7 highlights
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Dhirendra Brahmachari taught Indira Gandhi yoga, and acquired unbridled power and wealth. When the Shah Commission was appointed to investigate the Emergency, it looked closely at the relationship between the PM and her guru.
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The swami claimed the plane was a donation; the CBI said he had paid for it, but not the import duty. Accordingly, the Janata Party impounded it; when Indira Gandhi came back to power, he got it back.
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Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao cultivated Chandraswami. The same old stories played out, the favoured land allocation in New Delhi, illegal foreign exchange transactions, unfettered access and influence peddling.
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When the Dera Sacha Sauda was finally busted in 2017, 67 weapons were surrendered, half of them unlicensed. It was alleged that 400 followers had been castrated to bring them closer to God. The CBI believed that the sect did this to protect female followers from sexual advances, rather like the eunuchs who guarded the harems of our Maharajahs.
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For years, the CEO of the world’s third largest stock exchange, the NSE, apparently took advice on everything from organisational structure to executive remuneration and financial projections from a Yogi who existed largely in cyberspace.
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The Association for Democratic Reform (ADR) compiles the data for elected MPs from affidavits filed by them when they announce that they are standing for elections. In the 2019 Lok Sabha, 43% of elected MPs declared that they had pending criminal charges against them. Prof Trilochan Sastry, Founder and Trustee of ADR, told me that this number had gone up from 34% in the 2014 Lok Sabha, and 24% in the 2009 Lok Sabha.
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Economists say money has three functions - as a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of accounts. But when it becomes an end in itself, an account of your self-worth, it becomes pathological, and destructive.