The Reverse Merger Republic: Piramal Finance, DHFL, and the Architecture of Cunning Capitalism

This article examines the DHFL resolution and Piramal Group’s subsequent restructuring as a paradigmatic case of contemporary financial consolidation in India, tracing how regulatory design, corporate strategy, and state-enabled mechanisms converged to produce an outcome that is legally final yet institutionally opaque. It analyses the RBI’s supervisory–administrative dual role, the CoC’s opacity, the judiciary’s tendency toward implied finality, and the structural conflicts that limited independent scrutiny during the insolvency process. The paper then situates Piramal’s rare reverse merger—where the listed parent (PEL) was absorbed into its regulated lending subsidiary (PFL)—as a decisive act executed amidst pending appeals, effectively embedding DHFL-acquired assets inside a newly listed NBFC-ICC. The listing-by-merger, driven by upper-layer regulatory requirements, market optics, and corporate consolidation goals, is shown to function not merely as compliance but as a strategic reorganisation that consolidates control, complicates retrospective accountability, and reconfigures contested assets into an ostensibly neutral balance sheet. By synthesising legal, regulatory, financial and political-economy perspectives, the article argues that the Piramal–DHFL arc reveals a wider architecture of contemporary consolidation—one in which regulatory frameworks, capital markets, and corporate power align to enable irreversible restructurings under conditions of weakened transparency and constrained avenues for redress.

The Hidden Chemistry of Piramal Pharma’s “Tri-Activ”: A DHFL Victim Writes to Ajay Piramal

This letter addresses Piramal Pharma’s Tri-Activ line of disinfectants, critically examining the disparity between the products’ marketed claims of “triple protection” and the documented human health and ecological risks posed by their chemical constituents, notably ethanol and benzalkonium chloride (BAC). Written from the perspective of a survivor of systemic corporate harm, it combines lived experience with peer-reviewed evidence to demand transparency, full disclosure of toxicological and environmental data, and remedial measures including independent environmental monitoring, responsible labeling, and extended producer responsibility initiatives. Beyond consumer safety, the letter interrogates regulatory ambiguities, corporate ethics, and the broader social and ecological consequences of commodified cleanliness, framing the correspondence as a civic appeal for accountability and moral stewardship in the pharmaco-industrial sector.

On Systemic Erasure: From Electoral Rolls to the DHFL Resolution Process: A Letter to Ajay Piramal

This letter addresses the systemic erasure at the heart of both contemporary electoral disenfranchisement and the DHFL Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process, arguing that what appears as legal and administrative procedure is in fact a coordinated state–corporate apparatus of dispossession. Just as voters are made to vanish through calibrated electoral roll manipulation and bureaucratized opacity, depositors were erased from the DHFL resolution through committee intermediation, controlled documentation, engineered CoC voting, judicial sanction, and regulatory abdication. The RTI regime—designed as a transparency safeguard—functioned instead as a ritual of deferral, where responsibility was endlessly transferred across institutions to ensure that accountability remained structurally unreachable. The result is the same in both domains: those who constitute the basis of legitimacy—citizens as voters and as depositors—are stripped of presence, agency, and voice. This is a crisis not of procedure but of democratic integrity, where legality is weaponized to launder injustice and the polity is exhausted into silence. The letter refuses that silence.

Philanthropy, Pharma, and Finance: A Letter Unveiling the Piramal Equation

“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.

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.

RTI Under Siege: The Deadly Costs of Transparency in BJP-Run India

The Right to Information Act (RTI), once hailed as a revolutionary tool empowering citizens to hold power accountable, now stands at a critical crossroads. Two decades after its enactment, the law that once illuminated corruption, exposed scams, and strengthened democracy has been systematically hollowed out through political interference, bureaucratic evasion, and legislative dilution. From the 2019 amendments weakening Information Commissions to the Digital Personal Data Protection Act’s Section 443 shielding the government under the guise of privacy, transparency has been recast as a threat. India today suffers from data opacity, manipulation, and denial—where evidence is replaced by erasure and secrecy becomes governance. Institutions once devoted to public integrity—the NSSO, CAG, and Indian Statistical Institute—face interference, delayed data releases, and censorship of inconvenient truths. Activists who dared to ask questions have been attacked or killed, while citizens encounter silence and obstruction. The RTI’s decline mirrors a deeper democratic crisis: the transformation of a people’s right to know into the state’s right to conceal. Yet amid suppression, citizens continue to resist—filing mass RTIs, exposing institutional failures, and demanding reform. The fight to save RTI is no longer just about access to information; it is a struggle to reclaim the soul of Indian democracy itself.