Most journalists reporting from the corridors of power in Southasia are often repositories of stories that never get told. Josy Joseph, award-winning investigative journalist and National Security Editor of the Hindu, treads a different path. He puts together his untold stories, linking them across the board, to present a graphic account of the systemic rot that holds a country like India to ransom. A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India is the result.
A bone-chilling account of the path traversed by the world's largest democracy since adopting liberalisation and economic reforms in the 1990s, the book records exactly how and why crony capitalism and the mushrooming of a host of intermediaries denies any dividends or instruments of democracy to the vast majority of the country's poor.
The narrative is unflinching and unfolds sometimes with the pace of a whodunit, but always retains a faithful journalistic eye. It names names and touches the highest echelons of power. But the canvas is vast and some areas are not adequately elaborated upon within the text. In fact, Joseph and publisher Harper Collins, have been sued for the unlikely sum of INR 1000 crore by airline magnate Naresh Goyal of Jet Airways for alleging links between gangster Dawood Ibrahim and the airline.
The book claims that in December 2001, Intelligence Bureau chief KP Singh and Joint Director Anjan Ghosh had written to the then joint secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs Sangita Gairola, saying that they had confirmed information of "intermittent contact" between Goyal and the underworld gangsters Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Shakeel to settle financial issues. The book tracks the business rivalry between Jet Airways and the now defunct East West Airlines, raising questions on the killing of the CEO of the latter, Thakiyuddin Abdul Wahid. Though the author quotes intelligence intercepts to suggest that the murder took place with the connivance of Dawood and one of Wahid's business rivals, he does not pursue the leads to come to any definitive conclusions. At the book launch in New Delhi, Joseph said he has been threatened and served with legal notices through his two-decade journalistic career and now might face the latter for some revelations in the book, but firmly stands by every word he has written.