Dev Chatterjee: Long on results, short on copy

My Week

Monday
It's just yet another manic Monday. An Indian wine importer calls me up to say how he helped draft the US objections to the astronomically high duties levied on foreign wine imported by India. The overall duties, he complains, can go up to as high as 500 per cent, and with the Americans lobbying against high duties along with Europeans, he is convinced that import duties on wines would fall eventually. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that it would be wine consumers who would be the eventual winners as they will be able to get cheaper and quality products from abroad. For the sake of tipplers, Kamal Nath should make the announcement sooner rather than later.

Thursday
Tata Steel was going to announce its results and I was to cover it. As I settled down in a corner seat, Tata Steel's public relations manager nudged me and told me I'd get an exclusive interview after the function. I've always liked interviewing Tata Steel Managing Director B Muthuraman. Muthuraman is one of India Inc's best managers and can be credited for steering Tata Steel from a $2 billion Jamshedpur-based company in 2001 to a $25 billion global conglomerate now. Like a true lecturer, Muthuraman treats journalists like students and opens up immediately. A few years ago, I had to ask him what his favourite drink was (for a story I was doing). Without any hesitation, he said "whisky". Trust me, not many people in our corporate world would want to admit that. Muthuraman, however, was short of time today and could not spend enough time talking to me. But I had my story.

Friday
He is undeniably India Inc's poster boy. Kumar Mangalam Birla, the chairman of Aditya Birla group, however, is a difficult man to interview. Birla rarely opens up and likes to talk in two or three sentences which makes a reporter's job so difficult. It was same today, as Birla announced his $2.2 billion retail foray and gave us a short interview. But make no mistake, Birla is one of the sharpest businessmen I have ever come across in my 15-year career in journalism. When I used to walk into the Aditya Birla group's offices in Industry House in south Mumbai in the early nineties, it was like walking into a government office. People walked around aimlessly and sleepy managers would sign files like babus. Cut to 2007, and the Aditya Birla group has changed so dramatically and progressed so much that I am sure Kumar's grandfather Basantbabu would be very proud of him. In an interview a few months ago in his palatial Mumbai house overlooking the now under-construction Bandra-Worli sea link, Basantbabu told me on a lazy Sunday evening how Kumar had filled in the void in his life created by the tragic death of his only son, Aditya. Misty-eyed, he told me, Kumar has proved himself. I agree.

Also...
The catfights between television journalists for a "bite" is becoming an amusement for the rest of us. When an NDTV journalist got an exclusive with top Tata Group officials and that too "live", the CNBC reporter was not amused. The person who had to take the verbal blows from the CNBC team was the poor public relations officer. If only journalists realised that such public fights reduce their own prestige.