[silentmars]

For those of us who are not familiar with the Indian political and business background of this story and the characters, can someone summarize?

Some parts translate pretty clearly to a naive reader - high-growth startup accrues too much debt in acquisitions and expansion, some of the new ventures lose money, takes on a high-profile investor and restructures to stabilize, investor takes over the company and kicks out the founder. Others are less so - references to Reliance's place in the political sphere, something about gas prices(?) which I presume Reliance has something to do with, a new political movement that is apparently supported by some of the people in the story but not others.

[whocanfly]

A lot happened in India around the recently concluded elections. This resulted in the loss of the ruling party, Congress, It lost so bad it could not form an opposition in the house. The winner, BJP, won with unprecedented margin (at least in the last few decades)

One of the major reason for the downfall was growing discontent, anger among the people against corruption, crime and inflation etc.

A new political party which calls itself, Aam Admi(Common Man)Party, started by Arvind Kejriwal, emerged by raising its voice against corruption. Multi-billion dollar scams were exposed frequently.

The party projected itself as anti-corruption and targeted Congress, and several businesses. It raised fund through people and media propagated their message. It continued to expose and openly question government expenses. They targeted Reliance, the largest business conglomerate, several times.

[ganwar]

In addition to the previous comment, this new party (AAP) accused the two other main political parties of being in collusion with Reliance to fix the price of natural gas rather high. This is the crony capitalism angle and this, supposedly resulted in the animosity between AAP and Reliance.

However, these are all accusations made during a vehemently charged election atmosphere. Take them with a pinch of salt.