A black day for India.

Yesterday Diageo, a British company bought 53.4% of United Spirits from Vijay Mallya for a sum of Rs 111.66 billion, giving it full control of the company. With it foreign companies now control 80% of the drinks market in India and will be able to repatriate hundreds of billions of dollars. Prices will go up and the poor will be forced to drink illicit locally brewed hooch increasing the incidences of poisoning. This is how the British sneaked into India through the East India company, proceeded to conquer the whole country and plunder it for over 200 years. To be sure Mallya made some mistakes, probably through hubris. He should not have borrowed money from banks against personal assets to finance his airline venture. He should have bought planes, using them as collateral for his loans, and allowed banks to repossess them if they so desired. Still, it should never have come to this. Last year the total debt of Kingfisher Airlines amounted to Rs 40 billion which is nothing in the Indian context. Highly corrupt Air India has debts of over Rs 500 billion with accumulated losses of Rs 290 billion and is still in operation. Top 4 pilots at Air India earn more than Rs 10 million a year each. More than 15 employees earn more than Rs 9 million/year each while 65 earn more than Rs 8 million/year each. The Comptroller and Accountant General said in a report that the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Airport Authority allowed DIAL, the consortium running Delhi Airport, to make undue profit of Rs 34.15 billion by allowing it to levy a development fee on passengers in violation of its contractual agreement. To allow DIAL to increase its profits airport charges at Delhi have been increased by 346% and all passengers, including those arriving and transiting through the airport are charged, making it the most expensive airport in the world. Construction companies are allowed to charge toll on highways even before completing their work and charges are increased regularly to increase profit margins. The government could easily have restructured Kingfisher loans and deputed an officer to restructure its board and management. Instead every opportunity was shut off and the airline was not allowed to return the planes it had hired on lease. This meant lease charges, interest on loans and penalties were increasing daily until it went over Rs 70 billion forcing Mallya to his knees. In 1757 Robert Clive easily won the battle of Plassey against Siraj ud Daulah because Mir Jafar betrayed him by taking the bulk of the army away from the battlefield. We do not know who was the present day Mir Jafar. Was it a single person or a political party but what we do know is that India has been betrayed again. No wonder Paul Walsh, the CEO of Diageo was smiling when he was interviewed on CNN yesterday. He could turn out to be today's Clive.