The Breach Candy dilemma

File photo of Mukesh Ambani | Photo via Bloomberg

The problem with writing anything about the Ambanis is, you are immediately expected to declare your interest. Which side are you on? You have to be for, or against them. You can’t be neutral.

Further, if you are for them, they must have done something for you. If you are against them, they must have victimised you. This could be the reason why so little is written and discussed about them in the media except their immediately newsy ventures, business activities, social appearances and, of course, the controversies.

Could this also be the reason why, while literally the who’s who of Indian business and high society have visited Dhirubhai Ambani in the hospital, only one Union cabinet minister has done so? Not even the finance minister, who might have had more of a justification to pay such a visit.

The old man fighting for his life after his second stroke is after all the founder of India’s first private sector Fortune 500 company? Or the oil and petroleum minister? Dhirubhai built by far the biggest petrochemicals empire in the country. Unlike some of his predecessors, Ram Naik has also never been accused of being an ‘‘Ambani man’’ and his actions over the past months are ample evidence of that.

Then why is even he shy of sticking his neck out? Is it because of the same fear or getting his motives questioned? What will people say, log kya kahengey?

Delhi believes that power produces money; Mumbai produces money through enterprise and believes that money buys power. The Ambani phenomenon confuses this equation. They have real money through real enterprise and power in Delhi that is the envy of other business houses

In some ways it is a logical corollary to the old phenomenon of Delhi not being able to level with Mumbai, and vice versa. The two cities are instinctively and attitudinally so far apart that it is sometimes said they at least need to establish diplomatic relations between themselves before they can even hope to understand each other.

The official currency of Delhi is power. Power produces money and so Delhi thinks that is how it must be elsewhere, and why should Mumbai be an exception.

Mumbai, on the other hand, produces money through enterprise and believes that money buys power. So it must wonder why any other place should be an exception, notably Delhi.

You may dismiss this as pop-sociology or journalistic simplicism, but there has to be a reason why Delhi so compulsively ignores its entrepreneurial successes and Mumbai is always so much in awe of Delhi’s power. How many people in Delhi are today conscious that some of the fastest growing stars of corporate India are from their city?

For example, Ranbaxy, one of the sharpest pharmaceutical companies internationally and the Munjhal/Hero group, which is not only the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer but has left Bajaj behind as India’s largest two-wheeler manufacturer. These are new kids on the block. But even the originals, the DCM family, have traditionally been acknowledged more as philanthropists, patrons of the arts, culture and education, more than as entrepreneurs. Those pursuits, we Dilliwallahs have ceded to Mumbai.

The Birlas, Tatas create wealth in step with a doting establishment. Narayanmurthy and Premji do so bypassing Delhi altogether. In a category of their own are the Ambanis charming the establishment and when that didn’t work, arm-twisting it, and, for a long time now, getting the better of it

Similarly, Mumbai believes political power belongs in Delhi. Its politicians have made very little impact in Delhi and even if a Morarji Desai became prime minister, he not only failed to make any mark on politics, power structure or history but even failed to find any support for the one genuinely original belief he had — in his own peculiar brand of cure-all therapy.

A phenomenon like the Ambanis confuses this simple equation. They have not only real money produced from real enterprise in Mumbai, but power in Delhi that would be the envy of so many of the older, third or fourth generation business houses who have also been rich and successful and distinguished members of the establishment, who may have participated in the freedom movement and can cadge Rajya Sabha memberships from mainstream parties.

But they somehow have never acquired the same unique — ‘money in Mumbai, power in Delhi’ — profile, one that immediately pops the question at the politician, bureaucrat and the journalist: which side are you on?

We have now become so fearful of that question that we are quite happy to leave them to their devices: nobody wants to be seen as being friendly to them, and very few think they can afford their enmity. But if you hold shares in their companies you hope they have enough clout and networking down the line to have their interests looked after.

And if you don’t like them, and have the power of the establishment, you satisfy yourselves by delivering pinpricks like activating an Official Secrets Act case, in the week preceding the sale of a PSU for which they have bid aggressively.

Which other country would have acted in this manner towards its largest corporate house, days after it became its first private company to make it to Fortune 500? Who else would have denied any national honours to the Ambanis while bestowing the Padma Bhushan on Henning Holck-Larsen, the 93-year-old Danish chairman-emeritus of the Larsen & Toubro group, not so much for setting up Larsen & Toubro in India some six decades ago, but for having come out of the woodwork to campaign against the Ambanis’ bid to take that company over?

We in Delhi can’t yet figure out Mumbai and now there is also a Bangalore complication. The older business houses, like the Tatas, the Birlas and the Bajajs, were seen to be a respectable part of the establishment and benefited a great deal from that. The Ambanis controlled and dominated it, but gave a lot more back to their shareholders. Now we have Narayanmurthy and Premji who’ve built enormous wealth, not at the sufferance of the Delhi establishment but by completely ignoring and side-stepping it.

Their businesses required no real help from the government nor were they so susceptible to its intrigues. Since their basic produce, software, had so many tax exemptions and because exports were income tax-free, they didn’t have to pay much attention to the inspectors as well.

They didn’t need licences and quotas, nor did they need friendly ministers and joint secretaries to keep the CBI and Enforcement Directorate off their backs. We see them today as more pristine simply because they had so little to do with us.

The Delhi durbar’s deference towards them is the mirror image of India’s popular anti-politician mood. One reason there is such popular support for Kalam as president is because he is not a politician. He never had to play the game or rub shoulders with other players so he is more deserving of one of its supreme trophies. Similarly, Narayanmurthy and Premji must be cleaner, more respectable than the old economy wallahs, simply because they haven’t had that much to do with the politicians and babus in Delhi.

So, we have this new classification of successful Indian businessmen. The Birlas and the Tatas, creators of wealth but in step with a doting establishment. The Narayanmurthys and the Premjis who did so while bypassing Delhi altogether.

And, in a category entirely of their own, the Ambanis, who built enterprise and profits before and after reform, charming and dazzling the establishment and when that didn’t work, arm-twisting it, but always staying engaged with it and, for a long time now, getting the better of it.

Is that why we in Delhi’s politico-bureaucratic-journalistic establishment are so shy of levelling with them even as their patriarch fights for his life at Breach Candy?