Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) president Rahul Bajaj, who is also the chairman of Bajaj Auto Ltd, yesterday said that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government was a caretaker and could not take policy decisions that required Parliament's approval.
Interacting with mediapersons at the Indian Women's Press Corps here along with CII director-general Tarun Das and senior director Manushi Roy, Bajaj said that he was ready to sacrifice anything, even growth, for the sake of democracy. He substantiated this by recalling that he, in spite of the congress roots of his family, had opposed imposition of Emergency by Indira Gandhi, even at the cost of adverse impact on his business.
Fielding questions ranging from national pride and ownership of Indian companies, sustained development, need for a developing nations' perspective on the question of environment, to even politics and the citizenship of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Bajaj lived up to his image by non-stop frank talk until, in his own words, he was nudged "under the table" by Tarun Das to stop.
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Bajaj would not mind if among all Indian companies, some were foreign-owned while the rest Indian-owned. But he would say there was something seriously wrong with the system if all the companies in India were foreign-owned. He clarified that he, for one, would also never be in favour of all companies in India being only Indian-owned. "It has never been so even before liberalisation. We had ITC, Hindustan Lever and many others," he said.
Bajaj's linking of the ownership of Indian companies with the "system" with the sprinkling of the term "national pride" in between, appeared different from what the CII has been stating all these years in respect of efficient versus inefficient management.
He had his own solutions to offer for a cleaner Delhi, one of which was to buy automobiles, including his company's product, and use them only for a trip to the market with a well developed public transport system taking up the burden of the main travelling within the city. If not this, then there was another option: go back to the stone age and there would be no pollution. u