In his book Civilisation: The West And The Rest British historian Niall Ferguson discusses how the Western civilisation, from modest roots in the 15th century, came to dominate the rest of the world. The West did this by developing six killer applications: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the Protestant work ethic.
India The Spirit Of Enterprise, a coffee-table book, imaginatively captures the events and images that tell the story of the Rest, the foundation of the century that will inevitably belong to us. The foreword to the book talks of a chronicle of the rebirth of a once-thriving economy, in a Ferguson-like way. Yet, even as I write this review, India’s successful – and impatient – entrepreneurs, brought to halt by policy and economic slowdown, pray for another rebirth.
Which is a good time to reflect on India’s mercantile history, and see what makes India’s “reserves of entrepreneurship” tick. You can take your pick. The book covers a wide span of time: from the copper and gold traders of the Harappan civilisation, and commerce in the Vedic Age, to Mumbai’s Marwari cloth merchants in the 19th century, and the immensely successful IT start-ups of the last two decades, Infosys’ Murthy and Bharti’s Mittal.
A historian once told this reviewer that you need at least two decades between the event and the analysis to take an objective view. The problem with an effort like this is that if you rewind two decades in India, you hit blank space. So, there is an intricate account of the rise of the Tatas, from Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata opening the Empress Mill in 1877 in Nagpur to the arrival of J R D Tata on the scene, literally on a plane; and then near silence for a few decades till the mega acquisitions of Corus Steel and Jaguar Land Rover.
The good news about India’s economic story is that so much has happened in a decade and a half that it makes up for the decades, even centuries, of inaction. The book chooses a few subjects – aviation, healthcare, hospitality, jewellery, art and so on – and offers the kind of stuff we may have vaguely noticed but not read about or seen.
The author takes a revealing walk down Apollo Hospitals’ pediatric wing in Delhi, where you “might hear a chattering in Arabic” and the sound of little feet tearing through the corridors. These children, victims of the Iraq war who have had their ear drums damaged by explosions, are in India because Apollo – with 53 super-speciality facilities in India, Bangladesh and Mauritius – has developed expertise in cochlear implants, thereby helping them hear again.
India’s medical tourism industry a la Apollo benefits greatly from India’s strength in hospitality. Indian hotel chains offer world-class service despite poor infrastructure.
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If India’s hospitality industry has the charm, its jewellery industry has the glitter. You learn the interesting statistic that 95 per cent of diamond pieces are cut and/or polished in India, which is the world’s third-largest customer of polished diamonds.
The idea of beauty has spread to art too. We learn, as we gaze at Tyeb Mehta’s “Figure On Rickshaw”, that this painting was sold for $3.24 million at a Christie’s auction in London in June 2011. Indian buyers are not too far behind: we learn that IT tycoon Shiv Nadar’s wife paid $3.48 million for S H Raza’s “Saurashtra”, a work that hangs at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art at a mall in south Delhi.
It’s only appropriate that the IT czars are profiled for reasons going beyond art acquisitions. F C Kohli, regarded by many as the father of India’s software industry, headed TCS when it was set up in 1968. The company started with an old IBM machine and a second, COBOL-based computer that had been ordered by a government-run insurance company. It would have been better if some pictures accompanied these interesting anecdotes.
The writings in the early part of the book are insightful and many readers would encounter such a compilation for the first time. The photographs reflect the effort required to capture moments and events for posterity. Textiles may be boring to shoot, but the book showcases a well-chosen image of Raymond’s Everblue sewing room in Bangalore. Tata Steel’s cold rolling mill in Jamshedpur and the rolls of steel lined up awaiting dispatch tell us as much about India’s prowess in steel as of Indian industry’s coming of age.
The second part of the book, however, misses many things, including profiles of managers and enterprises who ensured India’s once-doddering public sector fought back, the advances in education, and the infrastructure that we do have (beyond airports). It’s interesting how the author has provided a link between the past and the present. Note this quote from Michael Kadoorie, Chairman of energy giant China Light & Power (CLP), “My family has been doing business since the 1870s, when my grandfather travelled from Baghdad to work in Bombay, before establishing himself in the Far East. I was able to restore my links with India through CLP’s presence here.”
INDIA THE SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE
Text: Ashok Malik
Foreword: T N Ninan
Roli Books; 253 pages