‘King’ Mahendra, 78, is worth Rs 4,000 cr & has been Rajya Sabha member since 1985. It’s his wealth & not legislative abilities that draws all parties to him.
New Delhi: The Rajya Sabha election this week was never really a contest for Dr Mahendra Prasad, 78, the billionaire pharma tycoon from Bihar with an estimated net worth of Rs 4,078 crore.
Since his debut in Parliament as a Lok Sabha member in 1980, he has never quite left the house. Over the past three decades, he has deftly navigated the changing political landscape of Bihar to always find his way to the upper house — starting with the Congress, he had a stint with the Janata Dal and then its offshoot Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) before moving to the Janata Dal (United), which has nominated him thrice.
Representatives for all the six vacant Bihar seats were elected unopposed Friday, but competition was never a worry for Prasad, set to begin his seventh term in the Rajya Sabha, anyway.
“Had there been only one seat vacant in the Rajya Sabha, I would still have been elected,” he had said after his election in 2012.
This confidence, some politicians from Bihar say, stems from his wealth, which makes him an asset for parties. “He directly talks with Nitishji and everyone knows he is a billionaire. Need I say more?” said a JD(U) leader who was expecting a Rajya Sabha ticket this time.
“His idea is simple. He never yearns for any post in the party, remains in the background and enjoys the perks of power,” said an RJD leader.
“The parties need him for financial support,” the leader added. “He has no enemy and anyone who wants to get something done, Prasad never lets them down.”
His story
Prasad was born in a modest Bhumihar farmer family in Govindpur village, Jehanabad, in 1940. At a young age, he left for Mumbai with aspirations to start a business. Not much is known about his initial days in the city, but he eventually started working with pharma mogul Samprada Singh, a fellow Bhumihar from Jehanabad.
By 1971, aged 31, Prasad had launched his own company, Aristo Pharmaceuticals. After that, people in his village recall, he was richer on every trip.
The political leap
In 1980, Prasad won the Lok Sabha elections from Jehanabad, then the epicentre of a bloody battle between members of the upper castes and Naxalites, on a Congress ticket.
However, in the 1984 general election, held after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination, he lost his seat.
In 1985, the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi got him nominated to the Rajya Sabha for the first time. It helped Prasad in the Congress that he was close to Makhan Lal Fotedar, a confidante to both Rajiv and Indira.
In September 1985, at the height of militancy in Punjab, he was sent by the Congress as an observer for the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat. While out for a meeting of party workers in Batala, a blast in his car almost cost him his life.
In 1986, he was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha.
The first shift
The late 80s and early 90s marked an era of massacres in Bihar, where clashes between upper caste Bhumihar landlords and Naxalites made headlines daily. The upper caste militia Ranveer Sena, believed to have orchestrated several brutal killings of Dalits, was also active at the time in Jehanabad.
It was around the same time that Lalu Prasad, then a member of the Janata Dal, was emerging as a force to be reckoned with as the champion of the lower castes, and the Congress losing ground.
The Bhumihars held Lalu in deep contempt, but the festering caste divide held little sway over Prasad, who soon joined the Janata Dal. Come 1993, he was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha as a Janata Dal representative.
In 1997, when Lalu broke away from the party to form the RJD, Prasad moved with him. In 2000, he took his seat in the upper house as an RJD MP.
Start of the JD(U) chapter
In 1999, the Janata Dal was dissolved. By 2003, a breakaway faction of the party had joined hands with the George Fernandes-led Samata Party, another Janata Dal splinter, and the Lokshakti Party to form the Janata Dal (United).
In 2005, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) declared Nitish Kumar their chief ministerial candidate for the Bihar polls.
Nitish’s rise created a rift within the JD(U). When Fernandes refused to share funds with Nitish for the elections, leaders close to the latter suggested that he get in touch with “king Mahendra”. Nitish, eager to prove his mettle as a leader, asked his closest aide, Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh, to talk to Prasad. Lalan Singh, also a Bhumihar, and Prasad were good friends, and it took just a few meetings to convince him to switch sides.
In 2005, Nitish was elected chief minister. The next year, Prasad entered the Rajya Sabha on a JD(U) ticket.
Over the years, Nitish and Prasad have forged a close bond. In fact, Prasad is not known to talk to anyone in the JD(U) apart from the chief minister, Lalan Singh and former MLA Abhiram Sharma, the latter considered to be “his guy”.
“There is only one channel to reach king Mahendra,” said a top JD(U) leader, “You dial Abhiram Sharma and he will pass on your message.”
Spelling out their equation, Sharma said he never called Prasad. “He calls me whenever he feels like it, and that’s when I say whatever I have to,” he added.
A farmer’s son becomes ‘king’
He is known as ‘king Mahendra’ in political circles alright, but that’s not where the honorific owes its origin. It was a title locals bestowed on him as he began to bring job offers at his company for Bhumihar youngsters on trips back home.
In fact, job aspirants still queue up outside his house when he is in Jehanabad, and he doesn’t discourage them. Biharis comprise the bulk of the thousands in his employ.
On the demand of locals, he started a college at Okari, Jehanabad, to promote higher education among the poor and underprivileged, as well as girls who aren’t allowed to go to the cities for further studies.
His philanthropic pursuits earned him cult status among Bhumihars, and, before long, the farmer’s son came to be referred to as ‘king’.
Today, Prasad runs several pharma companies. His main firm, Aristo Pharmaceuticals, has its corporate office in Mumbai, with branches in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bangladesh, besides other countries in Eurasia and Africa. His other companies include Mapra Laboratories and Indchemie Health Specialties, both headquartered in Mumbai. Then there are several factories operating across India, from Hyderabad to Daman and Sikkim. He divides his time between Mumbai, Delhi and other places in India and abroad.
King of travel
However, it’s all but all work, no play for Prasad, an avid traveller who, according to his profile on the Rajya Sabha website, has been to every country except Somalia. There’s an interesting anecdote here. In 2013, he was all set to tick the east African nation off his bucket list when a call from Nitish caused him to change his mind. Ticket and passport in hand, Prasad was at the airport, set to take off for Somalia, when Nitish persuaded him to not go there.
Between April 2002 and April 2003, Prasad travelled to 84 countries, averaging seven countries a month. Tales of his travels often find place in Nitish’s conversations with close friends.
He is also an avid reader and a diving enthusiast. In fact, in August 2002, he was awarded by passenger submarine company Atlantis Submarine in West Indies for diving 173 feet into the Caribbean Sea.
Even so, people close to him say he is a man of simple tastes who likes his food home-cooked. He only wears khadi, specially ordered from a factory in Gujarat. Even with family members, he only interacted “when needed”, they added. Said a close family friend, “I am like any other person to him and he is as good as a stranger to me.”
Not the best in the house
Though a veteran of Parliament, Prasad has hardly been the ideal representative. Since August 2000, according to the Rajya Sabha website, he has asked only six questions; five till 2003 and only one since.
According to the website of PRS Legislative Research, he had an average attendance of 82 per cent from June 2009 to 21 March 2018, but has never participated in a debate or introduced a bill.
Explaining Prasad’s political longevity, a JD(U) leader said, “He has no political ambition and knows how to maintain a distance between business and politics.” That’s the reason why, he added, he remained crowned even in times of political power shifts.
Fascinating. Bihar needs more such success stories. It would be even better for the state’s development if men like King Mahendra had found its native soil more nurturing of enterprise.