M.Rajshekhar writes for Scroll.in
Industry is fleeing Punjab – an investigation by Scroll.in found a growing number of companies have shut down or are planning to set up newer units outside the state. Among the reasons cited by businessmen for the exodus were the bribes they claim they are compelled to pay to politicians belonging to the ruling Akali Dal.
But rent-seeking is not the only way Akali Dal leaders are strangling industry in the state.
Over the past decade, Punjab has seen a handful of players come to dominate what earlier were fragmented industries composed of hundreds of small companies. This consolidation happened in a bewilderingly diverse set of industries, including stone crushing, sand mining, cable distribution, liquor distribution and bus transport. Most of these new, big players are alleged to have links to the Akali Dal.
Part 1: Liquor
Take liquor. Till 2002, liquor distribution in Punjab was in the hands of myriad entities. The industry had distilleries on top, a bunch of wholesalers in the middle, and hundreds of small businessmen running liquor shops – or thekas – at the base.
Revenue department officials at the district level used to auction wholesale and theka licences, said a businessman who used to own liquor stores in Amritsar. In every circle, the administrative subset of the revenue department, there could be as many as 12 thekas.“The government would define the revenues it wanted from each circle – say Rs 7 crore, ” the businessman explained. “Since most of the companies in this business were small, they could not bid for the whole circle. And so we would form consortiums and bid.”
The format for choosing wholesalers was different. According to a former wholesaler who like the retailer spoke on condition of anonymity, anyone could apply for a wholesale licence. Till the early 2000s, each district had several wholesalers – as many as 20 in some.
This architecture created a highly competitive market. “Across the state, licences would go to more than 1, 000 companies, " said Sarabjit Singh Verka, an investigator with the non-profit Punjab Human Rights Organisation. "No monopoly could form. Competition was stiff. The price of liquor was low. And the government earned good revenues.”
This structure first weakened under the Congress regime. In 2002, shortly after his appointment as chief minister, Amarinder Singh gave a state-wide wholesale licence to liquor baron Ponty Chadha – effectively, his company had a monopoly over the sale of liquor in the whole of Punjab.
According to Verka, the next four years saw men hired by Chadha wage war against homebrews, and against people who brought in liquor from neighbouring states (or the Union Territory of Chandigarh) instead of buying it in Punjab. They would, says Verka, “raid marriage halls and parties to check whether the alcohol had been brought in Punjab”.
In 2006, with state elections around the corner, says Verka, the government ended Chadha’s contract. The liquor business reverted to the circle model with multiple wholesalers in every district.
In 2007, the Akalis came to power and, a year later, began to consolidate the liquor business again. This time, says the former wholesaler, the government brought down the number of wholesale licences to just two for every district. As the number of wholesalers fell, their ability of the remaining wholesalers to put pressure on distilleries and retailers increased. “Distilleries were told to offer higher trade discounts and longer payment periods, " he said. "Stores were put under pressure by slashing trade discounts and insisting on immediate
payments."
Of the two wholesalers, one was usually an old player, the other one was a new entrant allegedly known to the Akalis. This split averted complaints of monopolisation. But, according to the former wholesaler, the new entrant called the shots: he would sell most of the stipulated quota and the holder of the renewed licence could sell the rest.
Most of these new wholesalers, Scroll was told repeatedly, are connected to the Akali Dal. Said KR Lakhanpal, a former chief secretary and finance secretary of Punjab, “In Punjab, it is very well known that the liquor business is dominated by functionaries of the ruling dispensation.”
In their conversations with Scroll, the wholesaler, the retailer and Verka said five individuals and their families control over 80% of the liquor trade in the state. Of them, at least three have direct links to the Akali Dal.
Bikram Majithia's family owns Saraya Industries, which has operations in liquor and energy. He is the brother of Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur and brother-in-law of Sukhbir Badal, the Deputy Chief Minister, and the son of Chief Minister Parkash Badal. He is also the minister for three departments, including non-conventional energy Deep Malhotra is the owner of the liquor-manufacturing Oasis Group and the Akali Dal MLA from Faridkot.
Shiv Lal Doda owns Gagan Wines and was the halka in-charge (local leader) of the Akali Dal in Abohar.
Questions sent by Scroll to the state government asking it to respond to these allegations remained unanswered.
Part 2: Stone crushing
If the liquor business saw smaller companies elbowed out by a few large ones, the stone quarrying business played out to a different pattern. Here, the industry structure stayed the same, but an outsider came in and took away most of the margins.
Punjab’s quarrying industry is concentrated in a few districts. Rivers such as the Ravi are a major source of stone. When it rains, says the owner of a crushing plant near Pathankot, “The Ravi swells as wide as 3 km. When it recedes, it leaves behind boulders on the fields of farmers.” This annual phenomenon created a crushing industry in two districts near the Himalayas – Pathankot and Gurdaspur. Apart from this, crushers also operate in districts that have rocky outcrops and hills, such as Ropar.
Crushing too is a fragmented industry, thanks to the low costs of entering the trade. A crushing unit, the businessman points out, costs no more than Rs 1.5 crore.
Till 2007, plots for riverine crushing were awarded through auctions. Successful contractors collected the stones deposited by the river, crushed them and heaped them up in large piles. The construction industry from Amritsar and elsewhere bought its requirements from these mounds. The market price of a tractor trolley-load of crushed stone was Rs 700-Rs 800.
Around 2010, once the central government began insisting on environmental clearances for stone mining, things began to change. According to a 2012 petition filed by lawyer Gurbir Singh Pannu in the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, Punjab held very few auctions thereafter. His petition says, “In Roop Nagar district itself... the total quantity permitted to be taken out for three years was 159, 000 tons. This was almost a joke as there are about 400 crushers in the Roper district itself and this much quantity of stones will last barely three days only.”
Similarly, in Pathankot, says his petition, the quantity permitted by regular auction would generate only six days’ work for 400 crushers.
In the guise of environmental regulation, did the government push a legal, revenue-generating industry underground? Says Pannu’s petition, “If the crushers have to work, they will have to work on the basis of illegal mining, not acknowledged by the state nor any revenue paid to the state.”
Adds human rights investigator Verka, if legally mined stone is so low, “where is the rest of the stone being used for making roads and buildings across Punjab coming from?”
People in the villages near Pathankot say stone crushing never really stopped after the central government order. Travelling through the area, it's clear that crushers are working relentlessly, and stone-laden trucks plying hectically. Villagers living near Pathankot say that more than a thousand trucks travel along these roads
every night.
This was verified separately on a visit to a crushing unit at Kathlour near Pathankot. There, workers were matter of fact about the source of the raw material. “From the river, ” a worker said.
“Mining continues, ” said the quarry owner. “It is just that now the stones are shown as coming from Jammu and Kashmir.” He claimed that crushers can now mine and transport their stones only on the payment of Rs 500 per tonne to a local called Kuldip Singh Makkar.
“On paying this money, ” said the owner, “we are given J&K ki parchi” – a document which attests that the stones being transported are from Kashmir and, therefore, legitimate.Kuldeep Singh Makkar, the local who is allegedly collecting levies from quarry owners, is the brother of Akali
Dal MLA Sarabjit Singh Makkar.
When contacted, Makkar denied any wrongdoing. “Sab ke paas permit hain", everyone has a permit, he said. “There is so much police. How can anyone do illegal mining?”
On being asked why he was being named by people in the local industry, he said: “I run a legal crusher and I complain about those doing illegal work. Hum chori ko pakadwatey hain. I get the illegal operators arrested. And that is why people doing illegal work are trying to defame me.” As for the PIL, he says, these are joothi writs, false writs.
His brother, he added, has no role in this business. “Woh is kaam mein nahin hain. Lena dena hi nahin hain, " he said. He is not in this line of business.
However, Kuldip Makkar’s claims about the lack of illegal mining are challenged by local reporters and businessmen in the crushing industry.
“For every Rs 200 the crusher makes, the goonda tax is Rs 500, ” said the quarry owner. “This means that we, who made all the investments, earn Rs 600 while they make Rs 1, 500.”
Questions to the state government did not get a response.
Part 3: Buses and Cable Distribution
A similar process, where a handful of people cornered most of the business (or value) from an industry, occurred in bus transport and cable distribution.
Take transport first. This too was a fragmented industry, with several companies plying buses. Here, as an award-winning investigation in The Tribune showed, a monopoly has taken root since 2007. “[Sukhbir] Badal- associated transport companies not only hold a virtual monopoly in the luxury bus segment, but are clearly the dominant player in the private sector, ” the paper reported. “Out of the 84 luxury bus permits operating in Punjab, at least 52 are with transport companies patronised by the Badals.”
This happened in two ways. In some cases, people close to the Badals acquired stakes in private transport companies such as the Indo-Canadian Transport Company, which plies Mercedes Benz buses between, for instance, Delhi airport and Punjab’s major cities. At other times, The Tribune reported, “Companies associated with the Badals have been on a permit-buying spree from other private transporters. This is especially so after the December 2012 order of the Division Bench of the Punjab & Haryana High Court which put a blanket ban on issuance of new permits.”
Then, there is cable distributorship. As in the rest of India, the cable business started in Punjab around the first Gulf War, with a bunch of entrepreneurs rigging up dish antennae in streets and neighbourhoods. These were small businesses, feeding as few as 500-600 households and subsisting on monthly subscription fees and local advertising.
Over time, according to a cable operator in a town near Ludhiana, the cable companies consolidated. This process picked up speed after, as this article in Firstpost in 2012 pointed out, the Akali Dal came to power. “Soon after the Akali Dal government took over, there were rapid changes in the cable network distribution front. DTH had not yet arrived, and there were three networks then – Hathway (belonging to Mumbai’s Rahejas), Zee’s Wires & Wireless India Ltd, and Digicable. Today, none of them exists. A new cable distribution network – Fastway
Transmission Private Ltd – has usurped all three networks.”
The fallout of this is that cable operators are getting squeezed. Fastway Transmission sends satellite signals to local cable distributors who then send them on to their customers.“I have to pay Fastway about Rs 125 per connection but I am not allowed to charge more than Rs 275, ” complained the operator. “It is hard to survive.”
As it happens, Fastway too has a Badal connection. Between 2010 and 2015, Jagjit Singh Kohli and Yogesh Shah were directors on Fastway’s board. Their names, incidentally, also show up in the statutory filings of Sukhbir Singh Badal’s two media companies – Gur-Baz Media and G-Next Media. G-Next owns the PTC Group of television channels.
In 2014, Gur-Baz owned 99.98% shares in G-Next. Orbit Resorts owned 99.98% shares in Gur-Baz. Sukhbir Badal owned 67.32% of Orbit Resorts.
The role of Sukhbir Badal
Long-term observers point out that the lines between business and politics were never so blurred, even during previous reigns of the Akali Dal. So why now?
Much of the onus for this is placed on deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, the son of chief minister Parkash Badal. A cabinet minister in the state government, who did not want to be named, alleged: “Sukhbir is mainly a businessman. He is running the state like a private limited company.”
The growth in the younger Badal's net worth puts most conventional investments to shame.In 2004, when he stood for Lok Sabha elections, he and his wife – current Union Minister for Food Processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal – pegged the value of their assets at Rs 13 crore. In 2007, when he contested state
elections, the couple’s assets stood at Rs 67 crore. Seven years later, in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Harsimrat Kaur Badal declared joint assets of Rs 108 crore.
That’s a rise of Rs 95 crore over 10 years. An eight-fold increase in 10 years. In contrast, a person who invested, say, Rs 1 lakh in fixed deposits in 2004, would have seen a 2.3-fold increase – not factoring in taxes.
Strikingly, while the fortunes of the Badals and Akali Dal leaders have gone up, the state’s welfare delivery systems have been gutted for want of money.
Courtesy-Scroll.in
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http://scroll.in/article/804998/every-business-in-punjab-leads-back-to-an-akali-dal-leader-well-almost