Why are Indian businessmen, I have often wondered, so reluctant to write their autobiographies? If you go to any bookshop, you are unlikely to find more than one or two. The only one stores stock these days is Capt Gopinath’s Simply Fly. Yes, there are several commissioned biographies around, but these are little more than hagiographies. These books don’t sell in the market. They are, to tell the truth, not meant to sell on merit — they are distributed to unsuspecting employees, though the money is quietly cut from their salaries, to educate them on the greatness of their benevolent employer. Search hard and you will come across several such books in second-hand book stores, always unread and often undusted.
One reason seems to be that Indian businessmen don’t find the time to retire — you can look back at your career only after it has ended. But that seldom happens in India. Ratan Tata seems to be an exception — a committee tasked to find his successor is at work. Most others just don’t want to let go of the money, perks, power and the adrenaline rush that comes with the business. Retirement is for the faint-hearted; Indian businessmen are made of sterner stuff. Jack Welch wrote Jack: Straight from the Gut after he retired as chairman of General Electric, and Andy Grove wrote Only the Paranoid Survive after he had hung his boots at Intel.
Not that our businessmen live uninteresting lives; on the contrary, they all have riveting, and often downright scandalous, stories to tell, though it is always off the record. Therein perhaps hides the answer. Till 20 years ago, business was all about getting licences and permits from New Delhi, and creating roadblocks for rivals. That’s where the core competence of Indian businessmen lay. Companies were small, inefficient, poorly managed and production-led. Whatever was produced got sold. No other business acumen was really required.
So, what stories could you tell? Political clout was what mattered most. Asset-stripping was rampant, and so was insider trading. How do you put in black and white the sordid details of how you acquired those skills? Let sleeping dogs lie was the unwritten rule. Hence, that period remains a complete black hole so far as business history told through autobiographies is concerned. There were exceptions like Har Prasad Nanda of Escorts, who wrote a candid account of his life in The Days of My Years.
But there was nothing else of substance. For instance, apart from Mr Nanda’s book, there is precious little on the raid mounted by NRI businessman Swraj Paul on DCM and Escorts in the mid-1980s. What had motivated him to stir a hornet’s nest? How were these businesses defended? What were the levers Mr Nanda and the DCM family pulled to thwart Mr Paul? Bharat Ram’s autobiography (Reminiscences and Reflections) and Charat Ram’s biography (Points and Lines, written by K V Kamath) are quiet on the subject. The fact is that the family lobbied hard with Rajiv Gandhi, who had gone to school with Bharat Ram’s youngest son, Vivek, to hold on to their company. That is what saved the day for them as well as Nanda.
By that logic, there should have been a flurry of autobiographies in the last 20 years — ever since the licence-permit-quota raj was dismantled by P V Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh in 1991. But the trickle has remained a trickle. The unavoidable conclusion is that the world of business remains as murky as ever. Crony capitalism, which we all thought would get buried in the avalanche of free markets, is not only alive but healthy and strong. To put it differently, there still remains in the hands of the government enormous discretionary power, which can make or break a business. The 2G scam is a live example. Political leaders of repute, businessmen and executives are all under the lens. More skeletons are sure to tumble out in the days to come. Again, who has the nerve to tell the full story, do the Full Monty?
Doing business in India is not easy; it requires special skills to move ahead. The country comes out poorly in the Doing Business rankings of the International Finance Corporation. It stood 134th amongst 183 economies in the 2011 rankings, up one slot from 135th in 2010. It has done badly on most parameters — starting a business (165), dealing with construction permits (177), registering property (94), paying taxes (164), trading across borders (100), enforcing contracts (182) and closing a business (134). Its only respectable scores are in getting credit (32) and protecting investors (44).
That aside, a large number of Indian businessmen have done commendable work in the last few years. It ranges from developing great products, acquiring big-ticket businesses abroad, turning around loss-making ventures and transforming companies. Still, it could be a long wait before they put their memoirs on paper. You could blame this on laziness. But why blame businessmen alone? Not writing an account of one’s life is a malaise that runs across the country. Only a handful of our civil servants and diplomats have bothered to write their memoirs. The same goes for political leaders, Army Generals and even editors.