<b>Lunch with BS:</b> Anita Raghavan

The Indian-American angst

The Dhaba at the Claridges is reasonably successful at achieving the rusticity of a typical roadside eatery, but the loud, tinny mid-20th-century Hindi film music makes me nervous. The sound may add authenticity to the faux  dhaba experience, but I nervously wonder whether it will intrude on my conversation with Anita Raghavan, journalist and author of The Billionaire’s Apprentice  (Hachette, 2013). 

 

Raghavan’s meticulously researched page-turner is an account of one of the biggest insider trading scandals on Wall Street involving a fascinating cast of characters mainly from the South Asian community — from the brash Sri Lankan Raj Rajaratnam to  respectable names from the Indian business community. To the appalled business world in India, it was really all about the Fall of Rajat Gupta, former head of McKinsey, and his protégé, Anil Kumar.

 

 

The subtext to this story is how these icons were brought down by Indian-born prosecutor Preet Bharara — the man fated to hit the headlines in India last year again.  Raghavan has broadened the canvas of the controversy to focus on the evolution of the Indian-American elite in the US business world, an original twist to an assiduously reported media event.

 

Raghavan arrives to the strains of Mera Naam Hai Chin Chin Choo , diminutive and flustered because she’s late, thanks to a driver provided by her publishers who proves innocent of all knowledge of Delhi’s roads. We quickly order: Rann kebab for starters, yellow dal, and chicken curry and rice to assuage our southern and eastern souls.

 

Since a brief bio says she was born in Malaysia, I had assumed Raghavan was part of Malaysia’s historical Indian diaspora. But no, both her parents are from Chennai (and she holds an Indian passport). So what’s the Malaysian connection? The story is a reflection of the South Asian experience in the US.

 

Her parents met in the US where her father was on a scholarship to Princeton and her mother was working in the Brooklyn Public Library. They were big fans of Ravi Shankar, then making waves in the US, but appalled by the free-living counter-culture they encountered at his concerts. So, when they planned to have a child, they decided to live outside America. Besides, the immigration laws were still stringent at the time.

 

India would have been an option. Ammu Swaminathan, freedom fighter and member of the Constituent Assembly and Raghavan’s great aunt, spoke to Nehru. Raghavan’s father was offered a job in one of India’s primary scientific institutions but was so frustrated by the red tape that he chose instead to teach botany in a Malayan university.

 

When Raghavan turned seven, the Bhoomiputra (sons of soil) agitation had gained traction, making it difficult for her father to continue working in Malaya. The US had opened up by then, so her parents decided to “repot” themselves. Still nervous about exposure to American youth, their daughter was sent to the very select Cheltenham Ladies’ College in the UK (which may explain the near lack of a twang in her accent).

 

The starters arrive, and, to my delight, the waiter actually says, “Enjoy your snakes,” a pronunciation I haven’t heard in years. The kebabs are so dry and unappetising that neither of us finish our portions. Raghavan started her journalistic career in The Wall Street Journal in the glory days of newspapering but also the height of the insider-trading trials. 

 

So how did she come to write her book from a South Asian perspective? “It kind of started out that way,” she replies. “I remember sitting in my apartment in London on the day Raj Rajaratnam was arrested when I got a call from a hedge fund manager friend in New York. No one was surprised at Raj’s arrest, he was so indiscreet that his operations were common knowledge.”

 

The shocker was Anil Kumar — “here was someone who was very smart, went to all the right schools, had the right pedigree, an Indian success story caught up in the scandal. Our first reaction was, ‘it can’t be true’.”

 

There was so much disbelief, Raghavan says, that Kumar’s lawyers initially even told the US prosecutor’s office, “you’ve got the wrong guy”. They suggested the real culprit was another Anil Kumar, an Indian guitarist.

 

Disbelief was the first reaction when we heard of Rajat Gupta too, I say. She has drawn a sympathetic portrait and I am curious to know what she thinks of him since she had met him. She is reticent, so I describe a frustratingly inscrutable interview with Gupta, then at the height of his reputation.

 

I have unwittingly touched on a pet theme. “That’s quite common among Indian CEOs in America and that’s one of the lessons of this book,” she counters. “When Indians come to America, they walk the walk and talk the talk sufficiently to get to the highest levels of power in American companies. But, ultimately, they haven’t fully embraced American culture. When I compare Indian CEOs to American CEOs, the latter are much more transparent.”

 

She warms to her subject as the main course arrives. Take Jamie Dimon, the powerful (and now controversial) chief of JPMorgan Chase. “I remember calling him in 1999 when he was widely expected to succeed Sandy Weill as head of Citibank. I was on a tight deadline and to smoke out the story the way journalists do, I called and said, ‘Hey Jamie, congratulations, just heard the good news.’ And he replied, ‘What are you talking about, Anita, I just got fired!’ I don’t think you’ll get a reaction like that from an Indian CEO, let alone get on the phone with him.”

 

I start on the rice and chicken curry — the latter so uninspiring that it is just as well our talk is not. Would she have found Gupta guilty had she sat on the jury? She would. “One fact of which people may not have been aware is that on the day of the Goldman Sachs board meeting that discussed the $5-billion Warren Buffett investment, the wiretaps show that there was no call  to Raj from 2.30 p m till Gupta’s call a few minutes before the market closed. The defence tried to show that a Goldman salesman tipped off a Galleon trader who told Raj. But that call came at 3.15. Why wait till 3.53 to scramble for Goldman Sachs shares?

 

“People said Preet Bharara brought down this Indian icon but every step of the way in the conviction of Gupta, there were Indians involved.” Her book describes the forensic work by, among others, Sanjay Wadhwa of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Then there was Ananth Muniyappa, a young Galleon trader who testified that his boss went into Raj’s office a few minutes before the market closed and came out shouting “Buy Goldman Sachs!” Another thing that did not get much publicity was the presence of an Indian on the final jury that convicted Gupta. “I do know that the defence was quite hopeful that he would not convict — after all, all you need is one for a hung jury.”

 

The argument from Gupta supporters, I say, is that he didn’t make money. She shakes her head. 

 

“In 2008, everyone with money in the markets lost, because there was a crisis, right? The point is that because of his knowledge, he lost less than the rest of us. It’s the opportunity cost. Having that Goldman stock meant he lost less. I know lots of people loved Gupta. But then, everyone loved Bill Clinton too, but what he did was wrong too.”

 

Preet Bharara. To Indians,  he either a good guy who is just doing his job or he has a chip on his shoulder and/or his father did about successful Indians and/or the latter was a secret Khalistani… “Oh, that’s such a stretch!” she exclaims, helping herself to the dal, the only decent dish. For one, as her book also shows, much of the preliminary work had been done by the time Bharara took office in August 2009. But there is, she admits, a culture clash between Indians who have grown up in America and are fully assimilated, like Bharara, and those who come later.

 

What’s polarising the Indian community in America now is Devyani Khobragade. Raghavan’s views are unequivocal. “She was one of the highest consular officials, and what do consular officials do? They approve and give visas to people. If there really is a difference between what she declared and what she actually paid her maid she is denigrating her office by lying on a visa application. It’s cowardly to hide behind diplomatic immunity.”

 

In fact, she adds, a comparison between Gupta and Khobragade is quite apt. “Just as Devyani stood for a high consular office, Gupta symbolised the gold standard of management consulting. By charging and convicting him you sent a message that no director is above the system. That’s the thing about America: you are never too powerful to fall.”

 

We round off an embarrassingly bad meal (Dhaba was my choice) with masala chai to assuage her heavy cold and camomile tea to soothe my irritation. How did the business community react to her book? One South Asian businessman involved in picking board directors told her that he came across her book every day and it had created quite a bit of anxiety among headhunters. Another Indian roundly told her, “Your book is the reason Indians are not doing so well,” a comment that elicits a wry laugh from both of us as I pay the bill.

                                                                                                                                           Anita Raghavan, journalist & author