Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology

17th January 1660

Akhand Bharatiya Empire

*Chu*

"Goodbye, honey."

It was a normal day for Vijay. He woke up like everyone else, exercised a little, had his breakfast, and set off to the Simhasana Bhavana.

He was a little bummed out after learning that the opening of the stock exchange had to be delayed since the number of brokers couldn't be trained quickly enough, but besides that, he was in a jovial mood. Your adventure continues at empire

However, when he got to the Royal Palace, he was surprised after seeing the person standing in the lobby.

"Charan Gowda!" he called out.

Looking at Vijay, Charan's face lit up. "Your Majesty," he immediately greeted with a standard military salute.

"Let's go talk inside," Vijay said as he quickly moved forward, while his captain of the Royal Guards carried his belongings inside.

Charan nodded and immediately followed along.

The leather on the seat creaked a little when Vijay sat down. "Have you completed the things I told you to do?" he asked with a hint of inquiry in his eyes, because if not, why else would he be here?

Charan did not deny it and nodded.

"I have completed dividing the military factories into three different divisions like you asked, Your Majesty."

" I'm just waiting for your orders "

Vijay smiled with happiness. "Very good." He pressed the small bell on his desk. A crisp ding echoed throughout the room, and almost immediately Ganesh entered the office. "Hand over the document to Mr. Charan Gowda here."

Ganesh looked at Charan. "This way, please, General," he said, his hand in an inviting gesture.

Charan Gowda didn't know what was happening, but he nonetheless obliged. 'His Majesty should have a reason to have me directly report the progress to him personally,' he thought as he followed behind Ganesh. Soon, he got the document in his hand, and by opening it and looking through its contents, he was shocked to find out that he was given an appointment letter to serve as the director of a company called Dynasty Corporation. 'Wha-' He was confused, as he did not know why he was suddenly given such a post when he already was the director of a major sector in the logistics department of the military.

But as he turned around the pages, his eyes widened. 'The Dynasty Corporation will be the exclusive military arms manufacturing company and sole proprietorship of the royal family, directly under the command of the patriarch of the Devaraya family.' His mouth dropped in disbelief. Getting the surprise of his life aside, he was more shocked to find out that this Dynasty Corporation was not even under the supervision of Raya Assets, the overlord governing body of all royal family businesses. 'Shiva! Wouldn't that mean my position in the hierarchy will be equal to that of General Manager Bhaskaracharya?'

He was overjoyed and immediately decided to resign from his current post.

If it was before, he would hesitate, as being a director controlling all military industrial production plants in the empire gave him a transcendental status. But after His Majesty ordered the department to split up, he already knew the fate of industrial factories directly controlled by the government wouldn't be too good for a top executive like him. He was already worried about what he would do in the future if his fears came true. Thankfully, His Majesty, like he promised, showed him a way out.

He didn't hesitate any longer. He quickly packed up the documents and left the Simhasana Bhavana, going straight to Nagpur to meet with Marshall Kiran Poojari and formally submit his resignation.

---

A few days passed, and Kiran Poojari, after seeing the appointment letter from His Majesty, formally accepted the resignation letter from Major General and Class Two Manthri Charan Gowda.

Consequently, a few days later, Vijay held a meeting with Prime Minister Vinod, Marshall Kiran Poojari, Admiral Gangadhar, and all the military commanders on the topic of military enterprises privatization, and Vijay formally put forward his proposal.

"I have asked Major General Charan Gowda to split all the existing military factories directly under the control of the state into three parts. I will be taking one third of it directly under the control of the royal family as a private asset," Vijay said, his expression serious, but only he knew that he was actually very tense inside.

Kiran Poojari, Vinod, Gangadhar, and all the other commanders looked at each other with surprise on their faces, but unexpectedly, they all came to the same conclusion.

"Agreed!"

"Agreed!"

"Agreed!"

"Agreed!"

"Ah!" To his surprise, he received no disagreement. He was not expecting this, because even he felt like he had taken a little too much advantage from the empire. When he founded the Raya Armoury, even at its biggest, it was only worth a few million Varaha. But after it got nationalized in the war economy system, it grew to incredible proportions.

If he had to guess, the value of the assets alone would be worth at least 500 million Varaha, and that was only the worth of solid assets, not counting the dominant position it had in the empire and not including the overseas sales channels. If someone were to propose that they would buy the factory for 500 million Varaha, not to mention Vijay, even the empire wouldn't agree. Even if it was only one-third of all the military industries of the Bharatiya Empire, it was worth more than some countries combined.

Vijay had strengthened his heart a lot to put forward his condition, knowing what he was asking, but once his proposal was directly accepted without anyone even questioning it, he did not know what to do in the end.

He laughed awkwardly and thanked everyone.

But what he did not know was that it was actually the big shots in the room who let out a sigh of relief, because, according to the military economy to capitalist economy privatization rules of the Bharatiya Empire, once a state-owned company is privatized, no matter how much the government has invested in it, it has nothing to do with the government. This rule, when it was set up, made a lot of sense, as it gave the government absolute rights to take control of any private enterprise under certain circumstances. So, in return, the benefits the owner of the original company was getting were a chance for his company to increase in value after the government took over.

This rule was originally not a problem because, even though the value of companies increased after being nationalized and invested in by the government, it was not too much, and it did not break the balance of the economy. But what to do when the whole military-industrial sector of the Bharatiya Empire has been brought out from Raya Armoury, which had been nationalized during the war against the Mughal Empire?

Everyone knew that this would be a problem in the future, and even some ignorant officers suggested quickly setting up new state-owned companies to hedge the risks. But as no one in the empire knew what His Majesty's plans were, everyone remained silent. In such an environment, Raya Armory snowballed to a value of nearly 1.4 BILLION Varaha, or around 32 tonnes of gold.

That's more than a quarter of all the currency printed in the Bharatiya Empire.

So when His Majesty suggested he wanted to privatize only one-third of all the military-industrial production plants and he would auction the rest, with the auction proceeds going to the National Treasury, everyone was immediately overjoyed.

Why would they not approve of such a wonderful thing? They would have to be fools to do otherwise. It is true that His Majesty got a big bargain, but one has to look at how much more His Majesty could have gotten if he had not taken the economy into consideration.

Vijay noticed the atmosphere was a little jovial for some reason he could not understand, so he simply shrugged and continued.

"I will put forward a few conditions to the new owners of the two new military conglomerates."

"Number One: All the major and minor shareholders and three generations of their ancestors, should be born citizens of the Bharatiya Empire." This was to make sure that no foreign agent would interfere in the military affairs of the Bharatiya Empire.

"Number Two: The three conglomerates are banned from having design firms or design bureaus, or any sort of laboratory focused on inventing new weapons. The only thing that is allowed is the research of better production technologies." Vijay made this decision to stop a small number of people from having full control over the military sector of the empire. He needed these three conglomerates to be the manufacturers of weaponry while he wanted the civilians to step in and provide the creative drive that these three conglomerates lacked.

"Number Three: The major shareholders with shares above 3% can only be nobles of the empire, from Manthri to Raja. With the death of the major shareholder, the equity can be passed on to the shareholder's dynasty if he or she is a noble; otherwise, the stake will still be inherited, but raising the stake is no longer an option. Only holding the stake is allowed, along with losing all the voting rights and decision-making rights. Additionally, it can only be sold to other noble title holders."

Vijay decided to make this rule because, in the Bharatiya Empire, the nobility is not hierarchical, and only those who have made some achievements and are legitimized by ENEC can be in power. This would guarantee the loyalty of the conglomerates to the Bharatiya Empire as much as possible. Moreover, he decided to make the minimum nobility level a Manthri, as he thought it was relatively easy for a Mahamantri to rank his descendants up to Yodha with enough connections and resources. It would only be hard to make him a Manthri because in that case; he would have to show the results in front of the people.

"All three conglomerates, including the one my dynasty controls, will undergo a strict audit from nobility who do not have a stake in any of the three companies, while it is validated by ENEC and the Supreme Court of Bharat. The audit will be public, and its report will be made public in a special issue of a newspaper or by any means deemed necessary and appropriate. Fail the audit, and severe actions will be taken by the government, from removing the problematic elements forcefully within the conglomerate to even fully liquidating the top management. In severe cases, even nationalizing the company is possible."

Vijay did this to ensure that these conglomerates did not, now or in the future, try to fool the government by charging several thousand Varaha for a simple soap dispenser, like a certain company in the United States of America, or even become warmongers who constantly pushed the government into constant wars like a certain country that loves to give freedom whenever there was oil involved. It was even jokingly thought that this was the main reason they hated Russia.

Russia had so much oil but refused to accept freedom and democracy.

Vijay's conditions were hard for people of this era to understand, as they only thought that the conditions were troublesome. But since they already felt like it was a blessing for His Majesty to let go of two-thirds of military enterprises, they felt like any conditions were acceptable, and unanimous agreement was reached once Again.

P.S. Thankyou CJ_The_Ripper for the IceCola