Goa’s corruption blog

Very few Goans must have heard the name of Amit Mantri, and understandably so, because very few Indians outside the line of business he operates into will not know him. Having said that, it will be foolhardy to assume that he is a complete nobody in the investment industry circles as his twitter account has some seventeen thousand odd followers, most of them probably deciding to follow him when one of the blogs he put out in the public domain started making sense after a year and a half from the date of his post. 

Amit Mantri is a fund manager and founder for 2Point2 Capital investment firm, with a difference. During the normal course of his research of companies if he finds anything that does not add up he is not afraid to put it out in the public domain in the form of a blog on his company website. A typical fund manager doing a pre investment research on a company finds questionable data, will at best refrain from investing into it and leave the company alone. Not Amit Mantri, he is willing to share his research in the public domain, probably to warn his peers or just candidly doing the right thing.

One of his blog that really got people to stand up and take note was a December 6, 2016 article titled “The curious case of Manpasand Beverages”. In it, he analyzed data he had collected from his research on the company Manpasand Beverages, trying to make a point that there was something wrong in the revenue and the market share the company was putting out, especially after he compared it with established players in the market. Of course the initial reaction by market players was to ignore the entire blog because market price suggests the price of Manpasand almost doubled with more institutional buying after the blog was put out. 

However, on May 26, 2018, a good one and a half year later, the auditor of Manpasand Beverages, Deloitte Haskins & Sells resigned being the company auditors, citing that the management of Manpasand did not provide significant information after repeated requests. Since the auditing firm did not provide further information on the reasons for their resignation, naturally everybody had to fall back on the blog written earlier by Amit Mantri to understand what the article was trying to say. Suddenly a blog that was ignored by everybody because it was not written by somebody famous started making sense. 

The power of putting out correct information that you believe will help make this world a fair and just place, is one of the basic advantages of new age media accessible to almost anybody. Of course with any technology there is going to be a flip side, a side that will promote slander, fake and concocted stories, but the idea of putting out accurate information is just too big a deal to let go the opportunity. 

Corruption was rampant with Party C in office, Party B assumed office promising a cleanup. Corruption came off a tad bit during this period, but to say Party B eradicated corruption will be an insult to our senses. Above scenario is not only about our country but also our state of Goa. Prime Minister Modi through his one-sided communication is trying to project that he is going after corruption, maybe he is, but just not enough. Here, technology should come handy in the hands of the common people. While we in Goa are willing to talk of specific corruption cases behind closed doors, it is time they come out in the open.

For example hypothetically an MLA of your constituency has taken a bribe from a businessman to setup a project in your area. He has paid all the elected people of the panchayat. Imagine talk going around in the village in hushed tones about the deal. Don’t you think it should be escalated to the Chief Minister and to the Prime minister level simultaneously? Talk will achieve nothing, while putting out the information in the public domain while marking a copy to the Prime Minister’s office will at least put the onus on the Prime Minster to take action and that too in full public glare. 

Dr Arvind Gupta the whistleblower in the ICICIBank/Videocon claimed that the Prime Minister’s office did not take action on time on the written complaint he had forwarded sometime back. To be fair, it could be that the Prime Minister did initiate action after receiving the written complaint even if it was a bit late, but if Dr Gupta had put out the letter on the public domain simultaneously it would put pressure on the Prime Minister’s Office to take swift action. 

Escalating even a small corrupt deed to the Prime Minister’s Office will help those deciding to vote for Modi the Prime Ministerial candidate in 2019. Your vote can then depend on the action the Prime Minister’s Office takes or does not take, instead of getting swayed away only by talk. Of course if it simultaneously put out on social media then everybody knows that a corrupt transaction has been red flagged to the Prime Minister and it will help those in the know of the complaint in deciding whom to vote. For too long we have been listening to hollow or hate speeches, at least now let us put some goals in front of the candidate who is seeking the top most job of the country.

Meantime, Party A in Goa should really use the Benami Transactions Informants Reward Scheme 2018, to their advantage. They should use their volunteers to zero in on benami properties in Goa, escalate it to the Joint/ Additional Commissioners of Benami Prohibition Units. The rewards are not small change and can be used to increase party funds that will come handy to fight elections. If action is not taken on the inputs given by the party then they can use that as a plank in the next elections. 

Finally it’s all about the voter’s choice, the preference should not be narrowed down to only your ‘manpasand’ politicians, instead put in front of them measurable goals, they don’t achieve them they make way for somebody new.

(The author is a Business Consultant)