Vijay Mallya and India's endless legal limbo: When does the wait end?
Like many, I watched the podcast featuring Vijay Mallya, once larger-than-life showman-billionaire, now looking a bit frail, weaker, in a suburban garden home in Hertfordshire, Britain, reminiscing about how unjust the system has been to him, awaiting legal verdicts, as he potters away, playing with old cars and trying to get this or that going. Having had his passport revoked, it feels a bit like a modern-day tycoon version of Rapunzel - held in a tower, not in want of anything, but whiling away, neither able to cleanse the past and unleash his entrepreneurial animal spirits nor able to go anywhere to get his punishment or freedom. A man in no man's land.
It's sad not because of the fall of a man, but because of how Indian debt recovery laws let things linger - forever. It shouldn't be too hard to calculate whether a man has paid his debts, and if not, what crime he must answer for, and for what duration - in 9 years. Even if Mallya had been arrested on Day 1, his sentence would be less than 9 years. Without a doubt, many great Indian entrepreneurs didn't understand - or, on purpose, defaulted on - loans. It is also without a doubt that government banks giving those loans had a limited idea of what they were getting into and went along being 'yes men' to the government of the day.GoI changed, all loans were now scrutinised, and banks became 'yes men' to the government of the present day - carte blanche deciding, with servility, that all entrepreneurs who defaulted were thieves. And of course, the jewel in the crown was Mallya - already under scrutiny for a sinful Westernised-spending lifestyle - and who did himself no favours by announcing he was retiring to... Britain. That's never a good announcement. The last time someone announced that was Louis Mountbatten. And it led to this country being split.Should everything Mallya said be believed? Nope. But the question one should ask is: How much time is needed before someone can get their punishment and restart?
A prominent murder case suspect - a lady accused of killing her daughter - is now out on bail, making Instagram dance reels. And yet, many Indian entrepreneurs, whose main crimes seem to be unpaid debt or siphoning company loans, are stuck in endless court cases in a labyrinthine bankruptcy law. So, like Mallya, they roam around the house - waiting. These are people who created jobs, and industries - now stuck in IBC limbo, waiting for a legal case to be filed by some authority, not able to end and begin again. If you put them before a firing squad, that would at least have the decency of not being no man's land.Even a petty thief is imprisoned, punished, and then released to learn from his mistakes and restart. The thousands of Mallyas of India - defaulters the media loves to 'take down' - would perhaps like nothing more than to know where they stand: prison for x time, loss of this percent of personal income, so that there's closure.Justice cannot mean decades-long litigation, and re-litigation, and counter-litigation that just goes on till the businessman/woman dies, or sits in London tuning old cars until some child asks, 'Who is Vijay Mallya?' when he finally returns to India. That's such a waste of clever people and their ingenuity.Trump went bankrupt twice, came out of it. Today he has a pretty decent job. If he'd gone bankrupt in India, he'd still be waiting for a company law tribunal date, playing Sudoku, and the date would come and go, and nothing would be resolved. And he'd never know if he was homeless or a billionaire, free or going to jail, somebody or nobody. Maybe the wait is an Indian punishment. Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. Warren Buffett-fan Pabrai is betting big on Edelweiss' Rashesh Shah. Will it pay off?
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