SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Buch cannot just catch a break. After she was first targeted by US-based short seller Hindenburg alleging that she continued to hold interests in offshore funds that were used by the Adani Group to pull off the ‘largest con in corporate history’, Buch is now facing charges from the Congress that has alleged that she has continued to earn income from the ICCI group where she once held a leadership position. If that wasn’t enough, now employees of SEBI have shot off a letter to the Union government alleging that she is responsible for a toxic work culture within the organisation.
The flurry of allegations has led to growing calls for the head of the country’s top regulator to step aside in the wake of the allegations and, if not anything else, to allow for a fair probe. That hasn’t happened yet and is unlikely to happen given the defiant tone struck by the government and the regulator so far. Instead, however, the government and SEBI have maintained complete silence regarding the allegations not even coming out to refute them or to defend the chief regulator perhaps out of the fear that giving any kind of response will stir the pot even further.
The response, instead, came from the ICICI Group, which, in a statement, said that the monies paid were retiral benefits as a result of services rendered earlier. There are also reports that Buch, being the chairperson of an independent regulator will have to answer to Parliament. However, the lack of a response compounded by an unwillingness to even recognize that there might be a problem points to a larger malaise afflicting this government viz the lack of accountability.
Be it rail accidents, the ongoing ethnic conflict in Manipur that has recently flared up resulting in six deaths, the allegations of sexual harassment and rape levelled against the BJP’s Brij Bhushan Singh or the myriad cases of corruption that several top ruling party functionaries are facing have all been met with a stonewall of silence. Not in a single case has the ruling party agreed to institute a fair probe or even pretend that it is serious about bringing justice even if it meant bringing its own party’s functionaries under the scanner.
It is as if the ruling party believes itself to be beyond reproach. But more than that, there appears to be a fear that any acknowledgement of a shortcoming by the government in power will somehow make the government in power seem only human, taking the shine off its self-styled halo and giving legitimacy to the Opposition parties and their allegations, which the Prime Minister has long derided as being undeserving, unqualified and lacking the legitimacy to be a contender on equal footing with the ruling party.
There is also the fear, in the case of the allegations against Madhabi Buch, that an acknowledgement of improper conduct, however innocuous, will open the floodgates not just into her functioning, but in her role in allowing the Adani Group, led by longtime Modi supporter Gautam Adani to get away lightly by refusing to seriously probe charges of pulling off the largest corporate con in history. The dominoes, once set in motion, will inevitably lead back to the Prime Minister himself, given Adani’s known proximity to the PM since his days as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. The rise of the two has mirrored each other.
It is exactly the duplicity that is threatening not just democracy, but even the social fabric of the State, as can be seen in Manipur as well as in several other States of the country. Its implications will be felt for decades to come and the damage will be left for generations to undo.
