Business of politics...continued

And why only Maytas? Lanco's owner Madhusudan Rao is a Congress MP.
The proximity of GM Rao (of GMR fame) and GVK Reddy (GVK Infra) families to 10 Janpath is well known. I know from friends of the family that they also quietly breed political ambitions, but have not made it evident because of the fear of antagonising 10 JP.
Deccan Chronicle's Ram Reddy has still not given up his desire to be a Congress Rajya Sabha MP. Subbarami Reddy is the undisputed liquor baron.
On the other hand, in Maharashtra, grapevine has that the entire sugar business is controlled by people associated with Sharad Pawar.
You find purely political people only in the Hindi heartland...where politics for them means politics, and is not just a medium to strengthen or protect their business interests.
Infact, clear segregation between politics and business is extremely important. If the country is run by businessmen, it will destroy the whole social fabric, on which we are based.
The idea of NREGA could have only be conceptualised by the likes of Rahul Gandhi and Raghuvansh Prasad Singh. While the latter owes his roots to the rural cowbelt, Rahul has extensively toured rural areas and interacted with the rural poor.
For them, politics is not a means to attain further successes in business. On the other hand,a businessman politician would have argued that schemes like NREGA are wasteful investment, because there is hardly any return on the capital deployed.
Not that I am a great fan of NREGA, and there are many flaws in the way it is currently undertaken (will come back with more on this in the next post). But all said and done, the scheme has at least provided a source of basic sustenance for several millions of rural youth.