What makes FT ex-journalist James Crabtree a brilliant outsider on inside

James Crabtree strolls into the cacophonous lobby of New Delhi’s Park hotel with the swagger of a high-school basketball player. His frame fits the bill. As he waves at me, I can’t help but notice how he so easily dwarfs everyone else in the large room. “I didn’t imagine you’d be so tall,” I confess. He beams and responds with a shake of the hand and a side-hug of sorts — another of those gestures you would expect from your marquee shooting guard and not a brilliantly capable journalist, writer and intellectual.

Then, as he poses for pictures outside before we sit down to talk, with an elevated, manicured lawn as the backdrop, he makes sure to turn up the coolness quotient. “Are you one for fancy socks?” I ask, impressed by the varicoloured pair he has chosen for our meeting. He offers a cheeky smile, lifting his trousers that wee bit for the camera.  

Crabtree has been on a mammoth promotional tour for his new book, The Billionaire’s Raj: A Journey through India’s Gilded Age — a seemingly endless phase of globetrotting. “If I have to promote another book, I’m afraid it will have to be with a second wife,” he laughs, alluding to the long period he has been away from home.

Having taken up a teaching position at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy more than two years ago, home for Crabtree is now in Singapore, where he lives with his wife, two kids and two cats. And the felines, Maine Coons, are perhaps bigger celebrities than Crabtree himself. In March 2016, Crabtree penned an amusing piece on how India’s red tape was proving to be a hurdle in exporting the two of them to Singapore. “That was a complete nightmare. Getting them out of here was quite a task,” he recalls.

As for the book, it had been in the making for a while. Heading the Mumbai bureau of the Financial Times between 2011 and 2016, Crabtree had the opportunity to cover and regularly meet with some of India’s most powerful businessmen — a kind of rare access that he himself acknowledges came about quite easily since foreign correspondents such as him are part of the conduit to global markets that help tycoons reach out to major global investors. 

“In my time here, I was intrigued by the billionaires and the kind of capitalism I encountered. We don’t have billionaires of this sort in the West; I wanted to understand their role in India’s development story. It was really fascinating,” says Crabtree, slumping back in his chair every once in a while to punctuate his thoughts. His boyish face, marked by a light, almost invisible stubble, belies his 41 years. And 10 minutes into our conversation, if the tie pairing his easy-fitting navy blue suit is anything to go by, Crabtree is loosening up.  

The book itself is delightfully detailed and wonderfully researched, further enriched by a writing style that is both fresh and evocative — reflections on a grim subject wrapped in an engaging narrative. And despite the title, billionaires only occupy a part of the book; the rest is an accurate and occasionally damning comment on the India of a few years ago, enlivened by contentious characters such as Lalit Modi, Jagdish Bhagwati, N Srinivasan, Raghuram Rajan and Arnab Goswami (an entire chapter is dedicated to Indian television’s enfant terrible).  

Crabtree underscores three fault lines in The Billionaire’s Raj: rampant inequality that is invariably an outcome of the wealth explosion at the top; crony capitalism and how corruption plays out in different regions of India; and the issues with India’s investment model. “India has become more unequal than most of us realise. And if India needs to move upwards and onwards in the development stakes, these three problems need to be looked at very seriously,” he explains. 

By now, our coffee has arrived and Crabtree dunks cookies in his latte with a kind of naturalised carefree abandon. The teatime ritual may have its modern origins back home in England but Crabtree makes sure he enjoys his biscuits in a very Indian way. 

Crabtree was perhaps hugely lucky to be around while the country was in the midst of sweeping change, and a book seems like an expected end result. He witnessed from close quarters the spectacular ascent of Narendra Modi and his imperious march to power; the despicably drawn-out fall of Vijay Mallya; the sudden tumult caused by demonetisation; and the acrimonious dismissal of Rajan as governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

In fact, Crabtree is among only a handful of journalists who have interviewed Mallya after the extravagant businessman fled India for the UK. What Crabtree found at the liquor baron’s London mansion, in addition to an unrepentant owner, was a gold toilet with a golden rim, and monogrammed white towels bearing “VM”. 

“He is a charismatic figure whose company I enormously enjoyed,” concedes Crabtree, further elaborating on how “Mallya sees himself as a victim of circumstance”. “A lot of it is obviously his fault. But India must not think that it has a ‘Vijay Mallya’ problem and that putting him in jail will solve everything. He is by no means the worst offender when it comes to taking money out of the banking system.” 

His assessment of the Modi government is more severe. Demonetisation, according to him, “was the single-biggest policy mistake made by any government in living memory”, with the Prime Minister’s overall record as a reformer also coming in for some fierce criticism in the book. 

“Demonetisation, the sacking of Rajan and the appointment of Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh chief minister were the three key decisions that made me realise that Modi isn’t the economic reformer we think him to be,” Crabtree continues. 

His acquired Indianness goes beyond his illuminating expertise on the country’s economy and politics. His son, born in 2014, is called Alexander Francis Viswanathan Crabtree, a name approved by a bunch of priests amid a blast of incense and holy coconuts at a naming ceremony at his Colaba home in Mumbai. It was a neighbour’s idea and when the priest told Crabtree that the name had to start with ‘V’, he hastily came up with Viswanathan, after Viswanathan Anand, India’s greatest chess player. “I am not the best chess player; you’ll probably beat me. But I’m definitely an enthusiast,” he chuckles. 

And then there’s cricket. His admitting to an affinity for the sport has me apprising him of a similarity he shares with Sunil Gavaskar. The former Indian captain, like Crabtree, paid tribute to his sporting heroes by sandwiching a curious portmanteau between his son’s first and last name. In Rohan Gavaskar’s case, it is “Jaivishwa”, a marriage of words honouring M L Jaisimha and Gundappa Viswanath. Crabtree nods, more surprised than flattered.

The surprise soon gives way to elation, as he is told that James Anderson’s prodigious seam and swing is running through the Indian top order at Lord’s, with the expected horror playing out on a giant screen behind us. Test cricket may have him exuberantly cheering on for now, but Crabtree says that he is one for innovation. “I am a fan of Test cricket but there really is no point if there are only two men and a dog watching it on a wet Thursday,” he remarks. “India, with its focus on T20 cricket, is changing the sport. But with this success has come corruption and scandal. Indian cricket, in fact, is a great metaphor for the country itself.”

As we are about to leave, Chris Woakes knocks over Virat Kohli with a floating outswinger. A dismayed Kohli trudges back, and I realise that this contest is every bit as unequal as my guest concludes India is. Crabtree is right: we must bridge the gap.