A collection of essays and other writings provides a good picture of India’s business history, at least up to the reforms era.
As a Marwari girl-child, I took my upbringing for granted. Even after moving to England, I swam easily between an English world in school and a Marwari one at home. It all seemed so very natural. As I grew older, however, I searched for a definition or articulation of the essence of Marwariness, one that was distinct or a subset of Indianness. That I would find an answer in The Oxford India Anthology of Business History, edited by Medha M Kudaisya, took me by surprise.
In her chapter on Birla family values in the 1930s, Kudaisya examines how the four Birla brothers functioned as a single social unit, supporting each others’ families, and how carefully family traditions were defined and perpetuated. Her detailed portrayal matched my own experience — reading the chapter brought back floods of memories.
Kudaisya, an associate professor of history at the National University of Singapore, presents the anthology in five sections: “The Bazaar”, “Mercantile Communities”, “Family and Firm”, “Rise of Indian Industry”, and “Post-liberalization Scenario” about business in the post-reforms era. Each section opens with a theme essay which sets the scene by placing events in historical context. This is followed by chapters consisting of extracts in their original form written by scholars, journalists and the players themselves. “The intention is to put together both secondary and primary material for general readers and scholars to gain a flavour of the times they portray,” she explains.
Her choices reveal just how much the writing of business history has changed. As a postgraduate student in the 1980s, one of the first books I was told to read was V I Pavlov’s The Indian Capitalist Class: A Historical Study. The authors Kudaisya has selected for this anthology could not be more different. India’s post-Independence flirtation with the USSR carried through into its universities. Today communist influences have been replaced by Indian professors at Harvard Business School.
HBS is a fairly hard-nosed institution — and it believes that research must be helpful. In a developing country like India, with endemic shortages of everything, resources spent on business history need to be even more helpful. In this aspect, sadly the Anthology has not kept pace with changes in the direction of business history in India. In the 1930s, economists within India and outside searching for the reasons behind India’s economic backwardness also looked at its business communities, its business leadership and its organisation. Eight decades later, the question lingers on, and one more has been added: how can India catch up with China? The answers will be found as much in business history as in politics, technology, the social sciences and economics. In this anthology, very little space has been allocated to the post-reform era.
This caveat aside, the book is very welcome. It’s hard for any activity to survive without infrastructure. Business history stopped being taught in India 20 years ago. Hats off, therefore, to Oxford University Press. Given the implausibility of volume sales to students and the general lack of interest in history, OUP demonstrates its courage by publishing books for which there is no obvious market. In 2004, OUP brought out The Concise Oxford History of Indian Business, by Dwijendra Tripathi with Jyoti Jumani. Now we have Kudaisya’s anthology.
Both books are beautifully put together. In the anthology, the cover and the photographs marking its sections are wonderfully appealing, with a solemn but quirky humour. I only wish that the inside photographs had been printed in colour rather than black and white. The lack of colour reduces their impact. Despite this economising, the high standards do mean that the cover price of the anthology is Rs 1,295. The Concise History was priced at Rs 1,500.
Any anthology, in any genre, generates the same kind of excitement we feel when about to enter a party: a heady expectation of having a good time, an eagerness to meet old friends, the quiet hope of making new friends. In that sense the Anthology does not disappoint. Here are old friends and new, an interesting mix of scholars, journalists and businessmen.
Of course, I have my own views about who should have been included, who substituted. And like the Pepsi advertisement, it’s a case of dil maange more.
I’m glad that Kudaisya has included journalists. Our vibrant business magazines (which have been around for over three decades) and television business news channels capture living history. And hopefully in her next work we will see case studies written by B-schools. Today these are a sadly neglected but rich source of business history. They deserve attention.
If you have recently acquired a taste for business history, this anthology is a great starting point. If you are already an old hand, it has the added usefulness of serving as a comprehensive annotated bibliography.
Gita Piramal is the author of several books including Business Maharajas and Managing Radical Change
THE OXFORD INDIA ANTHOLOGY OF BUSINESS HISTORY
Editor: Medha M Kudaisya
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Pages: xxviii + 492
Price: Rs 1,295
