 "Low on book value")
You could find some useful stuff in MJ Akbar's Nehru: The Making of India (Roli Books, 2002) and Gita Piramal's Business Legends (Penguin, 1998). Jawaharlal Nehru was a socialist, though of the Fabian type, and disliked wealthy men in general and intrusive businessmen in particular. Nehru thought Ghanshyam Das Birla supported the Hindu lobby within the Congress. He had problems with JRD Tata as well. Nehru once told Tata that he hated the word profit: "Never talk to me about the word profit; it is a dirty word." Much of the acrimonious correspondence between the two stalwarts can be found in the collection of Tata's letters in 2004 by Rupa & Co (JRD Tata Letters). But the businessman Nehru loathed the most was Ramakrishna Dalmia, India's third-richest industrialist after Tata and Birla, media mogul, self-proclaimed expert on international affairs, protector of the holy cow and husband to no less than six wives. "He is an ugly man with an ugly face and an ugly mind and an ugly heart," Nehru said of him. For a full account of the rivalry between the two, read Neelima Dalmia Adhar's Father Dearest, the life and Times of RK Dalmia (Roli Books, 2003).
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There is, unfortunately, a grave shortage of business books from the 1970s and 1980s. That's perhaps because the Licence Raj had led to crony capitalism. Business was all about procuring production licences by hook or crook. The core competence of businessmen was to "cultivate" public leaders. What could they have written? The big event of the 1980s was Swraj Paul's raid on Escorts and DCM. One book that gives some idea of what happened is The Days of My Life (Penguin, 1992) by Har Prasad Nanda, the chairman of Escorts. The full story came out only in 2011 when Vinay Bharat-Ram, of the DCM family, wrote From the Brink of Bankruptcy: The DCM Story (Penguin). It was his younger brother, Vivek Bharatram, who sought help from Rajiv Gandhi, who had been his friend from their schooldays in Dehra Dun, and Paul called off the raid.
The world where business meets politics is murky and hence seldom gets written about. Vinod Mehta's Lucknow Boy, A Memoir (Penguin, 2011) gives us some insights into the worlds of two businessmen: Vijaypat Singhania and Lalit Mohan Thapar. Of the first, Mehta writes, "Before Richard Branson, there was Vijaypat Singhania." Apart from running the Raymond group, Singhania was an avid flier, bred sheep, and won prizes for his ballroom dancing skills. In the mid-1980s, he started a newspaper called Indian Post. That was the Licence Raj, and businessmen could not afford to annoy the government with a pesky newspaper. So there was opposition from the extended Singhania family. But he decided to press on. In 1987, Singhania got Mehta to edit it. Mehta says some of the articles in Indian Post were unpleasant to the government, and, consequently, pressure began to mount on Singhania to fix him. Finally, Mehta says, Singhania sent him a letter that, unless there is irrefutable evidence, the paper should desist from carrying articles on eight people: apart from the usual suspects, the list included Amitabh Bachchan. These people, Singhania told Mehta, could seriously jeopardise his business interests. Mehta quit soon thereafter.
No less interesting is the story of how L N Mittal acquired Arcelor - captured so well in Cold Steel (Little, Brown; 2008) by Tim Bouquet and Byron Ousey. Mittal Steel and Arcelor had fought bitterly for assets all over the world. A merger between the two, Mittal argued, would solve this problem forever. The Areclor board and CEO, Guy Dolle, did not approve of the merger. Dolle started on the wrong foot. His derogatory remarks against Mittal Steel's Indian brass in general and Aditya, Mittal's son, in particular did not go down well with the company's shareholders. Towards the end, Dolle even got Severstal of Russia in as a white knight. But Mittal was able to checkmate him. Severstal, his spin doctors spread the story, was unlisted and therefore nobody knew its innards. Its closeness to Putin also caused alarm bells to ring. (After losing the fight, Severstal listed on the London Stock Exchange.) After some tough negotiations, Arcelor finally fell into Mittal's lap.
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No story of Indian business families can be complete without the Ambanis. Two books, Storms in the Sea Wind (Roli Books, 2005) by Alam Srinivas and Ambani & Sons (Roli Books, 2010) by Hamish McDonald give good insights into the biggest family spat the country has seen.There have been other books as well. The most notable of these is Whatever the odds, The Incredible Story Behind DLF by KP Singh (with Ramesh Menon and Raman Swamy; HarperCollins, 2011). Singh gives a glimpse of how business is done in India. When he went to buy land from farmers at Gurgaon, the Jat village next to Delhi, he would wear a Dhoti and a beret from his cavalry days. The idea was to strike a chord with the farmer as well the solider in the household. Singh recounts his run-ins with Bansi Lal, the former Haryana chief minister. By twisting state policy, Bansi Lal almost drove DLF and Singh out of business. It was a twist of fate that pulled Singh out of the dumps of despair. One hot day, while he was seated on a charpoy in the shade of a tree, a car screeched to a halt and the driver asked for water to cool the engine. That's how Singh met Rajiv Gandhi and sold him the dream of suburban development.