The truth is that it is tough to make a generalization about Indian business today, just as it has always been tough to make generalizations about this vast and diverse country. But one thing is certain—if there is dominance of any community or caste at the top of Indian business today, you can be sure that it is being challenged as never before.
This churn is not merely about who is becoming an entrepreneur, or who is able to become an entrepreneur, but also why people are choosing to become entrepreneurs. What is their purpose?
Many entrepreneurs define their purpose in ways that were improbable if not wholly impossible only a few decades ago. For instance, who would have thought that business, of all things, capitalism, and not just politics, would have such a transformative impact on Dalit life and caste in India; who on earth would have believed that a company can be created for maids? And yet, all of this is true in today’s India. Of course entrepreneurship is not a magic wand—it will not solve everything, nor will it solve things instantaneously. But business has—largely—never been thought of as part of the solution in India. It has always been thought of—at least institutionally—as part of the problem. The benevolent state and mercenary private enterprise are enduring myths, neither absolutely true, in India even though our experience in the last decade shows that in most public services—from getting a telephone connection to buying a plane ticket—private enterprise has made things cheaper, better, and more accessible. This, in no way, denies the corruption, the adulteration, and the exploitation that some companies have engaged in—and continue—but where competition has been free and fair, usually the market has veered toward getting customers a better deal. An ever demanding customer base has also pushed companies and entrepreneurs to think hard and innovatively about gaps in the market and services that can be rendered—who would think that an Indian village man would spot a gap in the sanitary napkin market or that mobile phone–based voice networks would emerge as the lifeline in the deepest tribal areas of India where the state has failed to deliver any services for decades, perhaps, in some areas, even centuries? My argument is not, and never will be, that private business can solve all of society’s problems—perhaps nowhere, but most certainly not in India. The state has a role to play in ensuring justice, equity and democracy. But for too long the state has interfered and impeded the natural entrepreneurial prowess in India—what business, for instance, does the government in India still have, in running hotels? My plea is that for too long the West has heard what it wants to about India—about the slums and the tech companies but never about the truck-financing socialist entrepreneur, about Maoist rebels but never about the ex-BBC journalist building India’s Facebook for the poor in the heart of Maoist-dominated India. To see India as the land of slums or slumdog millionaires is the sort of extreme that makes for great headlines across the world. But there is a vast middle India yearning for change, fighting for change, creating change idea by idea, innovation by innovation. I wrote this book hoping that this middle India, my India, would get some recognition.
The present prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, tells a great story. He was once traveling outside India and was asked, “Do you still have snake charmers in your country?” He laughed and said, “Oh no, that was when we were rich and strong. Now we only have mouse charmers.” It is the sort of cliché bursting I have tried, in my own small way, throughout this book.
In a sense, the economic and, often with it, political revolution is coming to India the way Gandhi brought independence, and bringing great social change with it, breaking many prejudices and walls. Not with violence and an uproar, but by slowly chipping away at the problem through careful enterprise. It is going to be a different kind of spring.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is about the people who feature in it—and I believe every Indian ought to be thankful to them for their perseverance and fortitude. My dearest friend Ishira Mehta introduced me to many of these people and their stories, and to the Mehta family, including her parents, Preeti and Rupesh Mehta, I am very grateful for all the love that they have showered on me throughout my creative journey.
I would like to thank Emily Carleton, my editor at Palgrave Macmillan Trade, who first embraced this book’s attempt to deliver a different narrative of the “India story.” The process of renegotiating mainstream narrative is, I believe, the most important role a writer can ever hope to fill, and critical to that process are editors who think similarly.
Also, it has been a pleasure working with Alan Bradshaw who has really delicately guided this book at every step of the way and, excitingly for me, was relentlessly enthusiastic.
Thank you also to Lauren Dwyer-Janiec for all her ideas about where this book could travel and how far it could go.
At Fortune India, I owe a great deal to the help and support of D. N. Mukerjea and Brinda Vasudevan for their incessant affection and urging.
If there is one person who is always joyful about everything I do, it is Shweta Punj. I am delighted and thankful for her warmth.
Not one thing in the journey of Recasting India would, or could, have happened without Priya Doraswamy, my friend and astute agent. It is an absolute joy knowing and working with her.
NOTES
Unless noted otherwise, direct quotes are from interviews conducted by the author from January 2012 to February 2014. Similarly, unless noted otherwise, statistics cited are from public reports of the companies discussed, or public documents whose references are provided in this Notes section.
INTRODUCTION
1. In October 2010, the Indian capital New Delhi played host to the Commonwealth Games for the first time. A series of embarrassing allegations of corruption and incompetence, including in the purchase of equipment and amenities, marked the run-up to the event. The chairman of the organizing committee, Suresh Kalmadi, was arrested after the event and was in prison for ten months. He is out on bail. The Commonwealth Games scandal caused major public uproar against India’s ruling Congress Party and is widely understood to be one of the key causes of ire against the Congress government in Delhi, which was voted out of power in 2014.
2. Subodh Varma, “Income Disparity between Rich and Poor Growing Rapidly,” The Times of India, July 8, 2013, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Income-disparity-between-rich-and-poor-growing-rapidly/articleshow/21410981.cms.
3. Arundhati Roy’s observations concerning Antilia, Mukesh Ambani’s home in India’s financial capital of Bombay, appear in the essay “Capitalism: A Ghost Story,” published in Outlook magazine in March 2012.
4. Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 7.
5. The report of the comptroller and auditor general of India, the central audit body, on the auction of telecom spectrum in the 2G band said that irregularities in the distribution of spectrum on a first-come, first-serve basis, rather than through an auction, by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government had caused a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer. This was widely seen as one of the biggest indications of graft in the government, and then telecom minister, A. Raja, spent 15 months in prison as a result. He is now out on bail.
6. The Indian market research organization divides consumers into various categories depending on the number of members and household earnings.
7. Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions (London: Allen Lane, 2013).
CHAPTER 1
1. Blair B. Kling, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 3.
2. Sati in the 17th and 18th centuries had been celebrated in legends and parables as the ultimate honor for a woman in Hindu orthodoxy. But by the start of the 19th century, as reform swept through Hinduism, more and more people saw it for what it was—a ghoulish, perverse ritual often used by ultraorthodox Brahmins to
usurp the property of the dead couple. The abolition of sati is today held as one of the greatest tasks accomplished in the overhaul of Hindu orthodoxy in the 19th century by Rammohun Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore and one of the best things achieved through British rule in India.
3. Makrand Mehta, Indian Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Historical Perspective (New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 1991), 81.
4. Claude Markovits, Merchants, Traders, Entrepreneurs: Indian Business in the Colonial Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 19, 20.
5. All interviews, unless explicitly indicated otherwise, have been conducted by the author.
CHAPTER 2
1. Details on J&K Entrepreneurship Development Institute at www.jkedi.org.
2. Mass protests with hundreds of young men pelting stones at security forces in Kashmir began in June 2010 after the killing of three suspected male terrorists who later turned out to be innocent young villagers. The protests mushroomed into weeks of street fights between stone throwers and armed forces. Some of the protests were also politically fueled by the rivals of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. These have been some of the biggest protests thus far against the large presence of the Indian Army in Kashmir and the army’s many alleged atrocities.
3. Jammu and Kashmir Bank annual reports and financials at www.jkbank.net. Angel Broking, Result Update 2QFY14, Jammu and Kashmir Bank at http://bsmedia.business-standard.com/_media/bs/data/market-reports/equity-brokertips/2013-11/13843273580.98208300.pdf.
4. “(J&K) Bank reported healthy operating performance, while asset quality remained largely stable. NII came in line with 23% growth yoy on back of 20% increase in advances yoy. The operating expenses grew by 29% (has been growing 25% and upwards for last few quarters) which was in line with our expectations. Operating profit grew by 17.5% yoy. On the asset quality front, the Gross NPA ratio increased marginally by 2bp qoq to 1.7%, while net NPA ratio increased by 5bp qoq to 0.19%, which appears to a modest increase, given the prevailing weak macro environment and low base of NPLs for bank. PCR for the bank dropped by 195bp qoq, but even then at 92%, it remains one of the highest in the industry. Overall net profit for the bank grew by 12% yoy to Rs 303cr. At the CMP, the stock is trading at 1.0x FY2015E ABV, at a higher end compared to peers, which factors in its better asset quality performance vis-à-vis peers even in a challenging macro environment. Hence, we maintain our Neutral recommendation on the stock.” Vaibhav Agrawal, VP-Research-Banking, Angel Broking, on J&K Bank, 2QFY2014 results, November 9, 2013.
5. M. Saleem Pandit, “Four Killed as Zubin Mehta’s Concert Begins in Srinagar,” Times of India, September 7, 2013, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Four-killed-as-Zubin-Mehtas-concert-begins-in-Srinagar/articleshow/22392358.cms.
CHAPTER 3
1. For more on the Saradha scam, see Live Mint, http://www.livemint.com/Query/5voTl1zEvA2y3bzBTRRDjO/The-Saradha-scam.html.
2. Baiju Kalesh, “Why Private Equity Firms Follow Shriram Group Company,” Economic Times, May 23, 2013.
3. Lisa Pallavi Barbora, “What Is a Chit Fund?,” Live Mint, April 29, 2013, http://www.livemint.com/Money/TM2QQIfmWRi5mtgcEc6zkL/What-is-a-chit-fund.html.
4. David Roodman, “The IFMR Trust: Not Your Parents’ Microfinance,” Center for Global Development, April 27, 2009, http://www.cgdev.org/blog/ifmr-trust-not-your-parents-microfinance.
5. Bindu Ananth, “Sustainability Means Going from Buyer Beware to Seller Be Sure,” Live Mint, December 10, 2013, http://www.livemint.com/Money/NNCvhOatfDQeB3d6UjxHDO/Suitability-means-going-from-buyer-beware-to-seller-be-sure.html.
CHAPTER 4
1. Asifa Khan and Zafar Sareshwala, “Debunking the ‘Facts’ on Narendra Modi and Muslims,” First Post, November 8, 2013, www.firstpost.com.
2. Sanjay Kumar, “Who Did India’s Muslims Vote for in General Election?” BBC.com, May 30, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27615592.
3. In February 2002, a compartment full of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya, which has been the site of a Hindu-Muslim dispute over a mosque, was set on fire at a train station in the predominantly Muslim area in Gujarat called Godhra and 58 pilgrims were burned alive. This triggered a nearly three-day-long riot across Gujarat, though most of the fiercest violence occurred in Ahmedabad.
4. Surjit S. Bhalla, “Lessons to Be Learnt from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat,” The Financial Express, October 26, 2013.
CHAPTER 5
1. Michael Sandel, “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvDpYHyBlgc.
CHAPTER 6
1. “Hiware Bazar: A Water Led Transformation of a Village,” IDFC Quarterly Research Note, no. 16, June 2012, http://www.idfc.com/pdf/publications/Hiware-Bazar-rural-water.pdf.
2. “India Wastes 21 Million Tonnes of Wheat Every Year: Report,” The Times of India/Press Trust of India, January 10, 2013, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-wastes-21-million-tonnes-of-wheat-every-year-Report/articleshow/17969340.cms.
CHAPTER 7
1. Constituent Assembly Debates, November 15, 1948, http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol7p6.htm.
2. Ibid.
3. B. R. Ambedkar, The Problem of the Rupee (London: P. S. King & Son, 1923).
4. B. R. Ambedkar, The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India (London: P. S. King & Son, 1925), 140.
5. B. R. Ambedkar, India on the Eve of the Crown Government, http://drambedkarbooks.wordpress.com/dr-b-r-ambedkar-books/.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Surinder S. Jodhka, “Dalits in Business: Self-employed Scheduled Castes in Northwest India,” Working Paper Series, Volume 4, Number 2, p. 5, Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, 2010.
13. Ibid., p. 8.
14. Ambedkar, India on the Eve of Crown Government.
15. Ibid., p. 14.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., p. 18.
18. Ibid., p. 19.
19. Ibid., p. 21.
20. Ibid., p. 22.
21. Ibid, p. 23.
22. Email to author.
23. Thomas Babington Macaulay, Minute on Education, February 2, 1835, para. 10, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html.
24. Ibid., para. 12 and 13.
CHAPTER 8
1. Kounteya Sinha, “70% Can’t Afford Sanitary Napkins, Reveals Study,” Times of India, January 23, 2011, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/70-cant-afford-sanitary-napkins-reveals-study/articleshow/7344998.cms.
2. Arunachalam Muruganantham, “How I Started a Sanitary Napkin Revolution!”, TED talk, May 2012, http://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_started_a_sanitary_napkin_revolution.
CHAPTER 9
1. Seema Chowdhry, “CGNet Swara: Spreading a Revolution with Words,” Live Mint, November 1, 2013, http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/JLMeY7AwookCpyraa04b0O/CGNet-Swara–Spreading-a-revolution-with-words.html.
CHAPTER 10
1. “Around 80% of Sewage in Indian Cities Flows into Water Systems,” Times of India, March 5, 2013, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/pollution/Around-80-of-sewage-in-Indian-cities-flows-into-water-systems/articleshow/18804660.cms.
2. Bhasha Singh, Unseen: The Truth about India’s Manual Scavengers (New Delhi: Penguin, 2014).
CONCLUSION
1. Oliver Balch, “The Relevance of Gandhi in the Capitalism Debate,” Guardian, January 28, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/relevance-gandhi-capitalism-debate-rajni-bakshi.
2. Sudheendra Kulkarni, Music of the Spinning Wheel: Mahatma Gandhi’s Manifesto for the Internet Age (New Delhi: Amaryllis, 2012).
3. Speeches and Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, 4th Edition (Madras: GA Natesan & Co.), 384–85.
4. M. K. Gandhi, “Theory of Trusteeship,” http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/trusteeship.pdf.
5. M
. K. Gandhi, Harijan, 145, accessed from M. K. Gandhi, “Theory of Trusteeship,” http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/trusteeship.pdf.
6. Ibid., p. 49.
7. Harish Damodaran, “Crony Capitalism? Really?, The Hindu Business Line, March 18, 2014, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/harish-damodaran/crony-capitalism-really/article5801300.ece.
INDEX
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest.
For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
9/11 attacks
20th Century Finance
aam aadmi (common man/mango people)
Aam Aadmi Party
Abdullah, Omar
Acharya, Srinivasa
Adani, Gautam
Adani, Mahmood
Adani Group
Adivasis (young tribals)
Administration and Finance of the East India Company (Ambedkar)
Advani, Lal Krishna
Aegis BPO
Agarwal, Vaibhav
agriculture
apple farming
and caste mobility
and electricity
farmer suicide
Harshna Naturals
in Hiware Bazar
income
Krishi Karman Samman (national agricultural prize)
in Madhya Pradesh
moneylending
percentage of rural economy
water irrigation
Ahmad, Ahjaz
Ahmad, Mushtaq
Aiyar, Yamini
al Qaeda
All India Chit Fund Association
Allahabad Bank
Alpic Finance
Ambani, Mukesh
Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji
Amin, Gazzala
Anand Rathi
Anand, Malik Saloni
Recasting India Page 20
