Written from the standpoint of one pauperised by the DHFL collapse—once a trusting fixed-deposit holder, now among the dispossessed—this essay interrogates Piramal Finance’s “Neeyat” campaign as an apparatus of aggressive linguistic marketing that weaponizes micro-honesty to legitimize macro-consolidation. Through semiotic, Marxian, psychoanalytic, and political-economic analysis, it traces how the repeated invocation of Re 1—returned in scenes of everyday virtue (a coin handed back, a packet retrieved, kinship invoked)—operates as myth: at the level of denotation, simple integrity; at the level of connotation, character over paperwork; at the level of ideology, ethical finance naturalized precisely after an insolvency process in which avoidance claims worth approximately ₹45,000 crore were assigned a notional value of Re 1 and retail creditors absorbed devastating haircuts under the shelter of IBC jurisprudence and Section 32A immunity. The same rupee circulates across regimes—as legal token, advertising prop, and ideological shield—while high-yield lending, SARFAESI enforcement, ratings upgrades, and judicial deference to “commercial wisdom” consolidate capital. Self-reflexively acknowledging its wounded vantage, the essay reads the compulsive return of Re 1 not as branding ingenuity but as symptomatic spectacle: a coin endlessly restored on screen while restitution remains foreclosed in law, revealing how moral minimalism at the micro level masks structural dispossession at the macro level.
Category Archives: Art of Resistance
Following the dictum “Cultural revolution must precede political revolution”, we are striving to create the scope for an alternative cultural space, which can offer resistance to all forms of coercion, and can also serve as a medium for conducting non-violent, horizontal dialogical exchanges.
Pamphlet For DHFL Victims: No More “Clean Slates” For IBC-Proof Crony Capitalism!
This manifesto is a fact-based cry from over 2.5 lakh DHFL depositors who lost life savings in massive 54–77% haircuts. It chronicles how India’s first AAA-rated NBFC — a sound ₹91,000+ crore housing finance company — was deliberately dismantled under the IBC: starting with Ajay Piramal’s “shock” warning (28 Jan 2019) followed by the Cobrapost exposé (29 Jan 2019), RBI supersession (20 Nov 2019), CIRP admission (3 Dec 2019), mid-process insertion of Section 32A immunity (28 Dec 2019), ignored full-repayment proposals, a Re 1 giveaway of ₹45,000 crore Section 66 recoveries, judicial overrides culminating in Supreme Court approval (1 Apr 2025), reverse mergers to sanitize legacy, and PMLA discharge of the corporate debtor (2 Feb 2026) under Section 32A — while Piramal Finance now thrives (AUM ₹96,690 crore up 23% YoY, PAT up 162%). Highlighting statutory contradictions, CoC bias allegations, and a documented political-corporate nexus, it demands repeal of Section 32A, scrapping the IBC, restitution, and an end to SLAPP suits — framing the DHFL case as engineered crony sanitisation, not genuine resolution.
Stones, Frogs, and Divine Dividends: Piramal’s Philanthro-Capitalist Lila
In this delightfully biting exposé, we reimagine Aesop’s timeless fable of boys hurling stones at hapless frogs as a metaphor for the Piramal Group’s “doing well by doing good” empire-building antics. Through sarcastic lenses, we link the innocent cruelty of playground games to corporate resolutions that crush small investors, pollute environments, and silence critics—all while cloaking it in Vaishnava philosophy and Gandhi-branded CSR. Prepare for a romp through divine “lila,” chaotic casinos of capitalism, and a conclusion that leaves you pondering: is this sport, spirituality, or just splendid self-interest?
Grapes are Always Sour for the Other 98%? A Tale Told by a Fox
I, the fox—displaced, hungry, forever circling the perimeter of what others call success—have written this howl from the ashes of vanished forests and the margins of a city that builds towers while drowning its poor. Through five chapters I trace how the grapes of sweetness remain forever sour, not from any defect in my leap, but because the vineyard itself is enclosed by design: fortified mansions rising above flood-prone shores, weddings costing hundreds of millions while hunger indices stay serious, births secured with foreign passports and luxury medicine while preaching national self-reliance to the rest, nationalism demanded as sacrifice from the many yet practiced as portable privilege by the chosen few, and finally an economics of limitless spectacle that devours the very earth required for any future life. From Aesop to Panchatantra to lived memory of deforestation and corporate predation, I refuse the fable’s tidy moral—that effort alone decides access—and instead diagnose structural denial, crony spectacle through conspicuous consumption and ostentatious display, ecological myopia, as well as selective patriotism. In the end I unlearn the dream of joining the feast; I choose instead the difficult, unglamorous arithmetic of limits—sufficiency, repair, localisation, care without applause—because the bulldozers have already flattened the last vine and my vixen beneath them, and what remains is no longer a question of reaching the grapes, but whether any shared ground can still sustain breath in a world that mistakes endless extraction for destiny. This is my testimony, not of envy, but of ruthless clarity: the sourness was never in the fruit; it was always in the fence.
Rana Ayyub’s Gujarat Files and the Politics of the Counter-Archive
Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up by Rana Ayyub is a hard-hitting, self-published investigative book (2016) based on an eight-month undercover sting operation she conducted in 2010–2011 while working for Tehelka, posing as “Maithili Tyagi,” a fictional Hindu-American filmmaker sympathetic to RSS ideology. Through covert recordings of candid conversations with senior Gujarat police officers, bureaucrats, politicians, and insiders—including a direct meeting with then-Chief Minister Narendra Modi—the book presents verbatim transcripts alleging state complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots (an anti-Muslim pogrom killing over 1,000), orchestrated inaction during the violence, evidence tampering, fake encounters (such as those involving Ishrat Jahan, Sohrabuddin Sheikh, and others), extrajudicial killings used for political gain, caste-based exploitation in law enforcement, and broader cover-ups tied to the rise of Modi and Amit Shah. Rejected by mainstream publishers and media amid fears of reprisal, Ayyub self-funded and released it, selling hundreds of thousands of copies despite blackouts, threats, and criticisms over ethical concerns, lack of forensic tape verification, and sparse analysis; supporters hail it as brave evidentiary journalism exposing systemic impunity and majoritarian consolidation, while critics (including a 2019 Supreme Court dismissal in a related case) view it as conjectural or procedurally flawed, yet no implicated officials have sued or directly refuted the statements, underscoring its enduring, polarizing impact on debates about accountability, press freedom, and Indian democracy.
Blooded Waters, Dirty Hands: An Elegy for Puṇyodaka
This text is an elegy for puṇyodaka—not as a lost ritual substance, but as a shattered moral condition. Moving across Kalidasa’s Meghadūta, the Vana Parva’s Yaksha-prashna, biblical plague, Macbeth’s indelible blood, and Sartre’s Dirty Hands, it traces how water—river, sea, confluence—has been converted into spectacle, alibi, and instrument of power. Empirical poisonings (heavy metals, fecal coliforms, ecological collapse) coexist with choreographed immersions, artificial ghats, and submarine devotions, revealing a regime of simulation where sanctity is performed while rivers rot and silences are enforced. The work argues that contemporary governmentality no longer seeks purity but stages it, laundering violence through ritual, nationalism, and necessity. Against Hoederer’s calculus and Macbeth’s despair, the Yaksha’s ancient answer—manomalatyāga, the renunciation of inner stain—returns as an indictment: when minds remain polluted by greed, vanity, and commanded quiet, no river can cleanse. Puṇyodaka vanishes not because water fails, but because power poisons meaning itself. What remains is refusal: the withdrawal of consent from any politics that needs blood to function, spectacle to survive, and dirty hands to rule.
অঘোষিত জরুরি অবস্থার (দুঃ-)সময়ে না-রাষ্ট্রের বি-কল্প-না (Imagining No-State Alternities Amidst the Horrors of Undeclared Emergency)
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.
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.
End of Year Bombshell: How BJP-NDA-Hindutva Failed India – A Scathing 2014-2025 Indictment
As 2025 draws to a close, this comprehensive dossier documents not a series of discrete policy missteps, but a systemic transformation of governance in India (2014–2025): a shift from democratic accountability to political executive dominance; from evidence-based policymaking to manufactured narrative control; from social protection to structural precarity. Spanning the economy, federalism, data integrity, labour, the natural environment, digital freedoms, education, public health, cultural institutions, civil liberties, and fundamental rights, the record reveals enduring patterns of power centralization, calibrated opacity, selective enforcement, and institutional hollowing—accompanied by crony consolidation and the routinized criminalization of dissent. Democratic indicators decline as surveillance infrastructures expand, grassroots welfare erodes, and truth itself is rendered an object of administrative management. This is not a partisan ledger, but a counter-archive: an evidence-grounded indictment that affirms accountability as the necessary cost of power. In closing the year, it calls for a civic reckoning—not to foreclose debate, but to reclaim and restore it.
Once in a Blue Moon Academia 