“Philanthropy, Pharma, and Finance: A Letter Unveiling the Piramal Equation” is an open letter that interrogates the moral architecture of “philanthropic capitalism” through the lens of the Piramal Group’s intertwined ventures in pharmaceuticals and finance. Drawing upon the language of public accountability and philosophical critique, it examines how narratives of “conscious” and “value-based” enterprise often conceal deeper entanglements of debt, profit, and political patronage. Blending forensic analysis with rhetorical irony, the letter situates Piramal’s corporate conduct within the wider ecosystem of India’s crony-capitalist order, where the boundaries between care and commerce, virtue and valuation, increasingly blur. Ultimately, it is both a document of resistance and a call for ethical introspection in an age where balance sheets masquerade as moral credentials.
Will to Hide: Vote Theft, DHFL Scam, and the Silencing of RTI in BJP-ruled India (Video)
In this video of OBMA, we trace how truth in contemporary India is not hidden in darkness, but blinded by the illegitimate, coercive glare of power itself. From the quiet theft of votes through digital deletions and duplicated identities, to the DHFL scam that turned public funds into private fortunes, to the slow asphyxiation of the Right to Information (RTI)— the same pattern of concealment runs through it all. This is not ignorance, but design: the rule of the “Golden Disc,” where polished words like development and national interest mask the disappearance of citizens, accountability, and justice. We ask: when every institution is scripted to glorify the untruth, who will unveil the face of truth?
“Highly Suspicious” Vote Theft: From Electoral Rolls to the DHFL CIRP
This exposé examines the converging crises of electoral integrity and financial justice in contemporary India, highlighting systemic capture by political, corporate, and institutional actors. It traces large-scale voter-roll manipulations—exacerbated under the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of 2025—and parallels them with opaque corporate insolvency resolutions, particularly the DHFL–Piramal case, to reveal a unified architecture of dispossession. Both domains exhibit technocratic opacity, concentrated discretionary authority, elite appropriation, and juridical complicity, resulting in the systematic disenfranchisement of marginalized voters and the financial expropriation of small depositors. Independent investigations, RTI filings, and media reporting document repeated patterns of procedural evasion, selective inclusion, and institutional passivity, demonstrating that these are not isolated incidents but interlinked mechanisms reinforcing crony-authoritarian consolidation. The report maps the roles of the BJP, corporate beneficiaries, judiciary, regulators, and auditors, showing how bureaucratic fragmentation and doctrinal deference transform public institutions into instruments of private gain. It further underscores the hollowing out of transparency, the weaponization of data, and the deliberate weakening of civic oversight, arguing that both democratic participation and fiduciary fairness have been subordinated to elite advantage. Concluding with actionable recommendations, the exposé advocates for machine-readable disclosure, judicial enforcement of equitable restitution, audit-grade transparency in corporate resolutions, curbs on opaque political funding, and independent civic verification, framing these measures as essential to restore accountability, defend the rule of law, and safeguard the participatory foundations of Indian democracy.
Arrest Me or Erase Me — But Your Corporate Empire Cannot Silence Me: A Letter to Ajay Piramal
This satirical polemic addresses Ajay Piramal and the wider nexus of the BJP-led state and crony corporates (notably Adani-Ambani), charging them with using legal, political, and extra-legal means to silence dissent. Framed as two provocative requests, the author first volunteers to be arrested and prosecuted for “defamation” — demanding the spectacle of litigation as a public test of whether asking questions about the DHFL debacle is now a punishable offense. The letter catalogs named victims of legal harassment, violence, and suspicious deaths (journalists, RTI activists, and dissenting civil-society actors), criticizes SLAPP-style tactics attributed to corporate counsel (DSK Legal), and recalls Vijay Mallya’s critique of Indian prisons to underline the contested nature of incarceration. Second, in darker satirical mode, the author offers to be “erased” by the state-corporate apparatus to expose the climate in which inconvenient lives are neutralized, invoking calls previously made for legalizing active euthanasia as a political statement about living under a failing “welfare” state. The piece concludes by situating the critique within Mumbai’s cultural imagery — quoting “Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan” — and appends a list of institutional and international recipients.
The Fragile Himalayas: Climate, Hindutva Developmentalism, and the Collapsing Ecology of the Third Pole
The Himalayas—often called the “Third Pole”—are collapsing under the dual weight of climate change and a reckless developmental paradigm driven by Hindutva nationalism. This article examines how the BJP’s infrastructural expansion, exemplified by the Char Dham project and many other recent instances, embodies an extractive model that desecrates the sacred mountain ecology in the name of “spiritual connectivity” and national pride. By exposing the contradictions between ecological fragility and politico-economic hubris, it argues that the Himalayan crisis is not a natural disaster but a moral and civilizational collapse—where faith has been mechanized, rivers commodified, and glaciers sacrificed for profit and propaganda. Drawing on ecological ethics, political ecology, and environmental sociology, the piece calls for an epistemic and ethical reorientation—from GDP-centrism to earth-centric governance that recognizes the Himalayas as living systems rather than geological resources. Ultimately, saving the Himalayas demands confronting not only climate change but also the ideological machinery that normalizes ecocide under the rhetoric of development.
Affidavit And Public Legal Representation In Opposition To The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) Of Electoral Rolls, 2025
This affidavit opposes the 2025 Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as an unconstitutional and discriminatory exercise that extends the exclusionary logic of the NRC–CAA–NPR regime. Framed as an administrative update, the SIR reproduces a politics of fear, surveillance, communal polarization and bureaucratic coercion—already driving marginalized citizens to despair and suicide. It exposes the State’s transformation of citizenship from birthright to conditional privilege, mediated by data and documents. Against this, the affidavit invokes planetary citizenship—an ethical-ecological vision affirming belonging beyond paper, religion, nation, or algorithm.
Unmasking Electoral Fraud in India: Patterns of Voter Roll Manipulation and Institutional Complicity
This article investigates the phenomenon popularly termed Vote Chori (“vote theft”) in contemporary India, revealing a systemic pattern of voter roll manipulation that challenges the credibility of the world’s largest electoral democracy. Drawing upon verified evidence from Rahul Gandhi’s disclosures, Ajit Anjum’s field investigations, voter testimonies such as that of Punam Kumari, and journalistic reporting from The Wire, the study identifies recurring techniques of disenfranchisement—including bulk deletions, forged Form-7 entries, and centralized, software-enabled tampering. Evidence from Karnataka, Bihar, and Maharashtra demonstrates how digital governance infrastructures, designed for efficiency, have become instruments of exclusion and partisan control. The Karnataka Special Investigation Team’s findings of call-centre operations and monetary inducements (₹80 per deletion) corroborate the allegations of industrial-scale roll manipulation. The Election Commission of India’s opacity and resistance to external audits reveal deeper institutional complicity and democratic erosion. By situating these developments within theoretical frameworks of algorithmic governance and bureaucratic authoritarianism, the paper argues that India’s electoral crisis marks not a failure of democracy per se, but its mutation into a technocratic apparatus of managed consent. The conclusion calls for independent digital audits, legislative oversight, and citizen-led verification systems as urgent correctives to restore electoral legitimacy.
Why Indian Political Parties Are Ecologically Indifferent
This article examines the deep-rooted ecological indifference of Indian political parties across the ideological spectrum. Despite unprecedented environmental degradation—from the destruction of forests in Hasdeo and Nicobar to toxic urban air and vanishing rivers—ecology remains absent from India’s political grammar. The essay argues that this neglect is not accidental but structural: born of a development myth that equates progress with extraction and nationalism with industrial expansion. In a corporatized democracy, parties serve capital before climate, leaving the earth unrepresented in the republic’s moral imagination.
Why India Needs a No Kings Movement: From Fascist Corporatocracy to Partyless Democracy
This essay traces the global and Indian convergences of authoritarian populism, corporate capture, and digital surveillance through the metaphor of kingship. Beginning with the “No Kings” movement in the U.S., it reinterprets democracy as an anti-monarchical ethic — a practice of shared sovereignty rather than submission to personality cults. Through Modi’s curated spectacle of power, the text exposes India’s descent into corporatocracy, pseudology, and ecological tyranny. It ultimately envisions a “partyless democracy” rooted in decentralization, mutual care, and invisible leadership — a republic without kings, parties, or masters.
“Who’s Got the Paper? I’ve Got the Match”: Osibisa and the Politics of Documentation
This paper offers an interpretive and historical reading of Osibisa’s 1970s Afro-rock track Who’s Got the Paper? as a sonic meditation on the politics of documentation, identity, and resistance. Beneath its surface as a jubilant “party anthem,” the song encodes a global genealogy of documentary surveillance—from colonial pass laws and apartheid bureaucracies to postcolonial citizenship registers and digital data regimes. The refrain’s dialectical call and response—“Who’s got the paper?” / “I’ve got the match”—stage an encounter between state surveillance and insurgent agency, between the archive’s demand for verification and the people’s capacity for ignition. Combining lyrical analysis with postcolonial, Foucauldian, and musicological frameworks, the paper interprets sound as a mode of political imagination that exceeds textual control. Extending this argument to the Indian context, it situates the song’s critique within contemporary regimes of legibility exemplified by the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC), National Population Register (NPR), the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA)—each reiterating the colonial “paper logic” of inclusion through exclusion. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, James C. Scott’s notion of legibility, Giorgio Agamben’s “state of exception,” and Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, the essay argues that Who’s Got the Paper? performs the political imagination of music as resistance—where rhythm becomes revolt and dance becomes dissent. Through the contrapuntal readings of Edward Said, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Frantz Fanon, Osibisa’s sound emerges as a postcolonial act of re-signification: transmuting the colonizer’s documentary order into an emancipatory rhythm of decolonial speech.
Once in a Blue Moon Academia 