 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us, Subit Ghosh who has written the book, The Grand Illusion regarding the GSPC and the publisher of the book, Poranjaya Guhatakutta. Subit, what we do write this book? Because this is the GSPC issue has been around, but nobody has really done a detailed analysis that you have. No, as a journalist you end up doing all kinds of stories. As a journalist, I mean as a reporter. You can do those, he said, she said kind of a very elementary reportage or you can probably report about an incident by an accident, a fire or something like that. Now these are kind of happenstances. Now there are other things that we call developing stories. A developing story can develop say over a period of 2-3 days. It can develop as a political development. It can be spread over say maybe 1-2 months. Now there are lots of other stories also which develop over say 5-10 years. This story developed over 15 years. Now as a journalist you have lots of circumstantial reporting to do. As a journalist you also have the duty to paint the bigger picture as and when you can and as and when you actually need to do it. Now this was something that we had been crossing our minds when we were working on our earlier collaboration which was gas wars. Now if you remember GSBC would keep on cropping up once in a while almost in the background. Now GSBC came on its own in the foreground a few years back after the two CAG reports. One was in 2012, the other was in 2016. That is when it came to the all in its own and that is when we actually had been talking about it that it probably merits a bigger canvas rather than writing a 500-word article here or maybe a 1200-word article somewhere else. It does not really make sense because it does not really tell the ordinary person the big story or it does not actually paint the bigger picture. So that is when we decided now it probably needs to take the form of a book because this is something that has happened over 15 years starting from actually from the Gujarat riots of 2002. 15 years and as you put it in the book 20,000 crores. Now that takes a lot of time and shall we say mechanisms to really spend this amount of money. In your book you talk about 20,000 crores having spent but no gas having come out of it for 12 years. So how does the government justify this at all the Gujarat government? And the CAG is the one which has actually castigated in very sharp terms. The government has been justifying it in only one way that is that the expenditure has been done and the gas will be recovered very soon and there are lots of geological complexities of which you kind of become a hindrance in terms of extracting gas to the point that has been probably been projected plain and simple. Now that has not happened. Now what has happened is very interesting. GSBC actually predates the Modi era by about 20 odd years. It was established in 1979. Now it was taken up by the Gujarat government after 2003. It was taken up as a showcase of the which later on became the Gujarat model. Now this was a company that never made any losses. It was never really running in the red. It was just another good healthy more or less healthy looking PSU at that time. Now after any LP which was the new exploration licensing policy of the government where the government from 1998 onwards I think inverted private players to explore oil and gas oil oil oil and gas in the country. This is about giving out the oil and gas blocks to private parties. Yes that was when GSBC actually decided to this earlier it was called the petroleum cooperation. Now it ventured into oil and oil and gas exploration activities quite on its own. This predates Modi's time. Check out the archives. You will see it was a very state looking company but it did not make any pompous statements. Any kind of very glorious assertions or anything like that. It was just a very state company saying that we are going to go into oil and gas exploration with respect to the Indian government's changed policy. Till then it was all fine. Now after you should read the book, this is the kind of pegging on the pitching the book also that you should read out how the Gujarat government actually did a little bit of jugglery, little bit of a creative accounting and then they inflated the net worth of the consortium which included GSB as the 80 percent partner. That story aside after 2003-2005 the chief minister of Gujarat in June 2005 made this very big statement saying that we have made a huge discovery and it's worth so many billions of dollars and with this we are going to conquer the world. In short that is what his statement was. If you delve into kind of historical accounts I would say news reports about Modi saying something, Modi saying something else altogether later on. If you look at what the ONGC people say or the critics say or the advocates say, there are lots of problems with the terminologies. Now it's extremely important that is something that is really kind of discovered was that the people kept on talking about recoverables. What exactly is a recoverable? In oil and gas parlance everything is recoverable. So when somebody says there is so much of gas there and so much percentage of it is recoverable actually doesn't mean anything. Everything is recoverable. Now there are proven reserves also called proved reserves and there are probable reserves and there are possible reserves. Now what is the difference between all these three? The only difference is that the percentage which is actually a probability. So there's a 90 percent chance, 90 percent probability that you will get recover gas. So that's called a proved reserve. Now a probable reserve it comes down to 50 percent and in terms of possibilities it's come down to 10 percent. That's the only difference. People have been talking in terms of talking so this is not just a question of semantics. Now it's actually kind of quantifying things that a proven reserve is something like that's 90 percent to an ordinary person would be just what is proven and what is probable and what is possible. It is just a question of semantics actually it is not. In terms of the engineering of it there are strict definitions what you are saying and normally this kind of slate of hand is also done by for instance big capital when they want to raise money from the market which are monies also date for instance with KG basin gas. They also used exactly this kind of flimflam shall we say linguistic parlance why over sort of overriding the distinctions and talking of reserves without talking about what is recoverable, what is proven, what is probable, what is possible and so on. So shall we say done for different reasons but virtually the same kind of flimflam. So they seem to have learned this game and Paroje will tell you about it because he did also the money KG basin issue. Yeah in collaboration with Chuvir you know to add to what Chuvir has already said you see Gujarat state petroleum corporation was just one more state government owned public sector undertaking. It was really in 2005 that it shot into the limelight when the then chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi made these tall claims that the gas that was supposed to be there which GSPC is supposed to have discovered would not only make Gujarat energy secure it would make the whole of the country energy secure and when that gas was then after not found and then you had this series of questionable deals including with companies in the Adani group companies in the Ambani group you had the controller and auditor general severely castigating the company then the company started borrowing and there after what happened by 2014 Modi has become the prime minister of India and two years after he's become the prime minister of India what happens is the public sector undertaking one of India's biggest public sector corporations at the ONGC the oil and natural gas corporation decides to literally bail out this company. Now before you go to the bailout let's see look at the scale of it which you have written about 20,000 crores spent over this period and no gas that's the sum and substance of the negligible gas negligible gas let me correct myself negligible gas and as we know in the petroleum sector is any gas as you said is recoverable provided you are willing to spend money now if you have to spend ten dollars and get three dollars out of it obviously doesn't make any sense and what was being fudged was the cost of drilling the cost of recovery as against the price which they would recover and therefore every barrel that you extract every shall say cubic meter of gas you extract is a loss because you'll have to spend more on it this is really the shall we say the CAG accounts which finally laid bare the scam that you are spending money and recovering hardly any gas and if you spend more money you will actually run into bigger losses you're not going to make any profit let alone much gas that's the sum and substance of the book shall kind of say but you have to also remember two things that is the 2012 report where the CAG had won that you are going on the wrong track because you have already borrowed so much and in 2016 the CAG didn't see as much but they could have well said now see we had told you you were going the wrong way and this is where you have landed up in big trouble it was it is GSBC is just we cannot look call it just a scam and it's I mean it's just it's a class of example of how not to do business. Well you are being very generous about it the question that remains the money that they spent where did it go some of it went to the companies which the drilling or supplied the equipment a lot of it are incidental expenses which seem to have gone up from 16 crore to something like 500 crores we do not know whose pocket they'll ended up in so there is not only mismanagement financial shall we say irregularities irregularities is again a weak word financial misadventures of different kinds but also big serious questions this amount of money is spent who got the money you know as they say who benefited so obviously Gujarat government GSBC lost 20,000 crores which finally as Paranjaya said just now was bailed out by ONGC but this 20,000 crores also went to some suppliers went to some agencies and these are something which we still have to figure out where did that money go. You know some of it is already evident first GSBC recklessly borrowed secondly as the then leader of the opposition in the state assembly Shakti Singohil pointed out he actually came up with vouchers with with evidence which hasn't been refuted of GSBC splurging a huge number of questions arise as to where this money went and I personally believe what happened in GSBC is not just a classic case of how not to do business as should be pointed out of the so-called Gujarat model where you make tall claims and then you actually deliver a fraction of what you are claiming but I think it goes for a larger deeper investigation and and and that this kind of question where did the money go it's really worthy of a detailed investigation by the concerned authorities. The CBI was called various names including sort of the house pets and so on cage parrot house pets if you will. So the investigative agencies today do not seem to have any agency shall we say to do some of the investigations we are talking about but yes it does raise very important questions you both of you have talked now about the Gujarat model shall we say the Gujarat model has been more about how to do how to make claims grandiose claims for the purpose of the media and then by winning the elections to such grandiose claims or otherwise then being able to cage the media as well so that uncomfortable questions are not raised that's why you both of you have now forced to publish books by yourself and even in the media what you are writing which should have found much greater notice seems to be sort of in the sidelines. There has been a total washout as far as this book is concerned in the mainstream media as far as when gas was was we got some legal notices for good reason bad reason there was some mention in the main so-called mainstream media and so the messenger was reviewed in a number of places as far as this book is considered has been a total washout probably people don't want to ask the same questions that we are asking because by acknowledging the existence of this book and really nearly you would still know anyway kind of acknowledge the questions that we are asking linking the GSBC disaster which is a very small thing in expanding it to the largest who called Gujarat model and that's why it's called the grand illusion as simple as then and if you if you care to read the last sentence of the of the of the book if you have read that is what it is it's all been a jumla all throughout. You know when we had a launch function in Ahmedabad to launch the book and we had a fairly high profile set of speakers they all spoke but you know you you'll be there was very little media coverage I mean there were TV cameras but barring a few very few people reported it and it must be also mentioned that in the election hearing to the state assembly elections in Gujarat the the story of GSBC at least as far as the Bhartya Janta party is concerned was conspicuous by its absence the Congress party raised the issue they talked a lot about it but as far as the BJP is concerned as far as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is concerned the BJP president Amit Shah is concerned as if this company doesn't exist. Silence this is golden and here we have 20,000 crore of silence or the GSBC shall we call illusion thank you very much both of you to be here with us in news click news click will certainly like to focus on such issues particularly those which are not being carried by the big business houses which are controlling the media so that's something that will continue to do please do keep on writing and do come to our studio to discuss what is not being covered elsewhere.