LaMo is the ultimate enfant terrible
Lalit Modi is the archetypal spoilt brat, who loves NOTORIETY AND flAUNTS IT LIKE WAR-MEDALS.
Hum taalib-e-shohrat hain, Hamen nang se kya kaam Badnaam agar honge, Toh kya naam na hoga?”
( I am desirous of fame, what do I care about riches?
Will I not be famous, even if it is in infamy?)
When, Shaifta, the preeminent poet of the Mughal era penned these immortal words, he did not know that a century and half later, one enfant terrible, Lalit Modi from the grandiose land of milk and honey, would make them the cardinal tenet of his life.
Hot tempered and calm, reckless and wizardly, arrogant and large hearted, invincible and paranoid — Lalit Modi, with his countless shades of grey is an enduring enigma and this century’s ignominious “controversy child”.
Born into one of the most affluent families of businessIndia, Lalit Modi, the grandson of the illustrious Rai Bahadur Gujar Mal Modi and the successor to his father, K. K. Modi’s multi- billion dollar empire, is the archetypal spoilt brat, who loves notoriety and flaunts it like a bunch of war-medals on his chest.
Quirky genius breeds within the innards of hyperactive children, and Lalit Modi showed daunting traits of reckless behaviour early in his childhood. The typically wayward child, he was expelled from school for playing hooky, one of his lesser vagaries, before he was arrested on charges of trafficking cocaine, assault and second degree kidnapping in the United States where he had been packed off by his despairing parents for further studies.
Lalit Modi has always been on the wrong side of the law. A fact that he revels in, since breaking rules is his passion and being in the news his consummate need.
While in Delhi as a young bachelor, Modi began courting and wanted to marry his mother’s friend Minal Sagrani, a freshly divorced mother of two and more than a decade older than him. His family, understandably, opposed the marriage, but Modi managed to get his grandmother, Dayawati Modi to convince the family. Lalit and Minal were married in 1991. They moved to Mumbai, as Minal was to face a total boycott in Delhi’s social circles for her transgression.
Before that a report of a high handed brash youngster losing Rs 5 crore in a manic gambling spree on Diwali night with a much older and now deceased hotelier, had hit the rumour mills. If sources are to be believed, they had come to blows during and after the cards game, and peace had to be brokered by a senior Congress functionary on the behest of his hapless father. No one knows whether the debt was paid back or not, but the story died a natural death soon after.
Lalit Modi did things differently. His early enterprises like MEN (Modi Entertainment Network) in collaboration with Walt Disney Pictures, ESPN and Fashion TV were non starters and he was forced to live on an allowance from his father, as his own business remained non- profitable due to his fallout with his collaborators.
Modi’s thrilling ride to stardom began in 2008 when he masterminded a cricket tournament, modelled on the T20 form of cricket, the Indian Premier League (IPL). He showcased to the world, his brand of wizardry and networking and from there, he catapulted to the highest circles of fame and fortune in the eyes of the awestruck lovers of the game.
This proved to be his defining moment and also his most profitable business venture. The first to introduce this concept to India, he had engineered a feat that became an instant crowd puller in a cricket crazy country. This time it came laced with Bollywood stars, skimpily dressed, imported cheerleaders and glitzy cricket grounds that revolutionised the game. The coveted after- parties became a matter of legend that everyone wanted to be a part of.
The IPL soon ranked among the world’s biggest sports leagues, worth a staggering $4 billion. It earned for Lalit Modi the distinction of being in the exalted club of sports monarchs like Don King and Bernie Ecclestone. But with this came greater arrogance, his feeling of omnipotence and his rising cluster of enemies, whom he trampled sadistically with impunity.
Jagmohan Dalmiya was the first game changer to usher commerce into cricket. As a Marwari construction magnate from Kolkata, he understood the nuances of connecting cricket with money. But Lalit Modi, scion of the Modi group, was three steps ahead of Dalmiya. His quest to monetise every single asset on the field of play led to big bucks, but also made him a lot of enemies.’
Like all profligates, Modi threw all caution to the wind. He needlessly tempted the devil and hastened his own hubris. His detractors started baying for his blood and he had to flee the country for fear of arrest following disclosures of serious irregularities in the IPL, which he ran like a dictator would his private fiefdom. From there began his life in luxurious exile.
Fast cars, wild horses, super elongated luxury yachts, custom made private jets with 24 carat gold fittings, exotic holidays in paradise islands — Lalit Modi indulges in his fancy like a reigning tsar of the modern world. He cares for no one and fears no one. He has a penchant for collecting the world’s best snooping devices that he uses with aplomb. For him knowledge is power.
He exults in the current spotlight on his dubious skills that have kept him out of the police dragnet. He grits his teeth, spewing venom in his deceptively childlike lisp, right into the camera. He mocks the red-faced authorities as he dares them to “catch me if you can”.
Lalit Modi is a kamikaze warrior on a mission to self-destruct. In his oath of omerta, no one is spared and no one knows who’s next. A man who knows no work ethic other than success, he believes that any obstruction on his path should be felled mercilessly.
While he jet- sets to exotic locales in his private aircraft, cozying up to Hollywood stars for urgently Instagrammable selfies, the Indian agencies scurry for cover after his embarrassing disclosures emerge with alarming regularity. The general perception is that Lalit Modi knows too much.
The financial irregularities of the IPL during and after his tenure and the involvement of several politicians across party lines, make everyone mortified of him. It suits many to keep him where he is — out of India. It’s certainly a novel and inventive approach to raising revenue.
We all know that Bangladesh needs to expand its tax base, but the tax authorities continue to have difficulty in collecting income taxes. Solving the problem of getting tax-payers to pay more income tax continues to be a challenge for the authorities, hence the continued reliance on and continuing expansion of the value added tax as a tool for raising revenue. The problem is that consumption taxes such as our value added tax are typically regressive in effect. This is because the richer you are, typically, the smaller the proportion of your income you spend on goods and services in any given month.
On the other hand, the poorer you are, typically the higher the proportion you spend on goods and services. In fact, at the bottom of the income ladder, most families spend every penny they earn each month, and are thus taxed on every last penny they earn, however little it may be.
In fact, it is ironic that by relying more on consumption taxes rather than in- come taxes, the government actually probably ends up taking more out of a poor person’s pocket than if they enacted and enforced an across- the- board income tax. I guess that is why the Finance Minister tried to ameliorate the regressive nature of this year’s tax regimen by raising taxes on items that are perceived to be luxury goods and used only by those who ought to have plenty of disposable income.
Unfortunately, luxury is in the eye of the beholder, and when it comes to private education and private medical services, I have to take issue with how the government defines a luxury good or service.
You don’t have to be wealthy or even middle-class to have to (not want to) avail yourself of private education or private healthcare in this day and age, you merely need to have the ambition to provide the best for your family, and an inability to access the public services set aside for such a purpose through lack of enough of them to go around.
We can all understand why it is appropriate to heavily tax items such as air-conditioners and decorative light fixtures. But education and healthcare are hardly similar. It is good that the tax on private education fees was dropped down to 7.5% from the initially bruited 10%, but the fact remains that when there are hundreds of thousands of young men and women who want higher education but cannot find a place in the public institutions, it makes little sense to