 "Madi Sharma")
A Europe based non-governmental organisation (NGO), Women’s Economic and Social Think Tank (WESTT), headed by Madhu Sharma (who goes by the first name Madi), is reported to have organised the meeting of a 27-member delegation of European Union (EU) legislators with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and facilitated their Kashmir visit. Regulatory records show that WESTT itself is funded by a company which has had no operations or income since its incorporation in 2014.
WESTT was registered in the EU in 2013 and records showed that it had received donations anywhere in the range 10,000 pounds to 24,000 pounds every year since its inception. In 2018, the latest year of its filings, WESTT received just 24,000 pounds as a single donation. This donation wasn’t received from the public or from any EU institution. Instead, WESTT is a corporate social responsibility arm of the Madi Group, owned by Sharma herself. The Madi Group is a company registered in the United Kingdom (UK). Sharma, WESTT and the Madi Group share the same UK address located at Nottingham. A look at Madi Group’s records shows that it was incorporated in April 2014, with Sharma contributing all of its meagre £100 paid-up capital. Although WESTT continued to be funded by Madi Group as its corporate social responsibility arm, Madi Group itself reported zero revenues or expenses. No signs of business activity have been reported since its incorporation. Madi Group is described by Sharma as a business conglomerate with interests in business consulting, business brokerage, international trade, logistics and is also involved in various philanthropic and social sector non-profit ventures. Some of the companies described by Sharma in her public profile also seem to be non-functional business enterprises. One of them called MRS Business is on the verge of being struck off the company register in the UK. Meanwhile, I3I business, a brokerage company, also faces the same fate. Little is known about her another company named, Madi Magnesium, which Sharma describes as being involved in business consultancy. WESTT used these donations to meet expenses of two temporary staff and ‘nominal travel and administrative expenses.’ According to its declaration to EU authorities it was involved in areas that involved “cases of breaches of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, women's and children's rights.”
While little is known about Sharma’s business interests, she herself was quite an obscure figure until the European MPs Kashmir visit fructified. She was photographed with Modi for the first time on October 28 along with European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) President Henri Malose, as she accompanied the European delegation to India on their Kashmir visit. Public records show that Sharma, a British citizen, is one of the 350 members of the EESC, a Brussels based consultative body of the EU. She was nominated to EESC by the Women’s Unit Cabinet office of the UK government in February 2017. Sharma runs her own website and even has an acronym for her angliscised first name — Madi. According to her, Madi stands for ‘Make a Difference Ideas.’ According to her website, she sums herself up as follows: I am the representative of my brand — a registered trade mark — because if Versace and Gucci could do it, so could I.
Little is known about Sharma’s social ventures like her education initiative named ‘Extraordinary Education’ and so called Make a Difference Idea (MADI) centres. In its filings before European authorities, WESTT has stated that MADI centres are spread across 14 nations that among others include India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Turkey, China, Nepal, Belgium, Croatia, France and Macedonia. Sharma has in the past lobbied on issues with other European politicians. Records show that her organisation WESTT met an advisor of Czech politician Vera Jourova, the Commissioner of Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality at the European Commission in March 2015.
While it remains unclear how Sharma lobbied in India to organise the European delegation’s Kashmir tour, an email put in the public domain by British MP Chris Davies shows that this particular visit including flight and accommodation was funded by the New Delhi based International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies (IINS). Business Standard tried to get in touch with Sharma but could not do so. A phone call was made and an email sent to the office of Monika Ladmanova, the advisor of Jourava whom Sharma had met in Brussels in 2015 but did not elicit a response till the time of publication. The bigger mystery is how Sharma, owner of a dormant business, funded and ran an NGO that successfully lobbied for and executed one of the biggest public relations stunt in precariously perched Kashmir.
