No roses for Ambani and Adani

Why do protesting farmers fear the corporate takeover of agriculture through the government's three new farm laws?

The farmers' protest will go down in history for training the spotlight on the relationship between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the family-controlled diversified conglomerates headed by Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, India's two richest men. This relationship had always been a cause of disquiet among a segment of the intelligentsia and the political class, but never before did it assume the shape of mass outrage against the troika of Modi, Ambani and Adani, evident from the repeated burning of their effigies ever since Punjab burst out against the three new farm laws.

It is hard to recall a moment in India's history when the effigies of tycoons were burnt outside the premises of enterprises they owned, by people who were not even on their rolls. Not even the Birlas and the Tatas, who ruled the roost during the pre-liberalisation era, were subjected to such ignominy. This was because even though the Tata-Birla houses gained from the government's preferential treatment of them, they did not dominate our lives as Ambani and Adani do today.

Their domination is largely because of Modi's philosophy, which seems to borrow from South Korea's model of growth that had as its pivot the Chaebol. A combination of Korean words chae (wealth) and bol (clan or clique), the Chaebol comprises family-owned enterprises such as Samsung, Hyundai, LG, SK Group and Lotte. Beginning with negligible business footprints, they grew rapidly, diversified into several industries, became global players, and today account for nearly half of the South Korean stock market's value. They transformed South Korea's agrarian economy into an industrial one, which lifted millions out of poverty.

The Chaebol phenomenon is credited to General Park Chung-hee, South Korea's dictatorial president between 1963 and 1979. Hoping to make his country self-reliant and less dependent on the superpowers, Park deployed his power to divert international monetary assistance for South Korea to the Chaebol, granted them soft loans, tax concessions and subsidies, protected them from foreign competition, and suppressed labour. Even in the early years of Chaebol's history, there were some who were perturbed over the snug proximity between its members and the government, which projected their rise as synonymous with South Korea's ascendancy.

The disquiet against the Chaebol started to simmer with the country's growing democratisation in the 1980s. They were now seen as having "contributed more to Korean social inequality than to society," according to Scott A Snyder, the author of South Korea at the Crossroads and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank. As South Korea's growth figures dipped from double-digits to below three per cent and disclosures about the political corruption involving the Chaebol grabbed media headlines, the simmering discontent boiled and bubbled over in 2016. Massive street protests led to the arrest of Lee Jae-yong, the vice-chairman of Samsung, who was accused of paying bribes to a confidante of then president Park Geun-hye, daughter of Gen Park. She was, in April 2018, sentenced to 24 years in prison for corruption.

A version of the Chaebol phenomenon is playing out in India. Even though India is a democracy, the enactment of the three farms laws is seen as evidence of Modi's undemocratic tendencies. He, like Gen Park, has made self-reliance his mantra, which subliminally treats the state-assisted rise of Ambani-Adani as India's resurgence, and deploys nationalism to silence the critics of his economic policies.

As in South Korea so too in India, Ambani and Adani have diversified to such an extent that it is impossible for an Indian to pass a day without engaging with them. They supply us energy, provide mobile telephony, entertainment, news, physical as well as virtual modes of shopping, man the gateways for taking flights, supply grocery and myriad products made of raw material accessed from the mines they operate. In India too, regulatory tweaks have enabled Ambani to become the biggest mobile telephone and internet service provider and Adani one of the biggest airport operators despite having no prior experience in that sector. Here too, the government crushes opposition against them, evident from the eviction of Adivasis from Godda, Jharkhand, where Adani is building a power plant.

As in South Korea so too in India, the protest against Ambani and Adani has coincided with India's economic downturn, with people losing jobs and their incomes dipping. Punjab's farmers have been the first off the block, apprehensive of the two behemoths' growing profile in the agriculture sector. Others may follow them. For instance, small retailers ascribe their plummeting profits to online shopping, which is yet another sector where Ambani has emerged as a major player, milking government policies disadvantageous to his foreign competitors.

It is only human for people to wonder why a malfunctioning economy still has the rich become richer. Between 2014 and 2019, Ambani's wealth increased from Rs 1.68 lakh crore to Rs 3.65 lakh, and Adani's from Rs 50.4 thousand crore to Rs 1.1 lakh crore. With India's economic future remaining bleak, more and more people are likely to wonder whether the government exists for them or the Indian Chaebol, precisely why the farmers' incantation against Modi, Ambani and Adani has had an echo.

The writer is a senior journalist. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper

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