Businessmen in Kolkata remember late industrialist Krishna Kumar Birla, who passed away at Birla Park here on Saturday, as a man who did not suffered fools or flatterers kindly.
He was also fond of his daughters and spent a lot of time with them and their families including at public functions.
He was usually most approachable at gatherings at their homes and would stay on till quite late there, remembers Kolkatans invited to the home of Jyotsna and Saroj Poddar for example.
In a famous incident, a very senior industrialist some years his junior once approached him at a gathering and the courteous Birla asked, “how is your business doing?” The other person answered, “Thanks to your ‘meherbani’ (kindness) I am doing well,” Birla replied, “If I had any meherbani to spare, I would use it in my own businesses – nobody spares meherbani for others, least of all me, so I assume you are doing well by yourself.”
He was feared for his no nonsense approach and when the Birla family went of separation of the holdings of the ancestral business firms of Birla Borthers and Pilani Investments, he settled his issues without anyone daring to cross his path, recall old timers. In contrast, the settlement among some of the other family sections remain unsettled to this day.
‘K K Babu,’ the name he was referred to by his associates and admirers, was one of the best dressed businessmen in the country in suits and shirts that reportedly came from London’s Jermyn Street and Saville Row, and in Indian clothes made with specially handmade muslin and cotton. His wife Manorama Devi passed away in Kolkata on July 29 and he had been inconsolable since then, said a person close to him for many years.
He expanded the business empire founded by his father and in parallel spent a lot of time on philanthropy and education.
The Indian sugar industry, the media, fertilisers, chemicals, heavy engineering, textiles and shipping made up his group of about 40 companies including Zuari Industries, Chambal Fertlisers, Paradeep Phosphates, Sutlej Industries, Birla Textile Mills, Oudh Sugar Mills, Texmaco, Simon India, India Steamship, ISG Novasoft, and Hindustan Times Media.
He was born in the ancestral family home at Pilani in Rajasthan on October 12, 1918, as the eldest son of industrialist Ghanshyam Das Birla. Along with the late J R D Tata, Birla co-authored what is called the “Bombay Plan” that outlined the role of businesses and the government in building a nation, highlighting corporate social responsibility, the role of industries, entrepreneurs and policy makers in modernising and developing what was then a backward India.
Birla was one of the very few who backed the liberalisation programme in the early 1990s dismantling licences and quotas unlike others who even formed an informal anti-liberalisation lobby group called the “Bombay Club.”
This endeared him to men like now-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was finance minister then.
He built landmark temples like the Lakshmi Narayan Temple and served as member of the Rajya Sabha for 18 consecutive years.
Birla’s autobiography “Brushes with History” captured his contact with men like Mahatma Gandhi, Rajendra Prasad, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Jayaprakash Narayan and was made available in Kolkata recently, where many of his Marwari compatriots picked it up.
