The Electoral Bonds Special – Issue #92
In recent weeks, the disclosure of the State Bank of India's electoral bond submissions has captivated India. Also, we invite you to join our Global South webinar this week!
How the Earth is changing. Exhibit #2876543
A heatwave in Brazil set new records, with Rio de Janeiro’s heat index hitting 62.3 degrees Celsius. Needless to say, Brazil is not the only country suffering from extraordinary heat. There is Kuwait City as well. Even in India, as temperatures rise, parts of southern India are already seeing heat and forest fires. The UN’s climate plan made headlines as well. It has stayed silent on meat eating.
News of the week
Over the last two weeks, India has been left agog by the State Bank of India’s electoral bond submissions.
The first set of data revealed the names of firms which had bought electoral bonds. The second week was altogether more explosive. It told us which party got bonds from which firm — and left us wondering about the quid pro quos that might have ensued.
Here is a potted history of the energy and infrastructure firms that bought bonds. In most of these, one sees a curious overlap between the purchase of bonds and government largesse.
Calcutta-based Sanjiv Goenka group, with interests in sectors like energy, is one of the biggest buyers of electoral bonds. Two of his group firms have been accused of rigging coal auctions.
So are RE firms like Greenko. The firm is expanding furiously across India right now.
As are infrastructure majors like Navayuga and Megha. The first was building the tunnel at Silkyara which collapsed last year. It gave Rs 55 crore to the BJP. As for the second, as The Wire reported, it too has bagged multiple government tenders over the last five years despite concerns about the quality of its work.
Talking of concerns about work, there is also Rithwik Projects. It was building NTPC’s Tapovan Vishnugad dam in Uttarakhand, the dam accused by locals for land subsidence after cracks appeared in Joshimath's buildings and roads in January, 2023. Later that month, on 27 January, 2023, the firm, owned by BJP MP CM Rajesh, bought bonds worth Rs 5 crore. Two months later, on 24 March, 2023, Rithwik bagged a Rs 1,098 crore EPC contract to build a 382 MW dam in Himachal Pradesh. On 11 April, 2023, it bought bonds worth another Rs 40 crore.
Gujarat’s Torrent Group bought bonds and won tax exemptions around the same time.
APCO Infratech gave Rs 10 crore to BJP less than a month after bagging contract for a Kashmir highway tunnel.
Days After Approval To Expand Project in Rajasthan, Vedanta Gave Rs 100 Crore to BJP.
A clutch of other firms hauled up for shoddy work have bought bonds as well. SP Singla Construction, which bought bonds worth Rs 75 lakh on 10 May, 2019, was building the infamous bridge between Bhagalpur and Khagaria in Bihar which saw collapsed twice in 2023, first in April and then in June.
Another firm, Sarosh Alizah, which bought bonds worth Rs 2.5 crore on 10 May, 2019, was implicated by the Shah Commission's report on illegal iron ore mining in Odisha.
Or take Ahmedabad-based Ranjit Buildcon. In 2021, an overbridge being built by the company collapsed. Despite a subsequent study by a high-powered committee set up by the state government, which found the firm had compromised with the quality of construction and concrete, no action had been taken.
There is also a large subset of firms which bought bonds after being raided by state agencies. Hyderabad-based Shirdi Sai Electricals, one of the three winners of the polysilicon PLI, was raided by the Telangana IT wing on 20 December, 2023. On 11 January, 2024, it bought electoral bonds worth Rs 40 crore.
Another illustration of this pattern is Nagarjuna Construction Company. On November 15, 2022, the Income Tax department searched the offices of this bond-buying Hyderabad-based company.
Environmental violations troubled Sun Pharma group donated Rs 31.5 crore to political parties.
On the whole, sectors like infrastructure and energy were amongst the biggest purchasers of electoral bonds. At one level, this is not surprising. Government decisions still make or break fortunes in these sectors.
[Webinar] Unpack the Global South’s Climate Priorities
Join our webinar on Thursday, March 28, for insights from Global South experts as we pave the way for impactful multilateral discussions in 2024.
On other fronts, the week stayed relatively muted.
The previous instalment of this newsletter spoke about India’s rush to auction critical mineral blocks. Now comes news that the country is also considering deep sea mining for critical minerals. Little of this, however, will matter unless the country can become competitive at renewable energy manufacturing. So far, as CarbonCopy reported last year, the country continues to import components.
For a while now, ever since Gautam Adani picked up Gangavaram Port. There has been speculation about the worsening health of Vizag Steel Plant. Now comes news that the plant is selling tranches of its land. While on Adani, see this CNN report on the outsized solar plant his nephew is setting up.
From energy to development. Inequality is spiking in India, says Andy Mukherjee. He is right. India has reverted to levels of inequality last seen during colonialism.
Finally, the protracted process to save the Great Indian Bustard from power lines continues. One more expert committee has been set up. In the meantime, however, the Supreme Court has reduced the effective area sans power lines from 80,000 sq km to just 13,000 sq km.
The Chipko movement celebrated its 50th anniversary
The Hindustan Times had a special report on the pathbreaking movement — a totemic instance of the environmentalism of the poor. It’s, however, ironic that the moment passed with the state flatly ignoring another non-violent protest by another environmentalist — Sonam Wangchuk of Ladakh fasted 21 days without the Central government blinking an eye.
CarbonCopy Read of the week
Are India’s coal gasification plans more glitter than gold, asks Hridayesh Joshi.
Climate Long-reads
1. Coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, is preparing for a long goodbye (Bloomberg)
2. ‘Unplanned Urbanisation Has Affected Bengaluru’s Vegetation Cover And Water Bodies’ (Indiaspend). Also see this, How Bengaluru, once the land of a thousand lakes, can rework its water plan (Question of Cities)
3. The costs of Reliance’s wildlife ambitions (Himal)
4. Talking of our cavalier disregard for animals, here is one more report. A company stopped importing monkeys to the U.S. for lab tests over smuggling concerns. Now they're flooding into Canada (The Star)
5. And also this. An American Who Managed a Shrimp Processing Plant in India Files a Whistleblower Complaint With U.S. Authorities (Inside Climate News)
6. Are we all doomed? How to cope with the daunting uncertainties of climate change (Nature).
7. Are we in the Anthropocene yet? (Nature)
8. Fires Imperil the Future of the Amazon Rainforest (Mother Jones). And yet, the country has ambitious oil plans.
9. Green Credit Scheme’s ‘methodology’ doesn’t inspire confidence among experts (Mongabay)
Obituary (also, books of the week)
Primatologist Frans De Waal is gone. Read this poignant introduction to the questions he chased in his life — and the books he wrote.