At the annaprashan ceremony of his grandchild earlier this year, there was absolutely no evidence Sahara group chief Subrata Roy was under any pressure.
The ceremony was attended not just by every politician of stature one can think of (barring Mayawati), but also a galaxy of bureaucrats (serving and retired) and a large number of Bollywood stars, including Abhishek Bachchan (putting to rest rumours of a fallout between Amitabh Bachchan and the Sahara Parivar).
However, as a bureaucrat who attended the ceremony observed sardonically, this was par for the course.
“For many present, the relationship with Sahara is like the bhajan by Raidas — prabhuji, tum chandan hum paani — so deeply are their financial fortunes intermingled with those of the Sahara group.”
That the Sahara group’s ventures have been responsible for the good fortune of many is true.
A bureaucrat who was invited to dinner by Subrata Roy at his sprawling Noida guest house in the 90s recalls that then too Roy had come a long way from the time he started business on a scooter in Gorakhpur, collecting small financial contributions from ordinary people but never failing to return their money.
His first venture was his newspaper, an idea ahead of its time in those days.
Roy struck a friendship with the then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Vir Bahadur Singh, and his business advanced by leaps and bounds.
“I had dinner with him (Roy) around this time. I still remember at the dinner table, there was a lady, clearly a professional manager of money, because she kept getting calls and kept telling ‘buy this’ and ‘sell that’. Whatever money Sahara collected as deposits was invested wisely and on professional advice,” the bureaucrat said.
Sahara’s fortunes began dipping when Kalyan Singh took over as UP chief minister in 1997.
One day, bureaucrats in the chief minister’s office got a frantic call from Subrata Roy -the