It's mainly due to his disregard for any rules that may exist.

The telecom regulator in India bent rules in favor of Jio: https://m.economictimes.com/news/economy/policy/vodafone-gro...

Rs 11,000-Crore ONGC (state owned oil and gas corp) Gas Shifted to Reliance Industries Fields: https://www.ndtv.com/business/rs-11-000-crore-ongc-gas-shift...

They literally took out full-page advertisements with Modi's image on it: https://thewire.in/economy/modi-reliance-jio-advertisement

You are over-blowing his control: My quick search brings following two things which is opposite to what this thread is claiming.

1. Reliance Jio may not be pleased with govt's spectrum moratorium to telcos: https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/telecom/why-reliance-ji...

2. India Trying to Stop Reliance From Selling Assets, Times Says: https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/india-trying-to-stop...

Telecoms in India are in a tremendous amount of debt. So much so, Vodafone and Idea had to merge but still they have immense financial problems. They are asking for the moratorium because Jio gave away their services for free, undercutting every player there is and the telecom regulator did nothing about it. WRT your first link, it was posted on November 21, 2019. This year the Supreme Court ordered the telecoms to pay their dues: https://m.economictimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom-news/sc...

As to your second link (Dec 23, 2019), yes, the Govt. did try to stop the 20% sale to Aramco, but "Aramco officials and bankers on the deal have been working at Reliance’s offices in Mumbai" says otherwise: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-18/reliance-...

Regarding telcos dues, AFAIK those companies have been avoiding the dues for decades and they must be held accountable some day isn't it? I can't comment on whether or not TRI should have intervened when JIO started offering free services - if it was allowed as per the regulation intervening by TRI could have given a message that it was acting for protecting existing players and if it wasn't allowed by regulations, Telcos would have gone to court.

Regarding the on-going talks of selling asset, since court has already ordered Reliance to reveal assets, they just can't do away with whatever is the liability set. Indian court system is not a joke.

My original point was that Reliance or Mukesh do not rule India; yes they are clever and do lobbying as any other capitalist does but they don't control the nation or gov.

You should really read into how Jio got their license and rules were repeatedly bent to favor them.

https://caravanmagazine.in/reportage/government-helping-reli...

It was on the TV too everywhere. All the damn time.

> The telecom regulator in India bent rules in favor of Jio

It's the Vodafone group CEO that's accusing TRAI of favoring Jio. They had a free run charging exorbitant data prices for a good time. No wonder these accusations are coming from Vodafone.

> Rs 11,000-Crore ONGC (state owned oil and gas corp) Gas Shifted to Reliance Industries Fields

This was fought in courts and eventually an international tribunal favored Jio.

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/govt-moves-delhi-h...

https://www.businesstoday.in/current/corporate/big-victory-f...

> They literally took out full-page advertisements with Modi's image on it..

What does this even mean? Even PayTm issued full page ads with Modi's image. Are they running the government too?

Honestly, Vodafone should be calling out Jio- they’re going to die because of it.

Jio has had some eye opening advantages-

Jio abused the stress test period for their network and essentially launched their service for free saying “join Jio, next few months free! (Fine print, this is technically a stress test.)

The way the auction for spectrum was conducted was magical- they had a front company With impressive bureaucracy wrangling power.

The stench of malfeasance is strong here.

That said fundamentally this is an issue that relates to the death of competition in the market.

Since the bungled SC auction verdict destroyed a vibrant telecom market, we’ve dropped to a triopoly- and heading fast to a duopoly.

What is sad is that the previous governments had done a truly impressive job of threading the economic needle when it came to designing a telecom market with competition.

Indian telecom was a boon to its impoverished customer base. Now it’s becoming a cabal.

> What is sad is that the previous governments had done a truly impressive job of threading the economic needle when it came to designing a telecom market with competition.

I beg to differ. I do understand Jio was quite aggressive in expanding its services and TRAI should have been more vigilant. But that still doesn't prove that they were working together in order to establish a monopoly. The pre-Jio telecom market was good for the telecom companies but it was horrible for the end consumers. The data prices were simply too high.

I’m sorry, but the facts are that india has (had) a remarkable telecom sector at inception.

The reason why I say this is because it’s VERY easy for the market structure to get flubbed and become only 2 or 3 firms which “compete”. (See america- invented the Internet, didn’t get the market right.)

India has some of the lowest, if not the lowest ARPUs in the world. The Indian telecom sector invented the 0 cost phone call (you give a missed call to a phone number, people call you back with offers)

Market structure is so important - you see it how the nascent Value added services market was destroyed by Indian telcos.

Back in the day one new area of innovation was VAS- but telcos were able to dictate the profit spread to VAS firms once they realized VAS was profitable. This killed the industry.

Telecoms tend towards rent seeking behavior (American telecoms say “this is the best service we can provide”, until google fibre turns up and magically those fibre installations get executed)

Data prices being high ignores the cost of calls and of infra issues the telcos were facing.

The spectrum auctions and the subsequent Supreme Court verdict destroyed our market - and there just isn’t the kind of market and economic acumen+Political power mix which will fix the market.

> I’m sorry, but the facts are that india has (had) a remarkable telecom sector at inception.

Maybe yes. But my previous point stands. What good is the sector when millions of Indians can't afford it? (from the perspective of data rates). Also the incumbents had all the time in the world to normalize data rates. But instead they chose to cartelize the industry and kept their profits up.

Again that perspective is wrong, because India is literally among the cheapest and often the cheapest country to buy data.

https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/03/05/the-co...

So they didn't cartelize, and only recently after the insane noise over the 3g auction which fizzled out, did we lose that market.

We've now essentially cartelized (all remaining firms raised rates in tandem), and the few players left are also teetering with Vodafone considering leaving.

This means that we will likely see Jio, and Airtel left, with BSNL constantly being denuded.

Their profits are terrible, and the debt burden because of arrears means they need a rescue, or the future situation will become - impressively - even worse.

I wasn't confident in asserting data rates were low, but I've checked and Indian data rates, along with call rates are the lowest in the world.

The comments of the guy is classic case of subtle propaganda, passing opinion as truth for the western audience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukesh_Ambani is the most powerful person in India. More important than the Prime minister or President. He decides who becomes the prime minister, what news people will consume, etc. He owns everything from oil refineries, infrastructure companies, telecom companies, power companies, entertainment companies, news companies etc. He is the wealthiest person in India and one of world's richest.

Mukesh Ambani once said to the son of the previous BJP PM that Congress (the previous ruling party) is his own private shop.

https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/kya-congress-muke...

Well, he did openly support a Congress candidate in national elections.

I guess they mean Mukesh Ambani, who owns Jio and is the richest person in Asia, is a powerful player in Indian politics.

I believe Jack Ma is now the richest man in Asia. In fact, it’s probably really Ayatollah Khamenei :/

I somehow doubt Ayatollah Khamenei eclipsed the Saudis.

Good point!

Well Mukesh Ambani with a net worth of $50 billion, is the son of Dirubhai Ambani. Like father son too has all political parties in his pockets, be it the congress or BJP or other parties in India. Word is since Modi didnt coorperate in something with Mukesh, he literally sabotaged an alliance they had in the state of Maharashtra, to screw Modi's party over and stiched up an alliance of political rivals.

It's one thing of accusing him of cronyism. It's another to accuse him of swaying elections for political convenience.

Practically everyone would believe this story in real life. Such is the image of Mukesh Ambani in India.

He is not Warren Buffett type of billionaire, that is for sure.

Dhirubhai Ambani practiced Jugaad, something which was necessary in license permit Raj. Even average Indians understand the nuance in this and how difficult it was to conduct business in that era.

Let’s not call it jugaad. It was corruption and a lesson on how stupid laws force people to find an illegal way to do things that should be legal.

The reason reliance gets shit though is not because of corruption - Reliance is fundamentally a predatory firm.

Just a tangential story.

Few years back there was this 'news' that Mukesh Amabani's son had killed 2 person in a car accident. Now you can't find any link in any major news website

https://thewire.in/business/anant-ambani-memes-reliance-indu...

Jio's parent company is Reliance Industries which is run by the richest family in India. So the usual rich people bad is the reasoning here. In reality, all rules are applied to Jio just like they are applied to other companies. I know this because I have worked there for a while.

It means he is "literally" the government of India. What part was unclear? This is HN, where JavaScript framework enthusiasts and css programmers philosophise and are experts on everything. Don't try to make too much sense

(Let's assume)

You have followed US policy making, lobbying and stuff like how a coccus of ultra rich people/execs are actually running the Govt from behind the curtain and all that. So when you read all that that usually means the groups do that to different parties i.e maybe one group does that to the republicans and another to the democrats.

(Now enter India)

This guy alone pretty much controls the Govt of India and its decisions irrespective of the party, more so with this current right wing Govt (they are like family).

If you read a bit, there are Govt decisions that look like this:

Let's say there are couple of shops in a village. One of those is billionaire's shop. This is a very famous village market among neighbouring villages. Business is good, especially at night (some famous fair/shrine or whatever). There's the huge high central light in the village square - this is the only light that keeps the market area lit. Now the village head decides he needs to shift the light to a better location so that it will be used even better, especially for the nightly shopping. Fair. Great idea! So he makes a declaration that the village assembly has taken an unanimous decision to move the light to the inside of billionaire's shop so that it is better for the villagers and all the shop keepers in the village. And the best part is the villagers cheer this decision and run after anyone who even has a doubt about this decision let alone an objection.

However if the next time this right wing Govt loses (which seems highly unlikely the way this party/Govt has consolidated power) he might be in trouble but I doubt that would be something he can't handle or hasn't handled before.

Sonia Gandhi literally uses Reliance Jets for her personal sojourns. You are dreaming if you think Mukesh Ambani and Congress are antithetical, in fact funnily i would argue he is closer to the Congress dispensation than BJP.

Where did OP say anything about Congress vs Ambani?

At best he hinted that Ambani is closer to Modi which is not that unexpected. Of course, no government has ever been 'unfriendly' to Ambani. They are all benefiting from one another.

Ambani is losing his wealth and person who benefited the most during this time is Adani who is going to surpass ambani in wealth.

The same old tired Illuminati/Soros/<Generic Rich Businessman owning the government> spiel repeated in all the countries across the globe.