Unloved tribe

A RECENT COVER STORY IN The Economist (August 2) described industry tycoon Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries ” and the world™s richest Indian, according to the US-based Forbes magazine ” as ˜An unloved billionaire™. This description of the country™s richest and most powerful business tycoon generated quite a stir in the boardrooms of India Inc and aroused considerable debate in elite drawing rooms countrywide, although hardly any public discussion. The Economist feature is worthy of notice because it presumes all billionaires aren™t unloved ” a presumption most Indians will find fantastic. It wasn™t always so. Mahatma Gandhi numbered several millionaire businessmen, notably G.D. Birla, Kasturbhai Lalbhai and Jamnalal Bajaj among others, as his friends and benefactors. But after independence when the country ill-advisedly chose the socialist path to national development, Indian society has been driven by envy of the rich and successful, disguised as socialism. But that™s not the whole story. Much of the hatred, ridicule and contempt which India™s rich arouse is also of their own making. Regrettable but true, India™s super-rich are defined by boorishness, in-your-face conspicuous consumption and behaviour norms inherited from  the kiss-up and kick-down village baniya. Unlike America™s richest who are generously loved by the public for creating employment, paying taxes and their philanthropy, the manners and public relations of most indigenous businessmen are ” not to mince words ” deplorable. They never return calls or letters and seldom have a kind word of encouragement, leave aside other forms of generosity. Your editor discovered the baniya mentality of the leaders of India Inc the hard way when launching this publication. All the captains of Indian industry whose cause I had fought long and hard in my previous avatar as editor of the country™s first two business magazines, many of whom I regarded as friends, never returned calls or letters, let alone spare loose change to advertise in this publication, so self-evidently in the public interest.If this is the way India™s billionaires/millionaires treat their friends and benefactors, one can well imagine their interaction with the general public. It™s hardly surprising it™s an unloved tribe. Decline & fall of HMT THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT MADE LAST MONTH THAT the public sector HMT Ltd (estb. 1953) has discontinued the manufacture of wristwatches begun in 1961, is another ” but alas, not last ” nail in the coffin of post-independence India™s neta-babu socialism. The time was when protected by sky-high import duties, HMT dominated the time-pieces market like a colossus, to the extent that the top brass of the company began to complacently believe they produced globally competitive products. After prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, India™s first liberaliser, reduced import duties on industrial goods, the machine tools division of HMT went into decline because babus in Delhi refused the company permission to switch to manufacturing nexgen CNC (computer numerically controlled) machines. Consequently 90 percent of the net profit of HMT was earned by the watches division headed by I.K. Amitha, a brilliant marketing professional. At that time the Tata Group…