a move), most of them,” says Radia. Singh concurs, “I don’t want it to come out and feature in Parliament because it could influence government mind....” Arun Shourie’s (BJP) plan to speak on this was successfully foiled, with his party colleague Venkaiah Naidu becoming lead speaker at the last moment in the Parliament debate on the 2009 Budget. N.K. Singh also accused Shourie of having “gone and got himself on the other side”, a charge Shourie denied while validating the incident in a TV interview last week.
 
The Telecom/Spectrum Wars

When the conversations took place in 2009, the telecom sector was going through a very turbulent phase in the aftermath of the 2G scam. Here, Radia had to play a difficult role. She had to protect her valuable client Tata, a beneficiary of then telecom minister A. Raja’s hasty and questionable decision to allow dual technology (GSM as well as CDMA). She also had to protect Raja himself, who she had promoted during government formation. At the same time, she had to fight Anil Ambani, who was a beneficiary of Raja’s largesse as well vis-a-vis dual technology. Any attack on Anil could have repercussions on Tata as well, but she used the “natural assets” tact that created a cloud over Anil with the least hurt to the Tatas.

Radia also informs corporate lobbyist Tarun Das that Anil Ambani was trying to hoard spectrum. In one of the tapes, she says: “Anil Ambani is active, I met Raja and the attempt is to try and garner as much spectrum. This is a Satyam.” And again: “I told Sunil (Mittal) also that don’t be so arrogant with Raja...because of his arrogance, competition’s getting the better of him.” Clearly, Radia was trying to create an anti-Anil front by bringing the warring Ratan Tata and Sunil Mittal together. As Das tells Radia, “He (Sunil Mittal) really wants to build bridges with Ratan...and maybe this time, Raja can’t be openly favouring one person. He (Sunil) really wants to meet Ratan once, clear the air with him...if you can get Mukesh and Ratan together with all the history there, surely you can get these two guys together. It would be really helpful if all three of them are on the same page.” Radia agrees: “...Ratan can’t wish Sunil away, he has to give him credit for what he has achieved all these years.”

The Air India Crisis

Radia is clearly still nursing her wounds from two failed attempts at starting an airline—and the three failed attempts of the Tatas to do so (where Radia was also involved). In the backdrop of an offer made by the government and aviation minister Praful Patel to bring in Tata group chairman Ratan Tata to head the advisory committee for the beleaguered Air India, Radia makes a fervent pitch to expose Patel’s dirty games in the government carrier. She alleges in her conversations with journalists and power- brokers that the minister was out to kill the carrier and finally “give it to Naresh (Goyal of Jet Airways) or Mallya (Vijay Mallya of Kingfisher)”. She gets a favourable response from Tarun Das, who tells her: “You know Praful plays big games...so he (Ratan Tata) won’t have a free hand...it’s an advisory committee... it’s just a whitewash.” (On Patel inviting Ratan Tata to head the committee on AI.)

In a conversation with Times of India editor Jaideep Bose, Radia says: “The whole intention of Praful Patel was to asset-strip that airline...they have sold the bilaterals...they have raked in about $300-400 million in bilaterals...Singapore Airlines came to me and said they wanted huge amount of money for bilaterals.... They had a going rate and so there was this tariff card that was running in the ministry for five years.” Radia even mentions that Patel was a stakeholder in one of the private airlines. She tells Bose: “Indigo’s got Praful in it, no...Praful is a silent partner in Rahul Bhatia’s company. He’s very much there.” Radia also lobbies hard to bring back former Indian Airlines ceo Sunil Arora as the head of Air India.

It’s apt to conclude with another Radia quote. In a conversation with ET’s Ganapathy on the gas issue, she says, “The PM is going to have the final say...he’s going to say ‘what the hell is going on, I’m not running a banana republic’.” Prescient again?

By Sunit Arora, Arindam Mukherjee and Lola Nayar