Crony capitalism is a curse on humanity with ability to severely dent and destroy economy, environment and eventually annihilate precious lives. India has two glaring examples of crony capitalism that has destroyed lives of innocent people but seems no lessons have been learnt till date to safeguard country and people from dwelling again in malpractices of few.
India first witnessed a terrible case of capitalism going wrong, the infamous "Bhopal gas tragedy" of December 1984 and the second was the grounding of "Kingfisher airlines", a debacle by flamboyant and overambitious Vijay Mallya.
Bhopal gas tragedy struck on the night of 2–3 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. An eye popping case of corporate negligence comes to fore as management of company(UCIL) under invested in safety, which allowed for a dangerous working environment, allowing several safety systems to be inoperable due to poor maintenance and switching off safety systems to save money. A leak in storage tanks caused toxic gas cloud of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and other chemicals to reach shanty towns located near the plant on the night of 2–3 December 1984.
The exposure to gas cloud by thousands of people of Bhopal led to travesty unprecedented in scale and numbers. Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and other chemicals which resulted in 3,787 (government estimate) deaths related to the gas release while unofficial estimates count death toll thrice more then the official data.The painful long term effects of Gas tragedy is unrecoverable environmental pollution and economic rehabilitation besides health hazards to local population exposed to gas.
Over 500.000 people were exposed to the gas killing 8000 within three days while thousands more die in the months afterwards but the compensation offered by company was miniscule. UCIL agreed to pay $470m (£299m) to settle the initial fight for compensation in India's Supreme Court in 1989. As the survivors' legal representative, the government had asked for $3.3bn (£2.1bn). Unfortunately the struggle of survivors and victims is two pronged, fighting health hazards till date with no or little compensation provided . Bhopal gas victims and activists are still struggling for compensation with no help in sight from government or company.
The second case of exploitation is even more uglier then Bhopal gas disaster. Vijay Mallya a flamboyant billionaire who fancies himself as the Richard Branson of India, launched his airline in 2005 to celebrate the 18th birthday of his son Siddharth.
With flawed business model at helm, Kingfisher Airlines soon started loosing money and was folded by October 2012. It is worth noticing that though the airline's underlying assets were far lower than its liabilities still banks (PSU) were in hurry and continued to lend Vijay Mallya. Vijay Mallya owes over Rs 7,200 crores to at least 17 banks. It is to be noted that the employees continued to work for 6-8 months after closure of operations in hope and assurances given by Vijay Mallya to restart airlines,a ploy of management to garner more funds from banks, till airlines permanently shut down in mid-2013 with unpaid salaries of more than 3000 employees since 2012.The shareholders and employees suffered financially and psychologically while Mallya had exit plan in place to save himself . It's not a surprise that in our system banks and government machinery hobnobbing with influential individuals to exploit toothless laws and benefit immensely with malpractices of crony capitalism.
The irony is,it is not the first or last case of crony capitalism where few narcissist billionaires get unlimited freedom with zero accountability to usurp loans from public banks rampaging economy and destroying lives of innocent people. The list of such willful defaulters is long -( http://www.moneycontrol.
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