Articles by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Forty of India's biggest energy companies are being investigated by a wing of the Union Ministry of Finance for over-invoicing of imported coal. The artificially higher prices of coal have been passed on to electricity consumers across the country. The scam is conservatively estimated by government officials at no less than Rs 29,000 crore, a third of which is in the form of higher power tariffs. Big names from the corporate sector, notably the Adani group and ADAG, are being probed for their alleged involvement in the scandal. An exclusive report.

A heady cocktail of politics, business emerges from the developments relating to one of India's biggest media conglomerates, the Chennai-based Sun group. The actions of different wings of the union government against Sun's owners, the politically influential Maran brothers, have raised a number of questions relating to allegations of breaking rules, taking advantage of proximity to power, economic offences and freedom of expression. These issues have, in turn, become embroiled in factional politics within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in New Delhi and in the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Chennai, which is currently out of power both in the centre and in Tamil Nadu.

Media professionals have an important responsibility to society since they are in a position to mould public opinion. But the recent exposures of journalists taking favours from corporate groups have only highlighted once again an old phenomenon in India--codes of conduct are observed in their breach and Chinese walls are usually non-existent in media organisations. Since the 1980s, groups of journalists have tried to straddle the worlds of the media, business and politics, and in the process have damaged the functioning of democracy in the country.

India's largest company now controls India's largest media conglomerate. The country's media could therefore well be perceived henceforth to be a little less independent or, for that matter, trustworthy.

A clutch of public interest petitions and legal entanglements between Reliance Industries and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on the pricing of natural gas and other issues are now before the Supreme Court.A record and discussion of the many legal cases in a battle that is going to be a protracted one.