Dhirubhai Ambani: The Heathcliffe of Indian business

There have been several articles/news items in the media recently on the

wealth gap. Some figures:

?More than 40 percent of total income in America now goes to the highest 10

percent of earners, about the same level as in the 1920s and well up from 30

or so percent between the early 1940s and the late 1970s. The average income

of the highest-earning 5 percent of families was nineteen times that of the

lowest 20 percent in 1999; in 1979, it was a little more than eleven times.

The wealthiest 1 percent of households now own more than 40 percent of all

assets, including homes and financial investments (after deducting

debt)?higher than in any year since 1929.?

?The average income of the top 20 percent of families rose to thirteen times

the income earned by the bottom 20 percent by the late 1990s; in the late

1970s, it was only ten and a half times greater?

In 1999, The United Nations` Human Development Report said:

``In 1960, the 20% of the world`s people in the richest countries had 30

times the income of the poorest 20%. In 1997, 74 times as much. This

continues the trend of nearly two centuries. Some have predicted

convergence, but the past decade has shown increasing concentration of

income among people, corporations and countries``

A recent article (an analysis of a paper by Mr Sala-i-Martin) in the

economist (July 18th edition) (if anyone wishes to see the complete article,

.

While the paper agrees that

1)inequality has worsened within countries.

2)inequality has worsened across countries.

it claims that it does not follow, as you might suppose, that global

inequality itself is rising. Why not?

Mr Sala-i-Martin explains. Imagine that five-sixths of the world`s

population live in poor and stagnant economies, and one-sixth in rich

fast-growing ones. Now imagine that one poor but very populous economy

starts to grow very quickly. At the same time, inequality within this

country worsens somewhat. Despite its size, this country is only one

data-point in the across-country comparisons: its rapid growth is not enough

to make any difference to divergence. So you have rising within-country

inequality and rising across-country inequality. Yet one-sixth of the

world`s population, by assumption, is seeing its incomes rise rapidly

towards those of the rich. Inequality measured across all the people of the

world, therefore, may very well be falling.

A far-fetched case? No, Mr Sala-i-Martin points out, this is exactly what

has been happening. The big poor country growing very fast is China. (India

has also been doing pretty well.) If you simply weight the across-country

measures of divergence by population, you see not a rising trend of

inequality, but the opposite: as the author puts it, not ?divergence, big

time? but ?convergence, period?.

...................

The only bad news is that, after the respite provided recently by surging

globalisation, inequality may well resume its long-term historical trend and

start rising again in due course. The reason is that China and India will no

longer be poor?and if the world`s poorest countries, mainly in Africa,

continue to stagnate, the global dispersion of incomes will widen. Whether

the main problem here is African poverty or global inequality (caused by

China and India leaving poverty behind) is one for the UN`s economists to

think about.

Is the picture really as rosy as this article claims? Can countries like

India/China sometime in the future be classified as not longer poor purely

based on the fact that they are highly populous, no matter that there are

huge gaps between rich and poor within the country (which everyone appears

to agree is not going away). Any insights/pointers from sawnettors on

inequality, global or otherwise?

roohi#26

Selfishness is not self-correcting, no surprise! :)

``Have you also read the analysis on how how the average CEO used to make a FAR less multiple of the lowest wage earners salary in Ayn Rands time ?``

Did they indeed? Paradoxically, perhaps there are more `ordinary` individuals as small investors these days than in those days and so there is more money available ?


hobbyt#21
You seem to be reaching an opposite conclusion to mine, but that said:



Greenspan Shrugged

By BILL GOLDSTEIN

contd from #18
---
In Mr. Greenspan`s essay, titled ``The Assault on Integrity,`` he wrote at length about the functioning of a healthy free-enterprise system and the perils of regulation. (Years later, however, in a profile in The New Yorker, a colleague recounted his warning ``to distinguish carefully between what he believes personally and how he acts as chairman of the Fed.``)
--

Protection of the consumer against ``dishonest and so-called unscrupulous business practices`` has become a cardinal ingredient of welfare statism. Left to their own devices, it is alleged, businessmen would attempt to sell unsafe food and drugs, fraudulent securities, and shoddy buildings. Thus, it is argued, the Pure Food and Drug Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the numerous building regulatory agencies are indispensable if the consumer is to be protected from the ``greed`` of the businessman.

But it is precisely the ``greed`` of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking, which is the unexcelled protector of the consumer. . .
.

What collectivists refuse to recognize is that it is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality
product. . . . Thus the incentive to scrupulous performance operates on all levels of a given field of production. It is a built-in safeguard of a free enterprise system and the only real protection of consumers against business dishonesty.


---
Actually, Mr. Greenspan wrote, a greater threat to a free-market economy with no barriers to ambition or achievement was posed by the government.
---

Government regulation is not an alternative means of protecting the consumer. It does not build quality into goods, or accuracy into information. Its sole ``contribution`` is to substitute force and fear for incentive as the ``protector`` of the consumer. The euphemism of government press releases to the contrary notwithstanding, the basis of regulation is armed force. At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun. . . .

Protective legislation falls into the category of preventive law. Businessmen are being subjected to governmental coercion prior to the commission of any crime. In a free economy, the government may step in only when a fraud has been perpetrated, or a demonstrable damage has been done to a consumer; in such cases the only protection required is that of criminal law.

---
Mr. Greenspan`s essay was reprinted in 1966 in ``Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,`` together with Rand`s operatic articulation of some of her views, titled ``America`s Persecuted Minority: Big Business``:
---

If a small group of men were always regarded as guilty, in any clash with any other group, regardless of the issues or circumstances involved, would you call it persecution? If this group were always made to pay for the sins, errors, or failures of any other group, would you call that persecution? If this group had to live under a silent reign of terror, under special laws, from which all other people were immune, laws which the accused could not grasp or define in advance and which the accuser could interpret in any way he pleased — would you call that persecution? If this group were penalized, not for its faults, but for its virtues, not for its incompetence, but for its ability, not for its failures, but for its achievements, and the greater the achievement, the greater the penalty — would you call that persecution?

If your answer is ``yes`` — then ask yourself what sort of monstrous injustice you are condoning, supporting, or perpetuating. That group is the American businessman. . . .

Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation`s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessman.

--
The hero of ``Atlas Shrugged,`` John Galt, maintained that executives who commit fraud betray their own highest values:
--

Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud — that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victim to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their nonthinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness become the enemies you have to dread and flee.

---
For his part, Mr. Greenspan argued in 1963 that moral values ``are the motive power of capitalism``:
--

Capitalism is based on self-interest and self esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.

---
Rand, of course, also had plenty to say about virtue and integrity, as in this 1944 letter to a friend who asked for advice on how to meet ``a worthwhile woman``:
--

One finds worthwhile men and women among people who work. Follow me here very carefully, forgetting the cheap generalities which all our modern minds have been stuffed with. I do not mean LABOR. I do not mean people who have to earn their living. I do not mean proletarians. . .. I mean what you and I understand by the term ``competent people.`` People who love to work, who are good at it, serious about it and concerned primarily with it. Bright, creative, productive, ambitious people. People who get money for their work, but who do not work primarily for the money — whether it`s a weekly pay envelope or a thousand dollar bonus. People who are ambitious — not to climb socially, not to get wealth and titles — but ambitious to do more and more work of a better and better kind. . . .

In a general way, that is the advice I`d give you: look for places where sincere people are working hard — and go there. Choose by the nature of the work. Going incognito into a convention of ditch diggers would do you as little good as going to the swankiest Wall Street party.

sadna #18

What would Ayn Rand say ... an attack on the ``Virtue of Selfishness`` !

Have you also read the analysis on how how the average CEO used to make a FAR less multiple of the lowest wage earners salary in Ayn Rands time ? ... and the assertion in The Bell Curve that now that education is more uniform there is an increasing corelation between IQ and earning power ? ... makes you think what sort of world it is going to be a few centuries from now ...

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Re: samina

``...i’m curious as to know to what extent this will curtail journalistic capabilities/freedom, if at all...``

That decision to allow partial foreign ownership of media in India is a non-event because (i) foreign media is already well represented -- there are no import duties in India on importation of books, journals, publication (ii) Cable/satellite TV and the Internat have changed the rules on distribution of content, and (iii) if there are many sources of consumption of information, then it matters less who owns what.

Sadna

Outstanding. Yes post the whole thing. Self reliance, a level economic playing field, the individual versus the collective. How even method has been replaced - elements of the origins of totalitarian democracy.

Hi H,

Lovely analysis. I think you hit the nail on the head on the shareholder issue. My uncle was talking about it the other day-- how he invested in 400 shares of Reliance in the late 70s when nobody knew about them, how he then used the gains to fund his first motorcycle, and so on. It was quite touching. Maybe the spontaneous outpourings in the street were a response to the simple principle that Dhirubhai followed-- never screw your shareholders. Our new-economy scamsters could learn a lot from them!

Truth be told, it was little annoying to see the barrage of sympathy and tributes-- everyone from pesky socialities to film icons to politicians weeping copious tears at the big man`s demise-- but this is the first piece about him that reads like a genuine tribute, warts and all. Well done.

The comparisons (or non-comparisons) to Murthy and Premji were also spot-on. It would be interesting to see how these squeaky-clean outfits operate in increasingly non-mainstream markets where they will now be forced to look for business oportunities to expand. Good luck to them.

About the nation`s new-found morality - or lack thereof- well, that`s something to be debated over large quantities of Old Monk and Thums Up :))-- can`t say that Bombay Times Pg. 3 stardom is all that worth aspiring to.

(And yes-- you HAD to get that dig in about smart-aleck MBAs didn`t you? Typical!)

Cheers,

N

Dear Nagnatheshwar,

Merci for the calculations. Ambani had one huge fortune. And as my prime source on Ambani tells me, it all started with Yemeni coins!!

For Ayn Rand enthusiasts:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/21/weekinreview/21WORD.html

Greenspan Shrugged

By BILL GOLDSTEIN

IN 1996, he questioned the ``irrational exuberance`` of the American investor. Last Tuesday, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, brought that era to a definitive end with his diagnosis that ``an infectious greed seemed to grip much of our business community.``

Acknowledging he was wrong in his long-held belief that the government should not regulate the accounting industry, Mr. Greenspan also said: ``It is not that humans have become any more greedy than in generations past. It is that the avenues to express greed had grown so enormously.``

Mr. Greenspan`s embrace of greater regulation is a remarkable turnaround for an economist who for many years was a close friend and colleague of Ayn Rand, the high priestess of unfettered capitalism, who fulminated against the ideas Mr. Greenspan now espouses. In the early 1950`s, while in his 20`s, Mr. Greenspan was a member of Rand`s inner circle (they called themselves the Collective), and was among those who read her influential 1957 novel, ``Atlas Shrugged,`` in manuscript. It was written, Rand once said, ``to glorify the real kind of productive, free-enterprise businessman in a way he has never been glorified before.`` But, she added, ``I make mincemeat out of the kind of businessman . . . that runs to government for assistance, subsidies, legislation and regulation.``

Forty-five years after the publication of her magnum opus, which Rand herself compared to the Bible, greed apparently represents a greater danger to capitalism than government bureaucrats. But back then neither Mr. Greenspan nor Rand seemed to have envisioned the unethical behavior of some of today`s captains of industry. Excerpts follow from Rand`s work and from a 1963 essay written by Mr. Greenspan for The Objectivist Newsletter, which was devoted to Rand`s philosophy...``

(Let me know if you want the whole article posted)

This is an excellent introspection. Hope to read more!

“The Central Bureau of Investigation’s most publicized cases till then were always corruption cases against politicians, because they immediately hit the front pages in politics obsessed Indian papers. I started to look out for the big story.”

…speaking of newspapers, i don’t think i’ve seen any of the indian posters comment on the govt’s decision to allow some sort of foreign investment in the newspaper industry…i’m curious as to know to what extent this will curtail journalistic capabilities/freedom, if at all…

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Mr.Ambani was in stiff copetition & personal row with Nusli Wadia Maternal Grand Son of Jinnah ....

Somehow i never had any respect for Business tycoons Parsis like Nusli or Jamshed Ji Ta Ta nor Gujju Bania



http://www.telegraphindia.com/images/bullet.GIF

RS 21.75 TWENTY-NINE YEARS AGO, RS 21.75 EVEN NOW



BY TAPAS GHOSH



Calcutta, July 17:

In 1973, he joined the Basak Bagan Primary School in north Calcutta as an assistant teacher. Twenty-nine years on, Pranab Kumar Sengupta continues to serve in the same position at the same princely salary of Rs 21.75 a month.

At the entry level, a primary school teacher now draws Rs 6,000 a month.

Eight years ago, Sengupta obtained a Calcutta High Court directive, asking the education department to regularise his service and pay him his dues with retrospective effect.

The then school education secretary informed the court two years later ? and six years ago ? that the order had been carried out. In 2002, Sengupta is still moving one court after another with a contempt petition in hand and with no one to hear him out. Education department clerks are unmoved by a court order.

?Don?t show us court rulings, if you want your job and your dues, you have to pay Rs 60,000? was what the 55-year-old Sengupta heard when he went there with the order.

Even his lawyer, Saibalendu Bhaumik, who was also his student, has lost all hope. ?If even the judiciary can?t move the administration, what are we here for? ? he asked, adding that he could not face his teacher. ?Sometimes, I try to avoid him.?

Sengupta started teaching at the school on May 21, 1973. When he found that even after two decades of service, the school authorities were reluctant to regularise him, he went to Calcutta High Court.

Justice Paritosh Mukherjee ruled that Sengupta be made a permanent employee with retrospective effect. This had to be done in two weeks and the dues cleared in six months.

After waiting for a year, Bhaumik again moved court, this time filing a contempt notice. Justice S.B. Sinha ruled that the education department and the primary education directorate were guilty of contempt.

Again, nothing happened. Bhaumik filed another contempt suit in 1996. Justice Dilip Basu disposed of the case the same year, choosing to place faith in a submission by the then education secretary that he had already told the North 24-Parganas District Primary School Council to regularise Sengupta?s job and pay him his dues.

Sengupta visited that office in Barasat several times. And it was there that the demand for a bribe was made on him. ?That was the last time he visited the office,? Bhaumik said.

From court to the chief minister?s office: Sengupta has written not one but three letters to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

Sengupta still goes to school and takes classes as he has been doing for the last 29 years. And he still takes hom

e every month Rs 21.7

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Dear Chowkies, Chowk Editors

As a fellow interactor and Internet user, I want to bring up a problem I am having with my email. You see, a particularly pathetic specimen of human being has been sending me emails with virus attachments for some months now. Here is an example of an email I received today:

``Sent: 7/15/2002 6:22:09 PM

Subject: A new game

Hi,This is a special new game

This game is my first work.

You`re the first player.

I hope you would enjoy it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *



Say hello to your mother for me!

---``

(Notice the incorrect usage of the modal ``would``. Wanker, you don`t need to use ``would`` for the future tense. Study your grammar before you go around releasing your pissant magic. Bechara gaddha ka bacha, look it up in a dictionary)

Now I have reason to believe that the author of this email is a wanker who interacts or reads the Chowk interacts. This email was sent with an attachment that probably contains nothing or not suprisingly, the cyber version of a veneral disease said wanker apparently suffers from in real life. And now he`s trying to pass it on.

Why this affects you dear Chowkies, is because I am friends with several of y`all and we exchange emails. I`m afraid 1. that wanker wallah is trying to unload a virus on me, and subsequently y`all or 2. these emails are all smoke and mirrors and I`d like to know if other Chowkies are receiving emails similar to this one.

Much as I would like to introduce said wanker to the posterior opening of his alimentary canal via his mouth, I realize that I have other steps to take. He`ll get his karma, legally. Meanwhile, I ask y`all to be careful with your email, notify Chowk editors that this person is apparently targetting Chowkies for his cyber viruses and use one of our boards to discuss this matter, if possible.

cheers!

Samina Sha

IT IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE THAT MUSHROOMED NON PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS IN THE NAME OF `INDIA DEVELOPMENT FUND` TAKING ADVANTAGHE OF TAX LAWS OF PHILANTHROPIC ENDORSEMENT OF AMERICAN ECONOMIC POLICY ,HAVE COLLECTED MILLIONS OF $$ OVER THE LAST DECADE.

IT IS A RECENT KNOWLEDGE THAT THOSE MONEY ARE BEING FUNNELLED INTO DFASCIST HINDUTVA PARTIES OF VHP BAJRANG DAL SANGH PArivar rss & Shiv sena...

US http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20020722&fname=VHP+%28F%29&sid=1&pn=1



Deflections To The Right



A few fund-raising organisations come under the scanner for diverting overseas charity money into RSS propaganda activity



A.K. SEN











Kanwal Rekhi has been facing the ire of right-wing Hindus across America. This is because in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal , Rekhi, global chairman of The IndUS Entrepreneurs, an organisation of South Asian businesspeople, claimed that money collected by Indian Hindus in America and sent to religious groups in India was being channelled to target minorities. ``Many overseas Indian Hindus?including some in this country?finance religious groups in India in the belief that the funds will be used to build temples, and educate and feed the poor of their faith. Many would be appalled to know that some recipients of their money are out to destroy minorities (Christians as well as Muslims) and their places of worship,`` wrote Rekhi in the article, co-authored with Henry S.





Hyderabad`s Keshava Sewa Samiti, one of IDRF`s beneficiaries, has the same add ress as the local RSS HQ; the BKP`s Delhi address is where the VHP operates from.





Rowen, a professor emeritus at Stanford University and senior fellow of the Hoover Institution. They suggested that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee could deal a severe blow to such covert causes by simply labelling them terrorists.

Their claims?of right-wing Hindu groups diverting funds from the US



to finance divisive activities in India?were articulated in respected academic Robert M. Hathaway`s recent testimony (see interview ) before the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Hathaway asked the commission to recommend an inquiry into fund-raising activities in the US by groups implicated in the recent violence in Gujarat. He told the commission that ``some US residents make financial contributions to overseas religious groups in the belief that these funds are to be used for religious or humanitarian purposes, when in fact the monies so raised are used to promote religious bigotry``.

The India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) is among the most prominent of charity groups involved in raising funds in the US, much of which ends up bankrolling outfits in India that are connected to Hindutva through the umbilical cord of the RSS. A Maryland couple, Vinod and Sarla Prakash, established the IDRF in 1978, and speak of their role in the upliftment of adivasis in India.

An ex-employee of the World Bank and a former RSS member, Vinod Prakash claims the RSS doesn`t accept any foreign contributions. He declares emphatically, ``The IDRF has given absolutely no money to the RSS. We deal only with NGOs involved in relief





Ask him and Dr Prakash says the IDRF deals only with NGOs involved in ``relief and rehabilitation.``







and rehabilitation.``

Outlook investigations, though, show irrefutable RSS links of some organisations that the IDRF funds. This is what makes a social activist from the San Francisco Bay Area, Raju Rajagopal, remark acerbically, ``If you claim to have nothing to do with it when you actually do, it becomes a matter of transparency. After working hand-in-glove for years, Sangh parivar outfits in the US can`t suddenly try to distance themselves from the VHP-Bajrang Dal. They have left footprints all over the Internet.``

Not only do footprints exist, so does incriminating evidence of the IDRF`s duplicity. Precisely what has goaded Rekhi and Hathaway to demand investigations into the fund-raising activities of Hindutva groups in the US. The IDRF, for instance, has donated $2,50,000 in the last four years to Sewa Bharati Madhyakshetra, an RSS affiliate, which claims to ``protect the tribal people from subversion, and integrate them into the mainstream``. Again, the Keshava Sewa Samithi in Hyderabad, to which the IDRF has sent $40,000 since 1998, has the same address as the RSS headquarters in the city.

When confronted with the Sangh antecedents of Sewa Bharati, Prakash quickly retracted from his earlier position to say, ``I am aware of the RSS-VHP affiliations of some organisations we fund.`` He then went on dismiss such links as a non-issue.



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If one was to say that servitude and the idea of servitude defined the lives of Indians, one would not be too far off the mark. Yet, the lands that are today India have never been poor, quite the opposite in fact. A new awareness is growing in India that all mena and women of conscience can celebrate. This consciousness is the link between Liberty and economic order.

From Hindustan Times dtd today

``Footpath businessmen

Sagarika Ghose

The legend of Dhirubhai Ambani started with Rs 500. Yet, in times of high profile privatisation, millions of Dhirubhais with Rs 500 in their pockets are being prevented from achieving their potential because of the continuance of a savage licence permit raj. India’s ‘footpath businessmen’ are trapped in the colonial attitude that ‘business’ is the pleasure of the rich, when in India, business is, in fact, the occupation of thousands of the poor.

Nine out of 10 people in India are self-employed as opposed to Europe where only 10 per cent are employed in the informal sector. Sixty per cent of our gross savings comes from the unorganised sector. Less than 20 per cent savings comes from the public and private corporate sector. Yet, in a recent survey, the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) discovered that liberalisation remains narrowly focused on the public and corporate sector and 80 per cent of Indians have never even heard of economic reforms!

The magazine Manushi in partnership with CSDS has begun a campaign for ‘liberalisation from below’. The campaign aims to free hawkers, vendors, self-employed artisans, shopkeepers, garbage collectors, fishermen and cycle-rickshaw pullers from the oppressive grip of a brutally colonial set of laws which subjects them to beatings, fines, harassment from the police and municipality officials.

The corporate sector, Manushi points out, will absorb approximately only 15 per cent of the work force in the next 20 years. Today, the private, public and corporate sectors provide employment to only 3 per cent of the work force.

But the hawking and vending economy in Kolkata alone employs 2 lakh people with almost 2 crore customers.

We view hawkers as ‘scum’, vendors as ‘vermin’ and hawking as a ‘law and order problem’, when they are in fact crucial economic actors. We insist on Manhattan cityscapes when the truth is that every city will necessarily reflect the lives of its majority. The campaign has offered to set up ‘model markets’ of international standard where hawkers and vendors might trade in specifically designated areas. It advocates cycle tracks for the main feeder roads, aprons, gloves and push carts in the Bangkok style for hawkers and regularisation of licences for cycle-rickshaws.

Already the hawkers’ movement has had many successes. As a result of cases filed by the Bombay Hawkers Union, by Sudam Singh, a garment vendor, and by SEWA in Ahmedabad, the Supreme Court brought down its hammer in favour of every hawker and vendor of India. In 1992, Justice Chandrachud thundered: “Hawking is a fundamental right!”

Since then the PMO itself has stepped in with a set of encouraging policy formulations, but on the ground the footpath businessmen are still denied their dignity. Perhaps, as a tribute to Dhirubhai Ambani, we could all realise that the Indian businessman is not only he who wears a suit and sits in board meetings. The Indian businessman also wears a lungi and pushes his cart along the road. He has as much right to participate in economic reforms as the Tatas. He too needs the attention of the Union minister for disinvestment``

Harish!

65,000 crore. How much is that in dollars?

this was a great story about a tycoon who seems to have singlehandedly changed perceptions of doing business.

Ooops... that should have read ``At your convenience ... ``, not ``At our convenience ...``. Looks like my keyboard is eating up the `y`s.

A retried senior police official from Bombay was visiting here several years back. He seemed to be a very wise person, full of understanding of the world, and a person who was able to retain his equilibrium despite a lifetime spent in dealing with the underworld. He would sometimes talk about his experiences, and tell very interesting stories.

Part of police work involves keeping an ear to the ground. You get to hear all kinds of stories, many of them rumors - magnified, distorted and spiced up. Only some of them are taken up for further investigation. Here is one story that he recalled having heard about Mr. Ambani, and how his fortunes shot up shortly after Mrs. G’s untimely demise.

Rajeev Gandhi had just been made the PM, and was trying to pick up threads of the awesome responsibility thrust upon him. Mr. Ambani arranged for a one minute meeting after paying some fifty thousand to the powers who arranged such things.

The new PM was busy going through a lot of paperwork when the visitor was ushered in, and did not even look up.

“Madam had entrusted me with two hundred crores. At our convenience, please let me know what you want me to do with it.” the visitor reportedly told the busy Prime Minister. He then left a business card, said his good byes. As he started to leave, he was suddenly stopped, and asked to wait. The meeting is reported to have lasted much longer than the planned minute.

Was the story true or false, who knows?

It was during Mr. Gandhi’s reign that the Reliance industry’s fortunes rose to great heights, it is said.

Ambani was a capitalist. He did not care for the poor people, of Gujarath, specially Muslims there. He only supported BJP and that is why Muslims were killed there. In Pakistan we do not have such problems because we are one people. We only are against kafirs.

Ambani seemed to embody all that was wrong with the traditional Indian business houses - license raj , connections and unabashed use of political connections to malign competitors.

Ambani started a smear campaign against Nusli Wadia of Bombay Dyeing.

Add to the top of the list - my suspicion regarding creative accounting practices that here in the AMerica of 2002 would have sent CEOs running for their lives.

Ambani may have done a lot of crooked things in his life. However, overall, I think he has done India an invaluable service. He`s one of the reasons, I feel, Indians have shed that disastrous ``socialist mentality``. Making money is NOT evil, poverty is NOT a virtue.

Unfortunately, in a rigid, socialist system, a poor man CANNOT become rich unless he does something crooked.

What I find encouraging is India has finally realised that its only hope to compete internationally is to throw out socialism. Every single party, no matter how much they differ ideologically, agree on ``liberalisation`` & ``privatisation``..even communist W. Bengal is trying to attract business.

I think Ambani played a big role in that change of mentality.

Harish

This was a very interesting read, made a lotta sense. What a world!

anNy

{he may not be the most moral or even legitimate businessman, but he was generous to his hordes.}

...it is hard to glorify a man who never hesitated to pay a bribe or pull a dirty trick to further his interests...just b.c. Reliance made it to the nasdaq, we can`t ignore right and wrong...