Queen of connections
Nira who? For the record, she is the founder-director of corporate consulting firms Vaishnavi , Noesis, Vitcom and Neucon. But, that does not even begin to describe who she is.
Well, in the rarefied cauldron of giga corporate deals and high-stake political power games, she is the lord of the ring. A power-and-deal broker that India may not have seen before; or since. She, as a keen observer once wrote, has a hand in deciding the fate a few percentage points of India's GDP. And, that is no exaggeration.
With a few calls, she influences the composition of the Union Cabinet, makes sure that her corporate clients land that coveted deal, and acts as the midwife in bringing corporate feuds to an end. She is the reigning queen of connections. She is the biggest wheeler-dealer that India may have seen. Stretching the definition of 'lobbyist' and taking it a whole new realm.
Just one factoid would reveal the scope and scale of her power and ambitions. In corporate India, there are not too many rivalries that can match that between Mukesh Ambani's Reliance and the Tata's. But that is until Nira Radia stepped in. She not only brought them together, ensuring bytes of support when Tata was stuck in Singur over the Nano plant, but in a PR coup of the century managed to garner both their accounts.
Who would have thought that a day would come when the agencies headed by the same person will manage the PR and communications accounts of both Reliance and Tata, companies who until now were known to embrace the two ends of the corporate value system.
However, until recently, Radia was a shadowy figure. More whispered about than known. The phantom of the corporate opera, fixing and influencing deals in the background. Faceless.
All that has changed. Now we know her face and, more importantly, we know what she sounds like. And in a manner that she is not likely to be thrilled about it.
Queen of connections
Between May and June 2009, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) put her phone lines under surveillance, based on a tip-off. The recordings of this surveillance were procured and submitted to the Supreme Court by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation, represented by senior counsel Prashant Bhushan.
He had pleaded before the apex court that the 2G spectrum investigation that involves former telecom minister A Raja, who resigned recently, should be monitored by the Court in view of the mounting evidence of alleged wrongdoing.
While the tapes have yet to be validated, they have been put up by various media organisations -- notably 'Open' and 'Outlook' -- on their websites. And, what they reveal is sensational.
It reveals a bewildering array of public luminaries -- corporate honchos, political bigwigs and, regrettably, celebrated and trusted journalists -- debating and negotiating on how to divide the cake called India, with Radia at one end of the line.
One particular episode in the tapes, in the run-up to the UPA-government formation in its latest innings in May 2009, takes one's breath away.
Radia is heard lobbying for the return of DMK's A Raja as the Union telecom minister and scuttling the chances of Dayanidhi Maran with a bevy of prominent actors: Ratan Tata, Raja, Tamil Nadu CM Karunanidhi's daughter and MP, Kanimozhi, foster son-in-law of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Ranjan Bhattacharya, senior journalist and columnist Vir Sanghvi, Barkha Dutt of NDTV and Shankar Aiyyar, then with the India Today group; apart from many other players involved in deciding who should get the telecom portfolio.
With Raja, she is heard not only discussing how to manipulate the internal power equations of the DMK, but she also promises to ensure the telecom portfolio for him by softening the belligerence of the corporate groups opposed to him.
But what has taken the media by storm is the involvement of top media icons -- Dutt and Sanghvi. Both Dutt and Sanghvi are heard discussing the intimate details of the effort to reconcile the differences between the DMK and the Congress in the UPA's ministry formation, with the two journalists acting as a virtual "go-between" between the two political parties.
The Radia tapes reveal many more of her conversations with other corporate bigwigs, politicians and journalists, the implications of which remain to be fathomed.
What comes through in these tapes is the abysmal decline in moral standards of the polity and society in today's India, with key portfolios of the Union cabinet being negotiated like a transaction in the local mandi.
More to the point, they also reveal the incredible reach, scale and power of Radia as the queen of her tribe -- the lobbyist who has honed her trade into a fine art, a science. The consequences be damned!
Source: India Syndicate