Latter-day morality tale

Kingfizzer: The rise and fall of Vijay Mallya, Kingshuk Nag, Harper Business; Rs.399, Pages 224 Former Times of India and Business India journalist and author Kingshuk Nag’s biography, Kingfizzer, on the dramatic rise and fall of Vijay Mallya, flamboyant former chairman, CEO and the be all and end all of United Breweries, the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines, and sundry other companies, is well-researched and has timely relevance. All dates and data relating to when and how Bangalore-based Mallya inherited United Breweries and McDowell & Co in the early 1980s from his parsimonious father, grew these mid-sized companies into the second largest liquor manufacturing conglomerate worldwide, and a few decades later had to flee from India for fear of indictment and jail for cheating and fraud, are detailed in this riveting account of the meteoric career of this reckless, high-spending tycoon now holed up in London fighting extradition to India.  The narrative begins dramatically with a report on Mallya’s tabloid-worthy 60th birthday bash (2015) in his swanky Kingfisher Villa, on Candolim beach, for India’s 200-plus rich celebrities, at which the fireworks display was so extravagant that it could be heard and seen in Panaji, the capital of Goa 18 miles away. To all intents and purposes, Mallya’s numerous businesses were thriving despite media reports that the ‘King of Good Times’ was neck deep in financial trouble, mainly on account of the collapse of his most ambitious venture Kingfisher Airlines, which had made a spectacular debut in the Indian skies in 2005.  But this was to prove Mallya’s last hurrah. Within three months, reportedly tipped off by a high flying socialite that his arrest for bank fraud was imminent and his passport was to be impounded, on March 2, 2016, waving his diplomatic passport (by virtue of being a Member of Parliament) Mallya boarded a plane with a first class ticket, seven pieces of luggage and girlfriend in tow for London. According to Nag, on February 28, senior Supreme Court counsel Dushyan Dave had advised the State Bank of India, Kingfisher Airlines’ largest creditor, to get a court order to prevent Mallya from leaving the country. Typically, the country’s largest government-owned bank was slow to react.  Now Mallya who owes several public sector banks — Rs.9,000 crore — is fairly safe in his sprawling Hertfordshire estate on the outskirts of London. The bumbling efforts of the CBI and other Indian authorities to extradite him are unlikely to succeed, because the sloth of the Indian judicial and filth of prison systems which inflict “cruel and unusual punishment” are notorious.  The point to note is that until Mallya foolishly promoted Kingfisher Airlines in 2005, every diversification he made after the death in 1983 of his father — the reclusive and penny-pinching Vittal Mallya — was successful. Driven by a flashy, excessive lifestyle, Vijay set about making Kingfisher the country’s #1 beer brand, exporting it to the UK and made a spirited bid to acquire Shaw Wallace’s Royal Challenge, then the country’s #1 whisky brand. For this…