Art of Resistance – Once in a Blue Moon Academia

Pressing Repeat: A Tragi-Comedy of DHFL Ruin, Viraha, and Satyagraha through Dilemma

In this darkly comic, self-reflexive monologue, a financially devastated DHFL victim—robbed of her life savings and hounded by a 100-crore SLAPP suit under an undeclared emergency—chronicles her solitary existence through obsessive loops of Rabindrasangeet. Trapped between paralyzing fear and compulsive repetition, she navigates aesthetic intimate separation anxiety (biraha), confronts the absence of any divine or human companion, and mercilessly dissects the selective “divine intervention” granted to the powerful while she receives only silence. Weaving Tagore’s melodies, Sudhindranath Dutta’s merciless “Ostrich,” Socrates’ Euthyphro Dilemma, Nietzsche’s amor fati, and Gandhi’s faith in truth, she transforms personal malady into a weapon of creative resistance. Refusing fatalism or piety, she reclaims the pharmakon of crisis, turning her suffering into non-violent digital satyagraha against the state-corporate apparatus. The result is a haunting, non-conclusive testament: a lone whistleblower who, though penniless and abandoned, continues to press “send” — pressing repeat no longer as surrender, but as quiet, unrelenting war.

A DHFL Victim’s Anonymous Letter — and the YouTube “Dislike” Campaign

This post presents an anonymous testimony from a DHFL depositor, documenting the lived human cost of India’s crony-capitalist financial regime. Through a raw account of loss, dispossession, and psychological distress following the DHFL collapse and subsequent resolution process, the letter foregrounds how institutional decisions, regulatory opacity, and political–corporate entanglements translate into everyday suffering for ordinary citizens. At the same time, it traces a shift from despair to resistance, as the victim transforms personal trauma into acts of digital dissent and collective voice. By reproducing the testimony in both transliterated Hindi and English, this piece seeks not only to archive a voice often erased in financial discourse but also to situate it within broader critiques of the “money-signifier” as a structuring force that shapes visibility, accountability, and justice in contemporary India.

Opaque by Design: The DHFL “Resolution” and Institutional Evasion — An Open Letter to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)

The DHFL insolvency resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016, stands as a stark exemplar of systemic opacity, regulatory evasion, and alleged crony favoritism in India’s financial ecosystem. Initiated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in November 2019 through the supersession of the DHFL Board and referral to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) culminated in the approval of Ajay Piramal’s resolution plan by the Committee of Creditors (CoC), the NCLT (June 2021), and ultimately the Supreme Court (April 1, 2025), which upheld the plan—including the appropriation of avoidance recoveries by the successful resolution applicant—while reaffirming the primacy of the CoC’s “commercial wisdom.” The case has drawn sustained scrutiny from approximately 2.5 lakh retail fixed-deposit and NCD holders, who suffered severe haircuts (recovering around 23% of admitted claims), amid allegations of undervaluation, procedural irregularities, premature occupation by the acquirer, and the dilution of fraud-avoidance mechanisms under Sections 32A and 66 of the IBC. Persistent Right to Information (RTI) applications—filed notably by activists associated with “Once in a Blue Moon Academia”—seeking itemized disclosure of the RBI-appointed CoC’s total expenditures (including professional fees, litigation costs, and deductions from the resolution pool) have been met with uniform institutional denial, with the RBI repeatedly claiming it “has no information” and bears no responsibility to maintain or interpret such records, while the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) and the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) have similarly deflected or transferred queries. This refusal to disclose even basic expenditure details—despite the RBI’s direct role in constituting the CoC—fuels concerns about a deliberate “will to hide,” potentially masking inflated costs borne by depositors, quid pro quo arrangements linked to political financing, and preferential treatment for well-connected acquirers. Critics increasingly frame the DHFL case as a “test case” for the IBC regime, wherein small savers became unwitting “guinea pigs” in a system dominated by institutional creditors, marginalizing retail stakeholders and entrenching judicial deference to CoC decisions—even in the face of documented NCLAT findings of irregularities. This analysis argues that the DHFL resolution reveals deeper structural flaws in India’s insolvency framework: the transformation of statutory immunity into structural impunity, the erosion of transparency obligations under the RTI Act, and the prioritization of private gain over public accountability. Absent independent investigation and full disclosure, the episode risks eroding trust in regulatory institutions and reinforcing perceptions of oligarchic capture under the guise of financial reform, making urgent rectification of the persistent opacity surrounding CoC expenditures essential to restoring legitimacy to the IBC process and securing justice for affected depositors.

Expose IBC’s Dirty Secret, Resist the Structural Impunity for Cronies!

This dossier argues that the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 has evolved from a reform tool into a system of impunity, exemplified by the Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd collapse, where depositors suffered massive losses while Section 32A IBC erased corporate liability for the “new owner” Mr. Ajay Piramal; highlighting repeated amendments and creditor dominance, it calls for repeal—especially of Section 32A in relation to its contradictory relationship to Section 66—and urges non-violent resistance inspired by Gandhiji to restore accountability.

Retrospective Truths: Valmiki, Ayodhya, IBC 32A, and the Stake of Constitutional Secularism

This short article explores a striking parallel between poetic creation and state-sanctioned reality-making in contemporary India. Drawing from Rabindranath Tagore’s poetic dialogue with Narada in the context of Valmiki’s Ramayana—where the poet’s imaginative mind-realm is declared Rama’s truer birthplace than historical Ayodhya—the discussion extends to two landmark institutional acts: the Supreme Court’s 2019 Ayodhya verdict (with Justice D.Y. Chandrachud’s later confession of seeking divine guidance) and Section 32A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), which retrospectively absolves corporate debtors of pre-insolvency offences upon plan approval, as vividly illustrated in the DHFL-Piramal takeover. Both instances represent exercises in retrospective ontological surgery: the poet erases or reconfigures the past through fiction for ecstatic delight (jouissance), while the judiciary and legislature do so through unsigned judgments infused with faith-based inspiration and statutory “clean-slate” mechanisms that shield economic continuity at the expense of accountability. The article argues that such sovereign rewritings—whether sacralising faith in a title suit or engineering corporate rebirth—breach the thick wall of separation between powers, subordinate evidence-based adjudication to revelation or expediency, and inflict profound injury on constitutional secularism. By collapsing the distinction between objective historical/legal truth and creatively decreed higher truth, these developments risk transforming the secular Republic into a palimpsest open to majoritarian or crony capture, where Article 51A(h)’s mandate of scientific temper yields to engineered absolution and divine endorsement. Ultimately, while the poet may harmlessly invent birthplaces, when the State borrows that crown, the stake is nothing less than the integrity of constitutional secularism itself.

The Mirage of “Piramal University”: Philanthropism, Prestige Branding, and the Crisis of the University in Contemporary India

This essay critically interrogates the ambiguous phenomenon popularly referred to as “Piramal University,” situating it within the broader transformation of higher education in contemporary India. Beginning from a radical critique of institutionalized education inspired by thinkers such as Louis Althusser, Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire, and the pedagogical experiments of Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, the article argues that modern academia increasingly operates as an “academiocracy” — a technocratic regime where knowledge production is subordinated to bureaucratic management, market rationality, and reputational metrics. Through an empirical examination of the Piramal School of Leadership and the sporadic appearance of the term “Piramal University” in corporate documents, CSR narratives, and public discourse, the essay reveals a striking disjunction between operational reality and symbolic branding. While no UGC-recognized university exists under this name, the label circulates widely in digital media, real-estate promotion, and philanthropic storytelling, generating an aura of academic legitimacy without corresponding institutional substance. By comparing this pattern with earlier cases such as the IIPM controversy and with prestige-borrowing strategies like Ajay Piramal’s widely publicized “Oxford Talk,” the essay develops the concept of “Schrödinger’s legitimacy”—a condition in which institutional prestige simultaneously exists and does not exist, sustained through strategic ambiguity and symbolic capital. Ultimately, the case is interpreted not as an isolated anomaly but as a symptom of a wider crisis in which universities are increasingly transformed from communities of inquiry into reputational assets within networks of corporate power, philanthropic branding, and knowledge commodification.

Piramal’s Fixated Obsession with Re 1: Documentation, Con-figured Equivocation and the Facade

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.

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.