The man who missed Maruti

Krishna Kumar Birla is the promoter of the Zuari-Chambal group and has interests in fertilisers, cement, seeds, software services, the media, sugar and furniture retail. The group has done a handful of acquisitions in India and abroad in the last few years. This includes Paradeep Phosphates Ltd, which Birla bought after the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had put it on the block. But none of these was stunning in size or impact. All told, the group is over Rs 5,000 crore in size and ranks amongst the world's leading producers of fertilisers.

None of this sounds worthy of being put together in a book. The pace at which Indian companies are buying firms and brands abroad has made airport fiction read dull and sedate. Still, any student of India's economic history would have loved to pick up Birla's autobiography. He is now in his late 80s and has seen India move from a British colony to an independent country, from a free market to a controlled economy to a free and thriving economy once again.

Unfortunately, Brushes with History talks about Birla's business activities in just 11 of its 665 pages. "My Business Activities" is the last of the 40 chapters of the book. The rest of the book is about the Birla family history, Birla's brush with politics, his charitable work and his correspondence with public figures and statesmen. The Lodha affair is confined to just two pages.

Birla did not inherit much of the wealth of his father, Ghanshyam Das Birla, because he had three daughters and no son to pass it on to. As a result, most of it went to Aditya Vikram Birla. But he inherited his father's interest in public affairs. And if the reader is willing to give up his search for strategic business initiatives and management lessons, the book does contain riveting information in some of its pages.

Ghanshyam Das Birla was close to Mahatma Gandhi. But his relations with Gandhi's political successor, Jawaharlal Nehru, were cold. Nehru was convinced that Fabian socialism was the way ahead for India and had scant respect for businessmen and their profiteering ways. But Birla became close to Indira Gandhi. He even wrote a book on her.

Indira Gandhi lost power to the Janata Party in 1977. Chaudhary Charan Singh, the home minister, lost no time in launching a vendetta against her and people perceived to be close to her. Two businessmen were on the list: Ram Prasad Goenka and Birla.

Birla's crime was that his companies had put out advertisements in some souvenirs brought out by the Congress and had given a few Jeeps to the party for election work. This was conceived as monetary help to the party. Socialism was still alive and kicking at that time and the Janata Party felt it had sufficient fire power to put muscle on Birla and Goenka. Birla first went to Jaiprakash Narayan, the Janata Party ideologue, who had at one time served as Ghanshyam Das Birla's secretary. But it didn't help. Birla says in his autobiography that Singh point-blank asked him about the money stashed away by Indira Gandhi. Devi Lal said all cases could be dropped against him if could cause 15 or 20 Congress members of Parliament to defect to the rival camp.

Nothing came out of these behind-the-scenes parleys. While Goenka was picked up by the police from Nainital and briefly put behind bars, Birla left the country just in time to evade arrest.

How did he manage to outwit Singh? Apart from the fact that the bureaucratic machinery did not move fast enough, Birla was able to stay a step ahead of Singh because he was on excellent terms with the then foreign minister and Jan Sangh leader, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The Janata Party regime was trying to impound Birla's passport to keep him confined to India. With Vajpayee's intervention, Birla was able to keep his passport. A few weeks before his planned arrest, Vajpayee tipped off Birla, who booked himself on a flight to Paris. A few months later, Birla returned to India after the all-clear signal from Vajpayee.

Birla was also close to Sanjay Gandhi. With his favourite people's car project floundering, Birla says, Sanjay Gandhi approached him to become a shareholder in the company and infuse some capital. But Birla was not convinced. He thought that for Sanjay Gandhi to realise his dream, it would have to be a large-scale project requiring large investments. He even told Indira Gandhi that her son was leading an unwise project and needed to be restrained. Had he agreed to Sanjay Gandhi's offer, Birla would have become a shareholder in Maruti Udyog, the country's largest car company.

---

BRUSHES WITH HISTORY
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Krishna Kumar Birla
Penguin
Price: Rs 650; Pages: 665