1991   How P.V. Narasimha Rao Made History by Sanjay Baru ; Published by Aleph ; Pages 216 ; Price Rs 599/-

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                   Sanjaya Baru is Consulting Fellow for India International Institute for Strategic Studies, London. He was Media Adviser to Manmohan Singh. He has been connected with several dailies. He is the  celebrated author of “ An Accidental Prime Minister” about Manmohan Singh .

                     In the book under review he makes an earnest attempt  to alter the existing belief  that makes  Manmohan Singh as the prime mover of the 1991 economic reforms and place the credit at the doors of  P.V. Narasimha Rao. 

                     The book is an account of the politics, the economics and the geopolitics that combined to make 1991 an important year in India’s recent history. The central character was Narasimha Rao.  It was the year that made Narasimha Rao and the year Narasimha Rao made history.

                    Rao was India’s first accidental Prime Minister, and a path-breaking one. He took charge of the national government and restored political stability ; assumed leadership of the Congress , proving that there was hope beyond the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty ; pushed through significant economic reforms and steered India through the uncharted waters of the post-Cold War period.

                          The brinkmanship, the one-upmanship, the short-termism of the 1989-91 period, driven by the petty ambitions of myopic and inexperienced leaders, was replaced by a long-term vision of the long-distance number. Narasimha Rao was India’s Man of Destiny. 

                          Baru’s long association with  principal players of the time and his access to several others by virtue of being a journalist enables him  capture history as it was made. Baru's account of the year in the life of Narasimha Rao, based as it is on his personal rapport with him, is absolutely unputdownable.

                               Narasimha Rao became the Prime Minister at a time when the country was faced with deep economic and political crises. On the economic front there was a severe balance of payments crisis, with a potential debt default staring at the country. On the political front, two coalition governments fell between late 1989 and mid 1991. Besides, the BJP’s Ratha Yatra, led by L.K. Advani, left a trail of destruction and communal violence behind it, especially in northern and western India. V.P. Singh in his short stint as Prime Minister had also decided to implement the Mandal Commission report on reservation for backward classes in government jobs, leading to protests. In this environment, Rao  provided the crucial economic and political stability which was so desperately needed.

                                    1991 was the year when circumstances were at play for P.V. Narasimha Rao and Rao was in equal measure active to define a year that has for many observers of business and politics become as noteworthy as the collapse of the Soviet Union or the awakening of the Chinese economy pursuant to Mao Zedong’s departure. The book is a compendium of what went wrong over the decades and why. In particular, Indira Gandhi's alignment with the Soviet Union in 1970 made India dependent on it for oil and military equipment. The Soviet Union's collapse in 1990 deprived Narasimha Rao of this prop, and he had to reconstruct India's external relations.  The Indian economy was in a bad shape and the then Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar had given a go ahead for gold mortgage. Twenty metric tonnes of confiscated gold worth U S $ 200 million was made available by RBI.

                                 Baru’s narrative also has a villain – the Nehru-Gandhi family and their coterie. He is scathing in his indictment, especially of Rajiv Gandhi for his short-sighted move to withdraw support to the Chandra Shekhar government in 1991 before it could pass the general budget and plunge India into a financial crisis. Rao became the first non-Nehru-Gandhi to complete his five-year term despite lacking  a numerical majority in Parliament. 

                                   Baru declares “I have nothing against Rahul or Sonia Gandhi. This is not a personal vendetta. I come from a Congress family. My great grand uncle worked with Jawaharlal Nehru. My father was a Youth Congress leader who hoisted the first national flag on the Madras Christian College campus. The Congress is the party of the national movement, built by thousands and thousands of Indians across the country, over generations. And it has been reduced to a party of one family. To me, that is unacceptable.”

                                       

                                     Narasimha Rao precipitately demolished licence permit raj. He had shown no earlier signs of such impetuosity. But then, he was thrust into a role he could have never imagined stepping into and was faced with the worst economic crisis in independent India's history. Soon after he stepped down as prime minister, he was erased from India's history by the return of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

                                   The book is divided into chapters named after months. They  cover the events as they unfolded, but the events had a complex background, which too Baru skillfully covers. The book is a compendium of what went wrong over the decades and why. Narasimha Rao  had to reconstruct India's external relations. He re-calibrated India’s commitment to non-alignment and established diplomatic relations with Israel.

                                    Baru has an interesting story when behind-scenes activities were on to elect a new leader after the election. He happened to meet Rao and asked him about reports in the Times of India that Sharad Pawar was tipped to be the Prime Minister. Rao, who had by then set in motion his own game plan, remarked, “It is a Bombay newspaper. The editor is a Maharashtrian, the bureau chief is a Maharashtrian. All the reports are coming from Bombay. What else will they say?” This was a lot of stuff for a person of few words. As the author says,” For a man who knew a dozen languages (he could fluently read, write and speak over half a dozen) and was known to have a series of romantic entanglements, he was surprisingly uncommunicative in person.”

                               There is not much in the book that talks of the razing of the mosque at Ayodhya. This too happened during Rao’s tenure, and his critics hold to this day that he could have prevented it but did not. The jury is still out. Baru concludes aptly, “Two decades after he demited office and a decade after his passing away, India is finally coming around to remembering him by the highs of his first year in office.”

P.P.Ramachandran.

 27 / 11 / 2016

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Nine Lives by William Dalrymple ; Published by Bloomsbury; Pages 284 ; Price Rs 499/-

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                      William Dalrymple, a quondam Scot and presently Delhiwallah  is astonishingly precocious. When only 22 years young he  published “ In Xanadu ”, an account of his journey from Jerusalem to Shàngdu.. This is a classic travel book. A few years later  Dalrymple  turned from travel writing to history. He argued that the future of the form lies not in "the epic journeys, often by young men, conveying the raw intoxication of travel during a moment in life when time is endless, and deadlines and commitments are non-existent". Instead, it lies in the writings of "individuals who have made extended stays in places, getting to know them intimately". This could accurately describe Dalrymple's life so far, since he has ended up on a farm outside Delhi, and made a lifelong study of those around him. “ Nine Lives ” is a travel book, but it is also  simultaneously a series of biographies highlighting  the rich religious heritage of India and her neighbours.  Dalrymple’s arena include several  parts of the East. “ In Xanadu ” took us from Jerusalem to Mongolia. “ From the Holy Mountain ” was about the Eastern Orthodox Church, and “ City of Djinns ” concentrated on Delhi’s tantalising history. In India, Dalrymple has found a home away from home  and India has embraced him. His historical work “ The Last Mughal ”. bagged the Vodafone Crossword Award and the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize.

                                    William Dalrymple asks us after his journeys in search of the sacred in a rapidly modernising India. “ Does India still offer any sort of real spiritual alternative to materialism, or is it now just another fast-developing satrap of the wider capitalist world? ” To find out, he travelled the country and met people from diverse  devotional backgrounds, studying  their beliefs and listening to their stories. The profiles he presents of them here present  a kaleidoscopic vision of the religious life of India – scintillating parts leading to a coherent whole.

                          The Indians Dalrymple encounters in Nine Lives are at the edge of the society, but  in India such  exceptions run into millions. Dalrymple's nine characters live on the margins of a society transforming at a bewildering pace. These individuals are gripped by a divine madness they cannot fathom. In some cases it induces trance; some express it through dance or song; and with some, that mystical current helps them create works of art of unusual beauty. They are on a spiritual quest, making sacrifices beyond  belief , discarding  identities, all in search of a salvation they may not achieve.

                           Among the nine lives covered  are a young Jain nun in Shravanabelagola ; the “Dancer of Kannur” a Dalit, who is worshipped as a Theyyam dancer-god for a few weeks, the rest of his life being spent as a prison warden ; the ‘Red Fairy’  a large 

outspoken Muslim lady from Bihar at a famous Sufi shrine;  a devadasi who pushes her daughter into a sacred trade ; the monk of ‘The Monk’s Tale’ who is a senior  Tibetan monk who atones for killing people in the struggle to ward off the Chinese onslaught on Tibet and then becoming  a soldier in the Indian army during the war for liberation of Bangladesh ; a female follower of  Tantric rites, who lives in a crematorium and drinks from the skulls of suicides and virgins. While the nine lives are not identical, in several instances they have undergone a revelation which defies  science and attracts ridicule from rationalists. But those experiences have assured them rare calm, and Dalrymple

 listens with total sympathy.

                             Dalrymple is greatly influenced by  Sufism and Baul brotherhood, and has a special passion for  those who have undergone mystical experiences.

 The historian in him  knows the forces that make religions and ethnicities fight;  the journalist in him describes  that violence ; however,  the travel writer lets these nine people speak. He never forces himself on the characters but  gently elaborates the  context and provides lucid  summaries of the issues: the  travails caused by caste; the challenge encountered by  Sufis from the dominant  Taliban in Pakistan; and the humiliation faced by  tantriks, whose blessings politicians and moneyed traders depend upon.

                                 Dalrymple's nine persons seek their  own  individual release. The author tracks the lives of these persons across the breadth of the country. He has had thirty intensive interviews. His book reveals how religion has influenced the lives of the nine persons. He had declared in an interview, "India's not just middle class India. There’s a kind of prickliness in the middle class about something out of its ken to cover stuff in the villages, the spiritual. These are the things the reasons that I don't really understand that make the middle class in this country feel uncomfortable.” 

The interviews for the book were done in eight languages with the help of interpreters who often helped  Dalrymple  capture insights into secret worlds.

                                       All the nine characters of the book are travellers who  lived by sheer faith. Dalrymple is the pure narrator allowing the story to proceed on its own pace. Somewhat akin to A.K.Ramanujan on his anthropological trail. This is  travel writing at its best. The stories are poignant and enchanting. India, without doubt, is one of the greatest source for enthralling stories and Dalrymple has exploited this

 gold-mine and brought forth wonderful tales. His  deep knowledge of Indian culture and history  comes out in limpid clarity. What makes the book eminently readable is the utter simplicity with which it is written—nearly Biblical.

                                    The book’s publisher describes it as “a modern Indian Canterbury Tales”. The parallel does work at least in part. Firstly, by concentrating on the sacred life of India, we catch sight of a 'Medieval’ world, a place where, among other things, minstrels wander the landscape singing of union with God. But also, just as Chaucer painted a portrait of a world shortly to undergo great upheaval, so the sense here is of snapshots being taken of characters and types who may not be available a few decades from now.

P.P.Ramachandran.

20-11-2016 

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“From  Third World to First” by Lee Kuan Yew ; Published by Marshall Cavendish  ; Pages  778; Price Rs.2011/-

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The book under review is a sequel to Lee Kuan Yew’s earlier book “ Singapore Story “ and brings up-to-date the history of Singapore’s dramatic rise. In 1965 Singapore was a British naval base, then made part of Malaysia which extruded Singapore because it was not ready to cope with its large Chinese population. With only an area of 640 square kilometers, annual per capita income has grown from less than$ 1000/- at the time of Independence to $ 30,000/- today. It is the high-tech leader of Southeast Asia, the commercial entrepot and the scientific centre. Lee details the extraordinary efforts it took for an island city-state in South-Asia to survive with just a “ razor’s edge “ to manoeuvre in.

Lee  made Singapore into a powerful city-state whose every detail  he micromanaged. His authoritarian manner won him  admirers and detractors, as he himself relates in this memoir. It appears to have had the desired results, inasmuch as the people of Singapore remain independent, comparatively prosperous, and untroubled by the strife that now troubles the region. However,  Lee writes that “it will take another generation before standards of civic behaviour of our people will match the First World infrastructure they now take for granted.”  

  While the first volume is a chronological narrative the present book is devoted to themes. The first Part is on   “ Getting the Basics Right” The second Part is  “In Search of Space-Regional and International”. The concluding  Part is “ Winding Up”. 

 Lee is credited with the vision, courage and determination to push through necessary, at times unpopular, policies to develop Singapore from Third World to First. The first thing Lee did when he took over was build a defence force.  Lee turned to Israel and Switzerland for examples of how a small country should go about defending itself. The next thing he did was ensure the safety and security of the country and provide a stable legal system.Then came  protectionism. He wanted everyone in Singapore employed  and he didn’t want them competing with low-cost Malaysian labor. Singapore specifically protected cars, appliances, consumer electronics and other consumer goods. The protections were all phased out later.

 Lee has used to advantage what Britain left behind: the English language, the legal system, parliamentary government and impartial administration. He  studiously avoided the practices of the welfare state.

The foundations for Singapore’s  financial centre were the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and a stable, competent, and honest government that pursued sound macroeconomic policies, with budget surpluses almost every year. 

 Next, Lee dealt with the press. When Singapore separated from Malaysia, there were some race riots in Singapore. From then on, Lee was wary of the media. He seems to have believed that a totally free media would stir up racial animosity while providing little benefit. A Singapore with a totally free press would have in the best case scenario been plagued by ethnic or racial or religious violence and in the worst case become an actual Communist country. Instead, it became what it is today and everyone is immensely better off.

Lee  ignored criticism and advice from experts and quasi-experts, especially academics in the social and political sciences. He always tried to be correct, not politically correct. The most interesting chapters in the book are Lee’s comparisons between Singapore and other countries. There are two that are significant--- Ceylon and Hong Kong.

  The main reason that Singapore leapt from the Third World to the First was  Lee’s extraordinary fighting spirit and tenacity and  sincerity. He crafted policies based on the situation then and made rational judgements in the interest of the country. Nothing about Singapore escaped Le’s watchful eyes ; whether it is choosing shrubs for roadsides, restoring the romance of the historic Raffles Hotel or persuading young men to marry women as well-educated as themselves!.Today’s safe, tiny Singapore bears his stamp.

Lee brings history to life with his cogent analysis of strategic issues and candid, often acerbic portraits of the people he met—the indestructible  Margaret Thatcher, hearty Ronald Reagan and the poetry-quoting Jiang Zemin.

Lee writes briefly of his family, his wife Kwa Gok Che and their three children, including the elder son, Hsien Long, now Prime Minister of Singapore.

 We perhaps ought to remember that the success of Singapore – as much as it lay with the leadership of Lee and other politicians of the time including S. Rajaratnam, Toh Chin Chye and Goh Keng Swee – was also dependent on a group of individuals who were committed to the idea and the act of building a nation out of nothing. Lee has dedicated this book to them.

The memoirs provide an unique insight into the history of modern Singapore and the thoughts of one of the great Asian leaders of the last century. This book is compulsory reading to all who wish to comprehend the working of the Asian mind.

P.P.Ramachandran.

13 /  11 /  2016

India’s Long Road by Vijay Joshi ; Published by Penguin –Allen Lane   ; Pages 421   ; Price Rs.699/-

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The quondam Governor of R B I, Dr.Bimal Jalan has called this book “..truly extraordinary. A comprehensive and in-depth survey of India’s long-term potential and what needs to be done to achieve it.” The author  Vijay Joshi is  Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford. He was  Officer on Special Duty in India’s Ministry of Finance, the Director of J. P. Morgan’s Indian Investment Trust, an adviser to the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, and a consultant to international organizations including the World Bank and the OECD.

According to him “ Since around 1980 and especially after the economic reforms of 1991, India has been among the fastest growing countries of the world…There is now a tendency to think of India  as an ‘Uncaged tiger’ that will leap ahead to overtake both the  U S A and China.

After this euphoria, he points out that the background of its success is fragile. An ambitious goal for the country would be to become a prosperous country by 2040. If India were to maintain 7 per cent a year per capita growth till 2040, it would mean India will become a high  income country.

Joshi  argues that the foundations of rapid, durable and inclusive economic growth in India are distinctly shaky. He presents  a deep  analysis of the country’s recent faltering performance, set against the backdrop of its political economy and charts the course it should follow to achieve widely shared prosperity.

For India to realize its huge potential, the relation among the state, the market and the private sector must be deliberately recast. Enhanced  liberalization is essential. The State must undertake  efficiently several  core tasks that is rightly theirs. He recommends a  model  that incorporates  a fiscally affordable scheme that provides a regular ‘basic income’ for all citizens that would result in banishing extreme  poverty.

  Joshi writes about  low total factor productivity levels,  besides usual factors such as labour and capital. He argues for  inclusive growth and is critical of what has happened so far in this area, blaming state failure in finding a solution in giving free power, food, money and water, and never working seriously on improving the quality of education and health, the two essentials for any sustainable development model. 

According to the economist  India will be hard put to  achieve high quality and enduring per capita 8 per cent growth for the next 3 or 4 decades in   case “business as usual” approach is followed. Radical reforms alone on the lines recommended  by Joshi can put fire in the belly of the economy.  He does emphasise  that superfast growth phases are typically quite short.

He is highly critical of  PSUs, which have been   a major burden for the exchequer. While we have reduced the number of families dependent on agriculture, we have not made it resilient or created an alternative that is long-lasting, resulting in  lopsided structures.

Joshi  has highlighted  seven areas requiring  reforms .

First is macro-economic stability. Inflation has come down and we appear to be on the right path. According to him  the R B I should follow a ‘managed float of the rupee’ and not let it appreciate, as it affects exports. He analyses efforts  to improve  investment in terms of  business and  links it with  NPAs and how it has affected  flow of funds. He is critical of the progress made in the area of  fiscal reforms. There have been benefits of low oil prices that have been leveraged well by the government. However, the subsidy levels have not been lowered. Fertiliser and food subsidies have not been lowered--- courage has not been shown in lowering the quantum. In the areas of markets, ownership and regulation he is critical of  the government on the PSU front and has  pointed out that progress is lagging in infrastructure, environment and agriculture. He approves what  government has done on the external side as also  for FDI. He is for more  liberalisation. The sixth reform is in the area of social development.  Aadhaar and cash transfers have been successful. A lot remains to  be done in education and health. The last reform pertains to the State where corruption has to be addressed to make doing business easier. 

Manmohan Singh  took few steps on the lines of the recommendations in the book. For instance  the rupee was allowed to rise again above its real effective exchange rate between 2010 and 2013. The Goods and Services Tax legislation to make India one market could not be passed. There was no reform of state electricity boards (SEBs) or distortionary subsidies. No substantive steps were taken to dismantle the monopolies engendered by the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees. Land acquisition legislation became even more complicated .

Overall, the Mody government’s economic performance has been mixed at best. It has successfully stabilized the economy and moved firmly in the direction of inflation targeting. But it has not been able to reignite private investment in the face of the inherited debt overhang, and thereby return the economy to rapid growth.

The book has two valuable appendices on ‘Inflation Targeting’ and  ‘Estimate of the Cost of Providing a ‘Basic Income’. A 20 page bibliography will prove very useful for the readers  for further studies.

 P.P.Ramachandran.

30 / 10 / 2016

Bhujia Barons by  Pavitra Kumar;  Published by Penguin Portfolio ; Pages 157; Price Rs.399/-

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   Pavitra Kumar was born in Deolali, Maharashtra, in 1985. She completed her undergraduate degree in journalism from Delhi University in 2003 before a short stint with CNN-IBN in Delhi.  Pavitra  pursued  a career in marketing and worked for digital marketing agencies in management roles. At the same time, her love for writing pushed her to freelance writing.She completed her MBA from the Carlson Institute of Management.

Quite literally the 1984 November riots-- following the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi-- gutted the “Haldiram “ establishment in Chandni Chowk in the national capital .One of the brothers Manohar saw everything that he had ever worked for, everything he had ever saved up, was right there, in those two small floors above the Sikh baker’s shop. His security and the future of his children were fast evaporating into a dark and sooty sky. But like the proverbial phoenix Haldiram re-emerged.

This book recounts  the fortunes of the Agarwal family from Rajasthan’s Marwar region, which took a fistful of bhujia — the roadside snack that’s sold by the bhori in Bikaner’s bazaars — infused it with three generations of toil, and has today built a processed foods business empire under the Haldiram’s brand that is valued, by some estimates, at Rs. 6,500 crore.

The volume  is  a chronicle of a homegrown ‘family business’  pickled in conservatism and  laced with an extra-strong masala flavour. It relates to a breakaway strand of the family, based in Kolkata, about whom the rest of the khandan, which built its bhujia base in Bikaner, Nagpur and Delhi, can only speak in hushed tones.

The origin was  during the time of Ganga Bhishen Agarwal (who was endearingly nicknamed ‘Haldiram’ by his mother, and who would later provide the group’s brand identity) that the ‘product differentiation’ occurred .Building on a bhujia sev recipe proffered by an aunt, a young Haldiram, married by age 10 and already immersed in the trade, experimented with spices and flavours and arrived at a formulation that set “Haldiram’s bhujia” apart in the crowded marketplace of Bikaner’s snack-vendors. 

The Haldiram family business started when patriarch Haldiram began making and selling a new snack—bhujia—to locals in Bikaner, Rajasthan, in 1918.He transformed a local snack into a national product by insisting on  high  quality, customer  friendliness , packaging and branding long before such concepts were heard of. The shelf life of bhujia was enlarged from six days to six months.The company radically changed customer preferences which was beyond learger brands.

 All was not well in the beginning  and the  family did indulge in tussles  redolent of fratricidal wars. It was not  inter-personal disagreements  as much as on business philosophical differences. The expansion of the Haldiram’s empire from small-town Bikaner to, first, Kolkata and, later, to Nagpur and Delhi, battling formidable headwinds, is a breathless case study of old-school family business,  giving way to a gradual professionalisation.

At  the centenary of its founding, the Haldiram’s empire is poised for the next phase of expansion, under a young generation of Agarwals who, for the first time, come equipped with international business accreditation.

Kumar does a competent job of chronicling these twists and turns, and her boots-on-the-ground reportage is illuminating.  Haldiram’s empire has revenue much greater than that of McDonald’s and Domino’s combined.

Haldiram’s –– has a history replete with ingredients worthy of a potboiler movie script; underdog hero, dizzying success, murder, intrigue, and a long-winded, high-decibel family feud that’s been playing out in the courts for nearly three decades.

 The book is full of interesting anecdotes .The most interesting is the story of ‘Bikhi bua’, who first introduced Haldiram and his brothers to the snack.While everybody loved the tasty snack, it was Haldiram who turned it into a lucrative business. She never received credit for it, but it was Bikhi bua who first sowed the seeds of bhujia in the Haldiram family.The initial sales were slow. However, Haldiram changed the game by innovating with ingredients. This changed the fortunes of the family and was just the beginning of the boom. The  bhujia was named  ‘Dungar Sev’ after the maharaja of Bikaner to differentiate it from others and create a brand. It could also be seen as an attempt to make the customer feel adequately royal when having this special bhujia. The Indian snack industry had stepped into  the world of branding.

 “Let your senses guide you” is the secret sauce of the Haldiram clan. The family’s “art of picking and blending the spices”, coupled with the uncanny wisdom of recognising just the right flavours, has been passed down the generations. Mixing, testing and tasting spices comes naturally to the Agarwals.

 There is not enough information on how competition has eaten into Haldiram’s business and the impact on the brand post the USFDA (United States Food and Drug Administration) labelling it unfit for sale in the US.

Over the years, Haldiram’s has garnered its fair share of the press. From tracing the incredible journey of its precocious founder Gangabhisan Aggarwal a.k.a. Haldiram in Bikaner, right through to the media blitzkrieg that was unleashed following the murder of a tea stall owner, for which Prabhu Aggarwal, the current scion of the Kolkata wing of the family, was sentenced to life behind the bars; the brand has been witness to both the good and the ugly of being in the spotlight.

 A hard toil and booming demand help Haldiram and his three sons scale up the venture from a small-time stall to a business that churns out 100-200 kilos of bhujias a week by the 1940s and 50s, with the prices shooting up from 2 paise a kilo to a handsome 25 paise! A chance visit to a Kolkata wedding prompts Haldiram to branch out into that ancient city. But it is familial pressure  rather than strategic vision that nudges grandson Shiv Kishan to set up shop in Nagpur, where Haldiram’s expands its snacks and sweets menu .

There is  black sheep of the family, Prabhu Shankar, who literally bulldozes his way through Kolkata and is sentenced to jail after an alleged attempt to take out a ‘supari’ on a tea stall owner

Aggarwal  under its fold has  today nearly 500 products sold under an array of brand names, several quick service restaurants, an e-commerce portal that’s on anvil and ambitious plans for expansion across categories such as frozen food and healthy snacks.
  Can Haldiram’s survive the onslaught of intense competition from MNCs and a new breed of local players that are breathing down its neck?.

The brand name is used by three completely independent businesses run by Haldiram’s grandsons namely Haldiram’s Nagpur, Haldiram Bhujiawala, Haldiram’s Prabhuji and Haldiram in Kolkata; and the best known Haldiram in Delhi.

 These are ordinary men who have achieved extraordinary feats. 

P.P.Ramachandran.

06/ 11 / / 2016