Kanika Datta: From here to maturity

SWOT

Business Standard completes 30 years on March 26 (launched on March 27, 1975). Having joined just before its tenth birthday and left shortly before its thirtieth, it has been interesting to have watched at close quarters the evolution of the paper from youthful exuberance to a respectability beyond its years in the midst of seminal changes in the political economy.

Both 1985 and 2005 are significant because they mark the start and end""almost to the month""of a corporate drama that came to public notice with a BS story break: the acquisition of Shaw Wallace (SWC).

The identity of its owner, a little-known Dubai-based businessman Manohar Rajaram Chhabria, was a surprise not least because it was widely rumoured on the Calcutta Stock Exchange""where the SWC stock was soaring""that it was Vijay Mallya who was the buyer.

Inevitably, it was whispered, this Dubai-based trader was just a "front" for Mallya (MRTP shackles were strong then, so such overt acquisitions would not have been possible for his UB group).

But no, as it turned out""at least outwardly""Chhabria's Jumbo group was very much in control. What is more, Chhabria went on an acquisition rampage with almost arriviste zeal: Dunlop, Mather & Platt and a score of hoary British corporate names entered the Jumbo fold.

Despite the serial acquisitions, it was the famous battle between Chhabria and S P Acharya, then managing director of SWC, that convulsed the business press for months. Proxy battles and shareholder value emerged as new words in the Indian business reporter's lexicon (in later Chhabria battles, the term "White Knight" became another addition).

The Chhabria versus Acharya battle ended somewhat ignominiously with the financial institutions doing a volte face and throwing in their lot with the Jumbo chief.

Twenty years and many subsidiary battles with the Chhabria family later, Vijay Mallya finally acquires this jewel in the liquor business""and openly admits he's fulfilled a dream that began in 1985.

Ultimately, though, Rajiv Gandhi's partial liberalisation ensured that SWC became one in a series of newsy developments over the eighties that added excitement to an uncertain career in business journalism.

There were stirrings in the stock markets, with Dhirubhai Ambani emerging not just as a controversial giant on the corporate firmament but also as the rock star of the equity cult.

A small-town bicycle maker tied up with Honda and by the nineties became one of the world's largest makers of motorcycles. Loads of foreign joint ventures were formed especially in the automobiles business, several of which had failed within a decade. V P Singh's infamous Black List of alleged corporate tax defaulters added to India Inc's angst.

For all that, the Indian economy remained essentially insular. The famous global stockmarket crash of 1987 was a point of academic interest in India; the Indian markets remained snugly insulated. And corporate success was still measured by lobbying power on Raisina Hill.

The Tatas' attempts to enter car manufacturing by tying up with Honda for the Accord foundered on the rocks of competitive lobbying (ironically, the Accord is very much in evidence on Indian roads while the lobbyist is nowhere in the automobile stakes).

But the Big Story in those days was not in Kolkata, then on the wane with the retreat of Fera-scarred foreign companies and the Left Front's depredations, but in Mumbai. This was the Reliance (Ambani) versus Bombay Dyeing (Nusli Wadia) battle.

Then competitors for polyester textiles, reporters on Budget night invariably tracked who had won the PTA versus DMT battle in North Block. PTA and DMT were competing intermediates for polyester manufacture that Reliance and Bombay Dyeing respectively used, and, or so it was thought, the excise and import duties on them were raised or lowered depending on whose star shone.

And then, just before the turn of the decade came the famous Murder Attempt on the person of Nusli Wadia, a development fully worthy of the Penny Dreadful prose it stimulated in the press.

Meanwhile, a union leader called Datta Samant led the textile workers of Mumbai into a strike for which India is now paying the price.

BS, then in its teens, reported all of this with an enthusiasm that was often judged ill-considered, if not risky.

By and large, though, reporters in those days had it relatively easy. Since government pretty much dominated the economy, reporters had to build their sources within government, which was then a reliable source of leaks and a safe whipping boy.

Of course, 1991 changed all that and with it the rules of the business and financial information business. For one, the parlous state of public finance came sharply into focus (it was Manmohan Singh as finance minister who first drew public attention to the fiscal deficit).

Suddenly, beats like power and telecom acquired private players, many of them multinationals with wide experience of and strict rules for engaging with the press.

Today, developments as far as New York or Beijing have an impact on Indian corporate fortunes. To stay in the game editors and writers alike have had to acquire newer skills and a far wider knowledge base.

Like other dailies, BS faced this maelstrom of change with its share of triumphs, angst, and mistakes. The paper's growth from a single-edition eight-page Kolkata daily to a multi-edition opinion maker will be amply set out in the special section that appears with today's edition.

Looking back and now from the outside I am delighted to have been part of it all. As reader rather than journalist, I do hope that the paper, on the threshold of the thirties, avoids the embarrassing excesses of mid-life crises that are afflicting journalism today. Happy Birthday.

The views expressed here are personal