Let’s Imagine! Imagine Charlie Chaplin not being the
legendary comedian that he was. Or Arnold Swarzeneger not the action icon we
all know him as. Imagine Sachin Tendulkar not being the celebrated cricketer
but a regular 9 to 5 school teacher or if electricity was never invented. What
would it be like if Newton had never discovered the Law of Gravity or Einstein
had not made those elaborate inventions? What if Elvis continued driving
trucks or Satyajit Ray wasn’t an illustrious story teller? Difficult and rather
unfamiliar and absurd hypothesis! Would these people be still famous, brilliant
and celebrated if they were not in their chosen professions? What would have
our lives been like in the absence of these people or their world changing
contributions to humanity? The answer can only be left to one’s imagination and
with no certainty can anyone claim that they be who they are today or what
would our existence been like, if these men were not true to their calling.
Now for a moment, let’s imagine a bit further. Would Sahara India have avoided
the existential crisis, they are in today, had they not chosen to provide a
sound, secure & lawful financial structure to a stratum of the society who
has always stood ignored amongst the tall claims of social and economic
development? What would the lives and future of these millions of depositors
would have been like if they didn’t have a secure medium to invest and save and
flourish? What would the future of the children growing in these millions of
households have hold? Would they be educated? Would there be employment for the
unemployed or the less skilled or the poor? Would there have been economic
empowerment for the have nots who do not have the means or the sanction to even
hold a bank account or a legitimate Id? Would the chief of Sahara India,
Subrata Roy, have saved himself the witch hunt by a National Regulator or
avoided jail had he chosen to create a lush empire and focused on serving
himself rather than serving the people? Such a swarm of hypotheticals starting
with just one simple question, “Imagine?”
Sadly, there are no simple answers. Only simple questions. The answers are
complex, unfathomable and lead down to a road of nefarious possible motives,
juxtapositions & outcomes. SEBI’s motives juxtaposed with the Court’s
senseless brickbat blows on the Sahara Chief only adds insult to the common
man’s understanding of productive regulation and fair justice. Even more dangerously,
the imagination of SEBI and the Courts have taken a turn for the worse and seem
to be more heavily invested in feeding their own egos, their illogic and
mindless banter rather than using that imagination to serve and secure.
Currently, SEBI has been claiming that investor accounts provided by Sahara are
fictitious and the regulator’s independent verification has failed to make any
headway. SEBI so far has been able to repay less than 1 crore rupees to OFCD
investors even though its been 18 months since Sahara deposited 5,120
crore rupees with the market watchdog. Interestingly, in 2008, Sahara had paid
back around 4 crore depositors under strict supervision of Reserve Bank of
India. The central bank, then, did not stumble upon any such fictitious account
and the OFCD issue had almost same set of investors. So is SEBI imagining these
investors as fictitious or is it disguising its incompetence. To further add to
the comedy of errors, the Supreme Court has expressed its displeasure over
SEBI’s tardy pace in verifying these investor accounts in Sahara’s OFCD issue.
I can only imagine the embarrassment the courts must be facing at the hands of
the regulator’s malfunction. And who is paying the price for all this mockery.
The innocent, the lawful and the poor!
Let’s tax our imagination one more time and explore another set premise. What
if Sahara is innocent? What if the Sahara supremo is being wrongfully accused
and punished? Is SEBI acting in the best interest of the depositors or is it
blinded by its punitive sense of dominion? What would it be like if
SEBI realized and acknowledged that these investors in question
are for real? What would it be like if there was no Sahara to begin with? Are
these questions that have real and heavy implications or are they just plain
rhetoric?
The answers can only be left to unfold as time and events pass by. The outcomes
would be real and the consequences can either set unhealthy & dire
precedents or can pave way to a truthful, mindful and fair premise. Just IMAGINE..!!!
