এখানে সময়ের প্রয়োজনে, না-রাষ্ট্রের আশায়, অঘোষিত জরুরি অবস্থার মধ্যে দুটো লেখা সংকলিত করা হলো। বলা বাহুল্য, দুটো লেখাই বর্তমান ভারতবর্ষের রাজনৈতিক পরিস্থিতি আর দুরাশা নিয়ে সুরাশা করা হয়েছে। ভাজপার আইটি সেল মিথ্যে প্রোপাগাণ্ডা করে। উৎপল দত্ত উল্টে বলতেন, “আমি প্রোপাগান্ডিস্ট”। আমরা তাঁকে অনুসরণ করেই আরেকটু বাড়িয়ে বলছিঃ আমরা কাউন্টার-প্রোপাগান্ডিস্ট। ধরে নিন এই গোটাটাই একখানা রাজনৈতিক ইস্তেহারমাত্র, যেখানে ভেন্ন ধাঁচের আকাদেমিয়া সেঁধিয়ে আছে।Here, compelled by the urgency of the moment and sustained by the hope of a no-state imagination, two pieces have been brought together amid an undeclared emergency. Needless to say, both writings engage with the present political condition of India and attempt to wrest hope out of despair. The BJP’s IT cell manufactures false propaganda. Utpal Dutt, by contrast, would turn the charge on its head and declare, “I am a propagandist.” Following his lead—and pushing it a step further—we say: we are counter-propagandists. Consider this entire exercise as nothing more (and nothing less) than a political manifesto, into which a distinctly non-mainstream strand of academia has quietly seeped in.
Manifesto for Scrapping the Ill-Conceived Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) 2016
This manifesto advances a sustained, evidence-based critique of India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016, arguing that the regime has evolved into a structurally predatory legal apparatus that facilitates large-scale transfer of public, depositor, and taxpayer-backed wealth into private corporate hands under the guise of “efficient insolvency.” Drawing on IBBI data up to 2025, landmark cases such as DHFL, Bhushan Power & Steel, Videocon, and Aircel, and recent Supreme Court jurisprudence, the analysis demonstrates how the IBC has systematically failed its own statutory promises of time-bound resolution, value maximization, equitable treatment, fraud recovery, and economic revival. Instead, prolonged delays, extreme haircuts averaging 67–68%, marginalization of retail depositors and public-interest claims, laundering of fraud through Section 32A immunity, and near-absolute deference to creditor “commercial wisdom” have produced a regime marked by judicial ritualism, moral hazard, and deep constitutional infirmities under Articles 14 and 21. The DHFL resolution is presented as a “laboratory case” exposing the IBC’s core pathologies—where a solvent, fraud-tainted institution was transferred at a steep discount, avoidance recoveries worth tens of thousands of crores were privatized, and lakhs of small savers were effectively dispossessed. Situating the IBC within a broader political economy of crony capitalism and opaque political funding, the manifesto rejects incremental reform as inadequate and calls for the complete scrapping of the Code in favor of a transparent, people-centric insolvency framework grounded in accountability, restitution, constitutional justice, and public interest.
The Student as Examiner: Decoding the Manufactured Illusion of Piramal Group’s “Shining” Credit Ratings
Credit rating agencies (CRAs) in India occupy a paradoxical position: their ratings shape investor behaviour, influence borrowing costs, and determine market access for corporations, yet they operate within a regulatory and commercial architecture that structurally disincentivizes critical scrutiny and accountability. The issuer-pays model — wherein the rated entity pays the rater — creates endogenous conflicts of interest that privilege quantifiable metrics like capital adequacy and liquidity while marginalizing qualitative governance and forensic risks. This article argues that under such a regime, investment-grade ratings (including the recent CRISIL AA+/Stable assigned to Piramal Finance in early 2026) function less as independent credit assessments and more as manufactured assurances that legitimize capital flows for well-connected conglomerates. Drawing on legal, financial, and political economy frameworks, this piece situates India’s CRA ecosystem within a broader pattern of regulatory compliance without substantive responsibility, oligopolistic market concentration, and political-corporate crony interlocks. It contends that ratings resemble self-assessment with outsourced certification, transferring systemic risk downstream to retail investors, pension funds, and the public. The Piramal example is explored as a paradigmatic case in which ratings have obscured deep-seated governance vulnerabilities and deferred accountability, underlining the need for structural reforms in rating incentives, liability regimes, and public interest protections.
Chaosophy of Credit Ratings: Where’s the Accountability?
This article offers a comprehensive, non-polemical examination of the accountability architecture governing credit rating agencies (CRAs) in India, focusing on CRISIL, CARE Ratings, and ICRA under the SEBI (Credit Rating Agencies) Regulations, 1999 (as amended through 2026). Situating itself in continuity with earlier analyses of Piramal Finance and Piramal Pharma ratings, it maps what CRAs are legally mandated to do, how the issuer-pays model structures incentives, and why regulation centered on process rather than outcomes produces a persistent accountability gap. Drawing on verifiable rating actions, enforcement precedents, and the DHFL collapse as a paradigmatic failure, the article demonstrates how credit ratings—legally framed as professional opinions rather than conclusive, decisive guarantees—shape capital flows and investor behaviour without imposing commensurate liability on agencies when optimism bias, delayed downgrades, or convergence errors materialize. It further shows how an oligopolistic market structure, implicit ratings shopping, and political–corporate crony concentration during the BJP regime dilute reputational discipline, transferring risk downstream to retail and public investors. Incorporating recent regulatory reforms and critiques, including debates on revenue diversification, expanded mandates, and transparency norms, the article argues that legality and compliance have been mistaken for responsibility. In conclusion, it frames India’s credit rating regime as a system of regulation without substantive accountability, where structural design—not isolated misconduct—explains recurring credit failures, and where incremental reforms remain insufficient without a fundamental rethinking of incentives, liability, and public interest protection.
From Issuer Pays to Polluter Pays: Unearthing Piramal Pharma’s Credit Ratings
Piramal Pharma Limited (PPL), demerged from Piramal Enterprises in 2022, enjoys high investment-grade credit ratings (e.g., CARE AA; Stable upgraded July 2025) under the issuer-pays model, which critics claim manufactures trust to enable cheap borrowing despite severe financial strain—Q2 FY26 revenue down ~9% to ₹2,044 crore, EBITDA crashed 44%, net loss ₹99 crore, high leverage (~3x net debt-to-EBITDA), weak interest coverage, and share price falling ~19% from ₹204 (July 2025) to ~₹166 (mid-January 2026). This rating resilience contrasts sharply with the alleged “Digwal massacre” at its Telangana plant: repeated effluent dumping (comprehensively reported by 2018) contaminating water/soil, devastating farmland, and linked to spikes in kidney failures, respiratory issues, and cancers among villagers; despite NGT’s ₹8.3 crore polluter-pays fine (2019), TSPCB closure orders, and weak enforcement, SEBI deemed events non-material post-demerger, reportedly shielded by Ajay Piramal’s substantial BJP donations and crony ties. Echoing the Piramal Finance rating controversy, PPL’s playbook—restructurings to quarantine liabilities, OTC pivot to mask industrial risks, and paid-for “stable” ratings—externalizes financial, environmental, and human costs onto investors and poisoned communities, highlighting the urgent need to dismantle the ratings oligopoly and opaque political funding that sustain such systemic expropriation.
OBMA Statement on Neo-Imperialist Violence: Iran, Venezuela, Palestine
This statement asserts OBMA’s condemnation of neo-imperialist violence in Iran, Venezuela, and occupied Palestine, framing these crises as interconnected expressions of cannibalistic capitalism. It exposes how state repression, militarization, sanctions, and fossil-fuel geopolitics enable genocide, ecocide, and resource plunder. Rejecting technocratic and reformist fixes, OBMA affirms planetary justice, anti-imperialist solidarity, and life-centred transformation through collective struggle and ecological ethics.
“Islamic Terrorism” as a Discursive Formation: Power, Paradox, and the Politics of Naming
This article critically examines the persistence of the term “Islamic terrorism” in global discourse, highlighting its paradoxical nature as a contested label that essentializes Islam as inherently violent in a monolithic manner while being reinforced by the explicit religious self-framing of militant groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Drawing on Orientalist epistemologies, post-Cold War geopolitical imaginaries such as Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations,” and Barthesian myth theory, the analysis reveals how the term functions as a disciplinary tool of power, asymmetrically applied to Muslim-perpetrated violence compared to similar acts by Christian, Hindu, Zionist or other extremists/fundamentalists/terrorists, thereby naturalizing civilizational hierarchies and obscuring historical contexts like colonial legacies, proxy wars, and political economies of jihadism. Incorporating defenses of the term’s empirical utility alongside critiques of bias and oversimplification, the piece argues for a shift toward nuanced framings that recognize militant Islamism as a product of imperial disruption, authoritarianism, and gendered crises rather than religious essence, ultimately advocating for pluralist transformations to combat all forms of fundamentalist violence without hypocrisy.
One Rupee, Piramal Finance, and the Ruins of DHFL: A Letter to Mr. Ajay Piramal
This open letter to Ajay Piramal interrogates the moral dissonance between Piramal Finance’s “Neeyat” advertising campaign, which celebrates honesty through the return of a single rupee, and the lived reality of DHFL depositors whose life savings were erased through a deeply contested insolvency process. By juxtaposing corporate virtue-signalling with the transfer of nearly ₹45,000 crore of DHFL assets for ₹1, the text argues that legality has been deployed to eclipse legitimacy, and branding to obscure accountability. Situating the DHFL resolution within a wider system of crony capitalism, opaque political financing, captured institutions, and manufactured consent, the letter frames the episode as part of a broader legitimation crisis in BJP-ruled India, where ethics are subordinated to power and proximity. At its core, the piece demands that “conscious capitalism” be measured not by advertisements or philanthropy, but by what is returned to those who trusted, funded, and were dispossessed.
Who Pays, Who Bribes, Who Flees, Who Profits: BJP’s Swelling Coffers Amid Exploding External Debt
Posted on 6th January, 2026 (GMT 06:26 hrs) ABSTRACT India’s neoliberal delusion stands exposed in this searing critique: As the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) amasses an astronomical financial empire—ballooning from modest pre-2014 assets to ₹7,113 crore in cash/bank balances and over ₹10,107 crore in election war chests by late 2025, propelled by ₹6,088 croreContinue reading “Who Pays, Who Bribes, Who Flees, Who Profits: BJP’s Swelling Coffers Amid Exploding External Debt”
When AA+ Means “Ask Again”: Manufactured Ratings, Piramal Finance, and the Credit Ratings Trap
Despite glowing CRISIL AA+/Stable ratings, Piramal Finance’s strength is an illusion built on conflicted issuer-paid ratings, legacy DHFL fraud asymmetries (₹45,000 Cr recoveries valued at Re 1, massive retail haircuts), governance controversies, political proximity, and a backdoor listing that bypassed scrutiny. High ratings enable cheap funding and retail mobilisation—while systematically ignoring forensic risks, related-party issues, and resolution inequities seen in IL&FS, Yes Bank, DHFL. This is systemic: manufactured trust, socialised losses, privatised gains. Ratings are opinions, not guarantees. Demand truth before investing.
Once in a Blue Moon Academia 