Devil's Pie: The Devil Makes His Pie of Lawyers' Tongues and Clerks' Fingers (Old English Proverb)

He is a young, middle class guy who aspires to set up a world-class manufacturing enterprise in India. His vision: produce energy saving devices for a country starved of electricity. Instead, Rajan is confronted with a Faustian bargain: tango with the corrupt bureaucrats, else, face extermination. He makes an improbable choice; he dares the establishment. Predictably, the might of a furious government strikes back with vengeance. He is hit with a tsunami of over 300 legal cases, lethal frame-ups, astronomical tax demands and an imminent bankruptcy. As armies of crafty clerks and vicious lawyers attack Rajan and his company, a Bank collapses, thousands lose their jobs and David’s crusade is all but lost to Goliath’s dirty tricks. He and his family are financially strangulated and socially cornered. Yet, he holds his ground and fights back. He unveils unconventional survival strategies that are not taught in any business or law school. The existential battles move from the law courts to the ethereal space of the mind. The result is unprecedented: an arbitration award of more than USD 60 Million as damages against the government, criminal indictments of top bureaucrats for fudging evidence. Every principle that Rajan fights for is vindicated. But the tribulations lead the author on an unintended trajectory of discovery, into a frame of reference contextually far removed from the mundane conflicts that attempt to consume his life. Devil’s Pie is the true story of a man who would never shy away from defying the unequal or the impossible.