The business of big politics and the politics of big business

“The business of big politics and the politics of big business” is a phrase for the ways political power and commercial interests can reinforce one another. In Didier Levy’s account, it is not an abstract observation: a bargain involving Shiv Sena members, Rafiq and his Afghans, and the police brings political influence to bear on the city’s opium trade, closing dozens of long-established dens in a single week. The phrase’s force lies in its double direction: politics conducts business, while business itself becomes a form of politics.

Wording and Attribution

Didier describes the closure of the opium dens as an instance of big politics and big business acting together. Lin recognizes the sentence as a memorable line and tells Didier that he likes it. Didier declines the credit: Karla had said it to him first, and he has used it ever since. His explanation gives the phrase a small but significant history of transmission, while his insistence that he has never claimed another person’s cleverness presents attribution as a boundary he still observes despite his admission of many crimes.

The surrounding exchange gives the line a further edge. Didier says that the business of big politics is ruthless, but that the politics of big business is even more so. He frames the two not as separate domains but as forces that become most destructive when combined. After discussing the closures, he turns to a broader maxim: “Civilisation, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit.” The sequence sets the state’s prohibition of opium dens beside the question of who benefits from political and commercial decisions.

The Bombay Example

Didier describes Bombay’s political divisions as regional, linguistic, and ethnic, organized around an us-against-them politics of fear. In his account, the Shiv Sena has influence over the police, many slums, unions, and some of the press, while the city’s major industrial and illicit wealth lies largely with other groups, including Parsees, Hindus from other Indian cities, and Muslims. His argument is that public disputes about race, language, and region also conceal an economic struggle over who controls the changing city.

The opium closures make that argument concrete. Didier says that, in the preceding months, some Sainiks made a deal with Rafiq and his Afghans and the police. In exchange for cash and concessions, the police shut down all but a few of the city’s opium dens. Dozens of established smoking parlours were closed in one week. The episode links political actors, criminal interests, policing, and commercial exchange in a single arrangement: the police enforce the closure, while payments and concessions shape the transaction behind it.

Political Language and Material Consequences

Didier’s indignation is directed not simply at prohibition but at the conjunction of political maneuvering and business interests that he believes produced it. He protests the loss of places that had served the community for generations and treats the rapid closures as evidence of a city being remade through bargains among powerful groups. His complaint is compromised by his own position: he admits to extensive criminality, yet draws a distinction between participating in crime and falsely claiming authorship of a line. That tension makes the phrase less a detached slogan than part of a conversation in which cynicism, self-knowledge, and moral judgment coexist.

A separate formulation by Abdul Ghani offers a related view of how power is sustained. He divides the world’s influential actors into evil men who make consequential decisions, stupid men who enforce their rule, and cowards who know what is happening but permit it through bureaucratic compliance. This is not the same expression, but it widens the political landscape surrounding Didier’s diagnosis: power depends not only on the visible bargain but also on the institutions and people that carry its consequences into effect.