Hindu Undivided Family

Back in my school days, I remember reading 'Kane and Abel' by Jeffrey Archer, with tremendous interest. It was probably my first 'big' book. All these 'Hardy Boys', 'Perry Mason's were quite small (around 250 odd pages). Maybe, the story of Mahabharata, which is indeed a story of brothers fighting each other kept me interested in Kane and Abel as well.

So skirmishes between brothers or siblings is neither new nor serious. That is in 'stories'. In real life, I always viewed such news with lot of circumspection. Maybe the political events inspired to view everything as a 'conspiracy' to deceive others. When An empire split, I had no doubt in my mind that it was a ploy to reduce tax burden (evade?). My reasoning was simple. The revenues can be siphoned off to different firms and net tax obviously can come down with each company coming under different tax slabs etc. The so-called Ambani feud (I still believe that it was nothing but drama) was a ploy to deceive people and mainly courts that a split was 'inevitable'. An honest answer that they want to avoid taxes was probably not forthcoming. Tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion is illegal, I remember the lecturer telling in my ICWA classes. Maybe the corporate laws deal voluntary splitting of companies differently than a 'bloody' spit of companies. One more reason could be to further reduce tax. A bloody split with court battles can lead to lot of 'expenditure' to legal and attorney fees for the new company.

It is not surprising that when there is no news, I cannot accept anyone as leader after Karunanidhi made for much talk. I didnt read too much into such political talk, but other news yesterday made an interesting read - about N Ram filing a defamation suit against Indian Express. This was apparently against the Battle for control breaks out in The Hindu very divided family article in Indian express. To quote from IE,

Ram is said to have recruited two family members in the company: Narayan Lakshman, son of Nirmala Lakshman; and Vidya Ram, his daughter.

and

This was strongly objected to by Murali, Ravi and Malini Parthasarthy, among other members, who alleged that these appointments were made without the board’s consent and proper governance norms were not adhered to.

Well, I along with probably few others mailed Hindu 3 years back on needless coverage given to Vidya Ram and Readers Editor responded

As for "dynastic politics", The Hindu is a 100 per cent family-owned newspaper and the family has been in control. Vidya and her cousins will be the fifth generation of the family working in the newspaper, should they decide to join it (so far, it appears, nobody has). "Dynasty" and "family" have acquired an unsavoury connotation in recent times, but that need not extend to all cases.

I cant help feeling that Ram and Murali are doing like Anil and Mukesh. I wont be surprised if Ram takes Hindu and Sportstar and Murali takes Frontline and Business Line. Now, if their 'new relatives', Marans also fight and split, it will complete a straight circle :))