MODI AND REDDY: THE CHOICE IS CLEAR

$200 billion in two days. Yes you are reading it correctly. Investment commitments worth a staggering nearly Rs 10 lakh crores have been inked in two days flat at the just concluded Vibrant Gujarat Investors' Summit (VGIS) 2009, breaking all records. This is on top of Rs 4.6 lakh crore ($100 billion), Rs 1 lakh crore ($20 billion) and Rs 66,000 crore ($14 billion) worth of investment promises that were made at the summits in 2007, 2005 and 2003 respectively.

The world might be in a recession, China and India may be slowing down; Modi's Gujarat is pulling powerfully ahead, all cylinders firing.

There is no one who is anyone in India's industrial landscape who is not in Gujarat already or is not going to be there soon. Ratan Tata, India's most respected business leader, had famously said at the last VGIS in 2007 that one who is not in Gujarat is stupid. He followed up his words with his money by moving the Nano plant there from Mamata's Singur. He has now pledged an additional investment of Rs 21,000 crores besides declaring that he will also set up a geo-thermal power plant. Like Tata, no one else wants to show his stupidity by not rushing to a state that is set to developmentally break away from the rest of India and look like a different country altogether 10 years down the line.

Gujarat is today the perhaps hottest investment destination anywhere in the world, thanks solely to Modi. There can be no better acknowledgment of the honest, no-nonsense, clear-headed and visionary leadership that Modi has shown as Chief Minister of the state.

In stark contrast, with an ever growing scandal, YSR Reddy's Andhra Pradesh has plummeted to new lows and has become a hot potato that no one wants to touch, much less claim.

The way skeletons are popping out in the Satyam-Maytas scandal in Andhra Pradesh, it seems that the rot is far deeper than anyone thought and is not limited to the IT firm promoted by Ramalinga Raju. It is also beginning to appear that the money trail does not end in Hyderabad and probably runs right up to Delhi. All-out efforts are on to ensure that this scandal, already far bigger and more rotten than the Bofors scandal that brought the Rajiv Gandhi government down, does not explode right in the face of the Congress party just before the general lections.

When he quit Satyam, Raju had claimed that he and his brother were the only two who knew about the Rs 7000 crore rigging of accounts that had been going on for years. Expectedly, he was dishonest in his confession then as he was in running the company. With every passing day, the list of those involved in the scam is only growing longer and more damning, despite the desperate efforts of Reddy and the Central government to prevent what is likely to be an inevitable blow out that cannot be capped for long.

Satyam CFO Vadlamani Srinivas has already been arrested and former CEO Ram Mynampati is likely to be arrested soon, as is the former dean of the prestigious Indian School of Business, Ram Mohan Rao. In yet another stinging indictment of India's bureaucracy that has become the prime mover of the rot that has hollowed all institutions, former Union Cabinet Secretary TR Prasad is likely to be arrested soon. Prasad has, in the meantime, resigned for the board of another Andhra Pradesh based firm, GMR, that is building the new airport in Delhi. One does not know how many other companies have similarly 'benefitted' from his powerful tentacles in the corridors of power, but one can be sure that none of them would be following desired norms of corporate governance and transparency and that their managements would be milking them scandalously.

CM YSR Reddy has yet not felt the heat, as he should have by now, thanks to the protection that he is continuing to receive from the Congress High Command, whose choice for the post he was. Allegations against him are flying thick and fast and it is only a matter of time before they stick.

Only the most naïve believe that Raju and family could have bought thousands of acres of prime land in Hyderabad worth Rs 30,000 crores at rock bottom prices, without giving a hefty cut to Reddy. It is an open secret that they also could not have won, in a single year, Rs 18,000 crore worth of projects, including the Rs 12,000 crore Hyderabad Metro project, whose route was changed to enable him to make a killing on the land owned by him, without scandalously partnering with the CM in the loot. And the CM couldn't have got away with this brazen dacoity for so long, even after E Sreedharan had cried foul last year, if he had not generously shared his loot with his bosses in Delhi.

The muck that is floating in Andhra Pradesh is making the much maligned Modi stand out taller than ever. He is clearly a man on a mission, a selfless mission to power his state to development and prosperity in a manner that has not been done in India by anyone anywhere, and at a scorching pace that even now seems impossible in any state except Gujarat. In a country where a hopelessly corrupt, unresponsive and inefficient bureaucracy has stalled India's progress with single-minded ruthlessness through the weapon of an all-pervasive red tape, in collusion with corrupt politicians, Modi has proved that impossible is nothing indeed.

Modi has become the beacon that has illuminated the truth that an honest, competent and visionary leader can single-handedly turn red tape into a 'red carpet' and get errant and arrogant babus to do their jobs as they are supposed to. No wonder Gujarat is by far the the best governed state in India and is motoring ahead of all other states. The most heartening thing is that despite so much of money being invested there, there is not even the whiff of a scandal anywhere. The absence of kickbacks to politicians and babus and a rare collective zeal inspired by Modi to get things done for the people is getting the world to rush to Gujarat.

Despite this near revolution that Modi has unleashed in a corrupt India that is being mirrored by Andhra Pradesh, our media, unfortunately, continues to treat him as a pariah, thanks to the shrill campaign of a few disconnected 'intellectuals' stuck in 2002. In a lively discussion on CNN-IBN on January 12, 2009, about the CNN-IBN Indian of the Year, Sagarika Ghose was blunt enough to voice the fact that, thanks to them, Modi will not be in any list where "a certain degree of the values of the awards are at stake". To them, politicians with suitcases full of looted money have been, and will continue to be, acceptable. But anyone who does not conform to their warped idea of 'inclusiveness', despite all evidence to the contrary, will have fight to earn his prize in the heat and dust of real India. They will not gift it to him in a five star hotel, no matter that he may actually be beyond all competition. That is saying a lot about the credibility of such awards, but who cares!

Fortunately, the people of India are far wiser than most of those who do the rounds of TV studios. They do not carry either fake ideological baggage or ulterior motivations to promote or pull down political leaders. They know well the difference between what is happening in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. They know that Narendra Modi personifies the symbol of his party perfectly as much as Reddy personifies the filth that is draining India. In this vast ocean of politico-bureaucratic muck, Modi stands out as the pristine lotus. Sure he is not the only one out there. There are a few, really few, others too, but he is clearly the tallest and strongest.

Narendra Modi is emerging as the transformational leader that India has been yearning for. With every passing day, that realisation is dawning on more and more of those who were violently opposed to him earlier. That is why Suhel Seth, once one of his greatest critics, is now one of his staunchest supporters. That is why the captains of India's industry have given him a 21-gun salute. That is why the people of India will pull him sooner rather than later to lead them and their country to long delayed glory.

The way the genie that unexpectedly emerged out of Satyam is growing despite best efforts to keep him covered, there is little doubt that, no matter how hard the government may try, the 'aam aadmi' will not be fooled. He knows exactly which face of India is represented by Modi and Reddy, now better than ever before. He is seeing the impossible being turned into a reality in Gujarat. He is also seeing in Andhra Pradesh the ugly underbelly of politicians from whom he had no escape earlier. He knows that he now has before him a clear choice to make. And he will make it wisely, no matter what efforts are made to confuse him with falsehoods yet again.

There is hope yet for India.
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NANO SEES RED...CARPET IN GUJARAT

Nano, the world's first $2500 car, does not seem to able to get rid of 'red'. First, Ratan Tata found a home for it in West Bengal, one of two Indian states ruled by communists. For a change, the red brigade rolled out the red carpet for this large capitalist project, thanks solely to the Deng Xiao Ping like Chief Minister of the state, Buddhadev Bhattacharjee.

Then, as the project was getting completed, the Nano was shown the red flag by Mamata Bannerjee, who thought she could get some additional votes by inciting unhappy famers whose land had been acquired by the government for it. Every one thought that she would finally show the green flag while she thought that Ratan Tata would not drive the Nano away despite her not changing the colour of the flag. But he did.

Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Gujarat all beckoned the Nano with tempting red carpets. Maharashtra was never going to get it thanks to Raj Thakeray who now sees red if anyone is not a 'Marathi manoos'(Maharashtrian man) enough. Poor Ratan Tata does not know even Hindi, forget Marathi. So he was always in danger of seeing the red flag go up in the state too.

Of the remaining three states, incidentally all BJP ruled, Gujarat, to my mind was always the forerunner. Narendra Modi, its Chief Minister who has literally transformed the state economically, has displayed in the seven years of his rule that his state is the best in the country to do business in. He is fond of saying that in Gujarat there is only red carpet, not red tape. He backs this dramatic claim by exceptional personal integrity and a Spartan lifestyle that is alien to Indian politicians of today. Also, when it comes to hard-nosed business sense, no one in India can better Gujaratis and Marwaris.

Land, that explosive commodity which saw the Nano say 'no' to Singur just before it was to roll out, was perhaps the most sensitive issue that settled the case in favour of Gujarat. The state government has readily available government land at Sanan near Ahmedabad of which 1100 acres have already been handed over to the Tatas so that construction can start without any delay. Take that for speed. As an added sweetener, the government is also extending the sops being offered to the Tatas to Nano's vendors, something they did not get in Singur. That will soften the blow of the losses that that have suffered in Singur. The government has also apparently promised that it will do everything needed to see that the plant comes up in double quick time.

An agreement has just been signed between the Tatas and the government of Gujarat for Nano's new home. As per sketchy details available now, in the first phase 2.5 to 3 lakh cars will be manufactured. In the second phase, the capacity will go up to 5 lakh cars. Ratan Tata, speaking at a press conference after the signing has said that this a momentous day as Nano has found a new home in such a short time in a positive and conducive environment, after the sad experience at Singur. And at slightly better terms than in West Bengal.

Till yesterday, Ratan Tata did not know where the Nano would go. Today it has finally got the real red carpet welcome that it deserved all along, in Gujarat. Just four days after it quit Singur. This also happens in India!

NANO QUITS SINGUR

Not very long back, Ratan Tata had said in an interview with Barkha Dutt "if someone holds a gun to my head, he has to pull the trigger or move the gun away because I am not going to move my head." As this post is being typed, Ratan Tata speaking at a press conference in Kolkata, has just repeated that statement and said that Mamata Bannerjee has pulled the trigger.

It is official now. The Tatas are finally moving the Nano plant out of West Bengal. Ratan Tata has made it clear that it is not possible to run a plant when its boundary walls are being broken, when its employees are being attacked and when all kinds of slogans are being raised against the project.

That the agreement between Mamata Bannerjee and the West Bengal government was dead even before the ink dried on it was clear when Mamata asked for return of 300 acres from within the plant and the Tatas said that no more than 47 acres could be made available. Mamata then thought that Ratan Tata would blink, considering that the price of staring back was Rs 500 crore. She had obviously not heard about his aforementioned statement and had not studied the man closely either. That is why she was sure that Tatas would not move out of the state and that all such talk was nothing but 'posturing'. That is why she remained adamant and refused to accept a much improved compensation package in lieu of land that the government offered.

She wanted 300 acres. She has got 997. Should she and the farmers of Singur who allowed themselves to be mislead by her be celebrating, now that not even one acre of agricultural land will now be taken away? This is what I had written a day after the failed agreement with Mamata had been signed, when it had become clear that things were going to come to a head:

Has Mamata really achieved her objective or has she condemned herself to political obscurity and the people of Singur to poverty and deprivation? She may have succeeded in pushing the hapless Chief Minister into a political surrender and achieved a pyrrhic personal victory. Will that be enough to make Ratan Tata also surrender to her, under pressure from the CM and many others in the larger interest of West Bengal?

This is the one political battle that will reverberate across India and influence similar disputes that are bound to arise as more and more land is acquired for setting up industries in an India making the transition from a developing to a developed nation. That is why, it is important that a sharp lesson is taught to irresponsible politicians that they cannot keep getting away with impossible demands. The surrender of the state government to Mamata clearly indicates that it is not going to be easy for other politicians to show the much needed spine.

That unpleasant task has, therefore, to be taken on by the industry which is putting its money on the ground. Although Bengal will suffer very heavily if the Nano project moves to another state, for the sake of India and Indian industry, Ratan Tata should swallow that bitter pill once and tell Mamata that what she has achieved is not a victory but an inglorious defeat from which she will not recover.

Mamata Bannerjee has pulled the trigger and Ratan Tata has shown exceptional courage, integrity and resolve by biting the bullet. This is something that is going to shock her as nothing as till now. Soon, the people of Singur who have been supporting her will realise that she has achieved nothing more than ruining not only their future but perhaps the future of their whole state. Her politics of brinkmanship had to one one day bring her to the edge of an abyss. If she is able to still recover from here and remain a political force in West Bengal, then the collective intelligence and wisdom of that state will need to be seriously questioned.

The only irony about what has happened is that it is the communists of Bengal who tried desperately to keep a capitalist in their state and it was a former Congress leader who drove him out. That is what the communists themselves had done in the sixties when they forced many industrialists to leave the state in droves to relocate in Pune, Faridabad and other places.

Ratan Tata deserves the collective support of the whole nation and the industry for taking a bold and badly needed step which is bound to lead to a paradigm shift in the manner that politicians create and fan agitations irreconcilably and irresponsibly in the hope of garnering popular support. It is not going to be easy for anyone in future to repeat a Singur without deeply considering the greater cost to the society and the state. It is for the people of West Bengal to send this loud message when it is time for them to say what needs to be said through the ballot box.

The Nano has quit Singur. But this long awaited dream of millions of Indians waiting to own a car that they can afford, will roll out for them from a new home. Perhaps it is befitting that the world's first $2500 car should roll out from a home where it is welcome and wanted. And when it drives into Singur from its new home, the people of the town will be left in no doubt that by letting Mamata Bannerjee throw it out from its original home, they lost a defining opportunity that knocks but once in life.

This post was also published by Reuters.com and in 'Bloggers' Park' of Mumbai Mirror.

NA NO MAMATA, THIS VICTORY IS A DEFEAT

Late last night, Mamata Bannerjee and the West Bengal government finally reached an agreement on the vexed issue of the 400 acres of land acquired for the Tata Nano plant in Singur by the government. After a last minute hitch, Governor Gandhi, who had been requested to break the impasse, announced that an agreement had been reached.

Mamata Bannerjee has called off the agitation in Singur and claimed ‘total victory’. On the face of it, her claim is justified. She wanted the government to return 400 acres and she has got it to do exactly that. As per Mamata, 300 acres of the land to be returned will be from within the plant premises while another 100 acres will from outside. A committee has been formed to find modalities to return the land to the farmers within a week.

Mamata is, naturally, euphoric. The Tatas on the other hand are distressed. They were just not taken into confidence before the agreement was finalised. And they have been handed a deal which appears to be un-implementable. The Tatas have 695 acres of land while their vendors have 290 acres. In addition, WBIDC has 47 acres and the state government 15 acres within the project area. The Tatas have already returned 40 acres of land and have made it clear that any further withdrawal of land will make the project unviable.

Though the agreement was reached last night, the state government has, surprisingly, yet not communicated its details to the Tatas. They are justifiably distressed ‘at the limited clarity on the outcome’ and have announced that they will not resume work on the project till clarity emerges on the agreement.

The Tatas have been saying all along that the integral nature of the mother plant and the ancillary units has to be maintained to make the project viable. Will they now agree to re-locate the ancillary units to make available 300 acres of land to be returned to farmers? Will they now buckle under pressure and accept the large recurring costs that shifting of these units will entail, making it impossible to sell the Nano for RS1 lakh? It appears unlikely, going by their latest statement. They have once again clarified that 995 acres of land is required and that only 47 acres of WBIDC land is up for review.

If the Tatas stick to this stand, as it appears now that they will, the agreement between Mamata and the CM is all but dead already.

Has Mamata really achieved her objective or has she condemned herself to political obscurity and the people of Singur to poverty and deprivation? She may have succeeded in pushing the hapless Chief Minister into a political surrender and achieved a pyrrhic personal victory. Will that be enough to make Ratan Tata also surrender to her, under pressure from the CM and many others in the larger interest of West Bengal?

This is the one political battle that will reverberate across India and influence similar disputes that are bound to arise as more and more land is acquired for setting up industries in an India making the transition from a developing to a developed nation. That is why, it is important that a sharp lesson is taught to irresponsible politicians that they cannot keep getting away with impossible demands. The surrender of the state government to Mamata clearly indicates that it is not going to be easy for other politicians to show the much needed spine.

That unpleasant task has, therefore, to be taken on by the industry which is putting its money on the ground. Although Bengal will suffer very heavily if the Nano project moves to another state, for the sake of India and Indian industry, Ratan Tata should swallow that bitter pill once and tell Mamata that what she has achieved is not a victory but an inglorious defeat from which she will not recover.

Ironically, that may be the only way to get her out of the way or into the flow that can still keep the Nano in West Bengal.

NA NO MA MA TA TA?

Mamata Bannerjee is on the verge of destroying her political career. Having got carried away by her victory in Singur on shrill cries of ‘na’ and ‘no’ for the much awaited Rs1 lakh Nano, the dream car of India’s lower middle class, she has managed to push Ratan Tata to the verge of saying 'ta ta' to West Bengal and re-locating the Nano plant to another state.

If the Nano project does move out of Singur, Mamata will find herself holding an explosive balloon re-filled with the anger and curses of the very people of Singur who are now supporting her. When they find the Nano plant gone, taking with it all direct and indirect job opportunities and the promise of unprecedented development and prosperity, the land that they are now crying for, instigated by Mamata, will mock at them and their foolishness. Only then will they realise that they were wrong in allowing Mamata to condemn them to poverty and deprivation for perhaps another millennium.

Mamata’s intransigence is not an isolated incident. India’s politicians have, over the years, perfected the art of using all possible coercive means to compel others into capitulating to their demands, no matter how damaging that may prove to society or even the country. India’s commies have always been in the vanguard of making use of such tactics to ensure that India keeps suffering sub standard goods and services produced by the state even as corrupt bureaucrats and politicians continue to enrich themselves. Not surprisingly, their influence is limited to a small part of India where that they have been getting away by fooling people with a globally discredited and discarded ideology that refuses to recognise hard realities.

Ironically, for the first time, Mamata has done to the commies of West Bengal what they have been doing to the state and the country for decades. And that has hurt them so badly that CM Buddhadev Bhattacharya has gone or record to say that bandhs are not justified as no one has a right to stop others from pursuing their jobs! If only this enlightenment had come before the shoe started biting the commie foot, India’s economic growth would perhaps have been a percentage point or more higher than it is.

The fallout of the Tatas saying ta ta to West Bengal may well deal a devastating blow to the state. Mamata, not satiated by what she has ‘achieved’ in Singur, has already sounded the bugle against the plans of Reliance Retail on the plea that organised retail will adversely affect the interests of small traders. The DLF group, which plans to invest a whopping Rs100,000 crores over the next seven years, is already threatening to cancel its plans. Once the Nano goes, others will follow in a flood and no new projects will come in for a long time. But to Mamata and many other myopic and petty Indian politicians, the larger picture just does not matter. It is the votes for the next elections that determinate all political response.

Any change inevitably benefits some and has an adverse effect on others. No change can be painless. If the benefits outweigh the pain, as is usually clear pretty early on, then the responsibility of real leaders is to ensure that the losses and hardships of those adversely effected are reduced as much as possible for the larger benefit of others. The building of a road bridge over a river, for example, is a death blow to the boatmen who have been ferrying people across for thousands of years. But for those few hundred people, others cannot be deprived the benefit of that bridge.

The 400 acres of land in Singur that Mamata is crying about will create difficulties for the few hundred who owned that land. The issue has no doubt been handled carelessly and arrogantly by the commies who thought they could do another Nandigram in Singur with their brute, insensitive power. But, is that justification enough for Mamata to adopt an uncompromising stance and demand the return of that land, when she knows that ancillaries have already come up there and that shifting them to another location will not be cost effective besides leading to a delay in rolling out the Nano? Would she not have been better off demanding a more attractive alternative package for those whose land has been acquired?

Unfortunately, Mamata has taken her agitation so far that she now does not know how to get off the tiger that her intransigence has made her mount. With Mukesh Ambani, Narayanamurthy and now Saurav Ganguly also coming out in open support of the Tatas, her position must begin to look untenable even to her. But, having come so far and having succeeded in getting the Nano plant to shut down through her pressure tactics, it is perhaps too late for her to admit that.

Shifting of the plant to another location will cost the Tatas Rs500 crores, a huge sum of money. But Ratan Tata is not the kind who will back out if his employees are not safe and he is not welcome in West Bengal. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the Tatas do not give bribes and Mamata does not take them, making a shady settlement, the kind that makes most other politicians salivate, impossible.

Mamata is apparently still under the impression that the Tatas are posturing and are not going to leave Singur. She just might be making the biggest mistake of her life. Ratan Tata had said earlier in an interview that if someone holds a gun to his head, he has to pull the trigger. He is not going to give in to her blackmail, no matter what the cost. She better understand that fast or else she will wind up committing hara kiri, because the Nano will go from West Bengal.

What a big project the billion dollar Nano is and what it can do to the area where it is located is clear to all except Mamata. A number of states are already falling over each other to get the project. The red carpet is being rolled out by them while Mamata mindlessly waves the red flag. That flag is about to consume her politically, but she does not know that yet.

It would in the best interest of all if the Nano remains in Singur. At the same time, if the Tatas move out, it will send an unequivocal message to irresponsible politicians who can’t see beyond petty political gain, that there is a line which they can no longer cross and get away without paying an unacceptable political price.

In the larger interest of the country, perhaps the time for the latter has come. If Mamata refuses to relent, then, no matter what the monetary cost, the Tatas must move Nano out of her firing line and say ta ta to Singur. If he does that, Ratan Tata will set one more shining example that will prove to be a beacon to industrialists and politicians in future.

BHARAT RATAN AND BHARAT PATAN - 2

Was it not expected? LK Advani's public demand for conferring the highest civilian award on former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has opened the Pandora's box which , in India, needs only the gentlest of prodding to vomit out its contents!

Indian politicians are adding to the list of claimants by the hour! The motivation, as I had written earlier, has little to do with the exceptional service rendered by the those whose names are being proposed. The overriding criteria is the the number of votes that they can bring for the political leaders who have proposed the names!

BSP founder Kanshi Ram, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister(CM) M Karunanidhi and former West Bengal CM Jyoti Basu now face tough competion, mostly from those who have already left their earthly abode! The only living politician in the ever expanding list of politicians is the former CM of UP, Mulayam Singh Yadav, for reasons not known to anyone!

Will you believe it, even the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar who was taken prisoner by the British more than 150 years ago, is in the fray! The other Muslim whose name has been proposed is the Late Mohammad Rafi, the great playback singer with an inimitably mellifluous voice.

Not to be left behind by Mayawati's demand for awarding the Bharat Ratna to Kanshi Ram, Ram Vilas Paswan has proposed the name of two dalits, Jyotiba Phule and Jagjivan Ram. Orissa wants it for ex-CM Biju Patnaik, father of the present CM while some Biharis want that it should go to another ex-CM Karpoori Thakur. Jats want ex-PM Charan Singh to be honoured and those from eastern UP have proposed the name of ex-PM Chandrashekhar!

Tibetan refugees have been bitten by the bug too! They want, most justifiably, their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to honour India's top award.

In the next few days, don't be surprised if you hear people demanding the Bharat Ratna for Lord Ram, Hanuman, Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, Kabir, Sri Sri Ravishankar or other holy men, both living and beyond! Anything is possible in India! Of course, almost all the names proposed will be of those who can deliver some votes to politicians whose sole aim seems to be to get to power.

Ironically, in the sixty years that India has seen as a free nation, no business leader has ever been found worthy of being called a Bharat Ratna. There are many shining examples of such leaders who have not allowed the constraints and the obstacles placed by politicians and babus to deflect them from their vision of an India which can actualize its creative material potential and improve the lives of its people, and also make the country proud again. Even now, no one has proposed the name of a Ratan Tata, Dhirubhai Ambani, Lakshmi Mittal, or a Narayanamurthy, to name a few of those who perhaps deserve the honour more than most of the political leaders whose names are being touted.

What this laughable and shameful spectacle is going to do is to ensure that this government, so critically dependent on its allies for its next breath, will not confer the award on anyone at all! Or maybe it will take the other and more politically attractive option of giving Bharat Ratna en masse to all politicians in the fray and hope that this will improve their electoral prospects across the social spectrum! That will be Indian secularism at its best!

Given the sad spectacle of the Bharat Patan we are witnessing for Bharat Ratan, I think it would be best it the award is given collectively to the Common Man of India on this Republic Day and then discontinued. This will not only be a true recognition of the monumental patience and fortitude that the ordinary Indian has shown for sixty years but will also spare the nation of such Patans in future.

BHARAT RATAN AND BHARAT PATAN

It happens only in Bharat! For those who might have forgotten, or have never heard, Bharat is the ancient name of the sub continent of India.

Last week, Ratan (Jewel) Tata set new benchmarks in automotive innovation and engineering by launching the Tata Nano, a great looking modern, small car at the impossible price of $2500. The whole country, indeed the world, took notice of the fact that Ratan Tata had kept his promise to keep the price of the car at Rs1 lakh, even though the input costs had gone up tremendously during the last few years. That said a lot about the man - easily the most respected and admired business leader in India - who is absolutely honest, does not pay bribes and does not bend either rules or his back obsequiously to politicians.

Management guru CK Prahalad, one of the world’s foremost management thinkers, was effusive in his praise for Tata’s achievement. Writing in The Times of India of January13, 2007, he said: “In India, it lays to rest skeptics who five years ago assumed India cannot compete in manufacturing. Yes, Indian engineers—given the right challenges and leadership—can out-innovate and out-engineer others. Seldom does a single product introduction challenge the received wisdom in the industry so radically. The Nano also sheds light on how to leverage emerging markets as innovation hubs. We can constantly complain about constraints. We can also use constraints as levers for breakthrough thinking. I call this process of constrained innovation as working within the Innovation Sandbox.”

Highlighting the importance of the achievement, Prahalad wrote: “This innovation is serious. But now, let us celebrate. I just want to say: Ratan, what an extraordinary New Year gift to India and the world! To ordinary people! Ratan Tata, Tata Motors, and all the suppliers and dealers deserve our thanks for rekindling the innovative spirit of India.”

Even as the world was saluting this Bharat Ratan, this precious Jewel of India, for his many stupendous achievements, including the explosive growth of TCS, the acquisition of Corus, Pierre, Tetley, Daewoo’s truck division and Jaguar and Land Rover (both almost in the bag), and the earlier launch of the Indica car, India’s politicians were again on display for the usual reasons, just to remind us that the ‘other’ India was still there.

India’s highest civilian award is called Bharat Ratna, India’s Jewel. Ratna is also spelled as Ratan, as in Ratan Tata. It was originally instituted with the noble aim of honoring Indians who were national icons of the highest order. Soon our politicians discovered that the award was more useful as a tool for getting votes of the constituencies represented by political leaders who were given the Bharat Ratna. To exploit this tool fully and quite immorally for this unstated purpose alone, past leaders were also subsequently made eligible to receive this reward posthumously. This enabled the government to bestow the award on luminaries of the freedom struggle like Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Dr BR Ambedkar, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose etc.

Guess who never became India’s highest jewel? Mahatma Gandhi, of course! Possibly it was out of respect for the Father of the Nation who is much taller than any award in the world. But, considering the manner in which the award has been given and some of those who have got it, I cannot shake the feeling that Gandhi was overlooked mainly because he could not be identified with any narrow political constituency which would translate into votes.

It is on the Republic Day that national awards are announced. January 26, that special day, is less than a fortnight away. LK Advani, Prime Ministerial candidate of the BJP, fired the first shot by making public his demand that former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee should be given the Bharat Ratna. A confidential request should have sufficed but no Indian politician likes to miss a chance to claim credit for himself or discredit his opponents, even it means stooping to low, petty levels. Predictably, others started championing the cause of Jyoti Basu, ex Chief Minister of West Bengal, and Kanshi Ram, the founder of the BSP and mentor of Mayawati. There are rumours that before all these public spats started, K Karunanidhi, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu was quietly lobbying with the Centre for himself on the strength of his party’s critical support to the UPA government.

During this very week, the salaries of the President, Vice President and Governors were enhanced substantially. There were also debates in the media about the need for giving politicians salaries at par with the corporate world! All that these guys can see and covet are the salaries of business leaders. They are simply blind to the qualifications, the competition, the competence, the accountability and the risks which accompany such salaries. As far as they are concerned, even criminals and convicts are entitled to be cabinet ministers; they have been elected by the people after all and are above normal scrutiny. We are the law makers; they never tire of saying, so supreme that they frown when even the learned judges of the Supreme Court question them for repeatedly making laws that are repugnant to any semblance of impartiality and morality. Recall the Office of Profit Bill that Dr Abdul Kalam, the President with a conscience had retuned and the recent bill to ensure the personal victory of Health Minister Ramadoss over the AIIMS Director Dr Venugopal. Just give us fat salaries, they say, but do not question who we are and what we do!

Is it any surprise that despite the coincidently timely launch of the Nano, the latest in a long series of outstanding achievements to the credit of Ratan Tata, no politician across the political spectrum has even whispered that he be awarded the Bharat Ratna? You can hear some of them criticizing him all right! Mamta Bannerjee has, in fact, asked Rata Tata to give away 10 lakh Nanos for free in lieu of the land that the government of West Bengal has given to Tata Motors at Singur to manufacture the Nano!

This happens only in Bharat! The real Bharat Ratnas who do their country proud despite the many Mamtas in the political landscape remain unrecognized by the government while tinsel is embraced and honoured again and again. All for a few votes more in just one election by appeasing a section of the electorate to whom the awardees belong! It does not concern them in the least that by doing so, all that they are achieving in the long run is destruction of the value and sanctity of such national awards, and belittling of the achievements of those who have got them deservedly. This is Bharat Patan (decline, fall), but who cares!

The really great miracle of India, greater than even the Nano, is that both Bharat Patan and Bharat Ratan are able to happily co-exist in this land of many contradictions and achieve their dreams! This is the despair and delight of the India that is both exasperating and exciting! This is also possibly responsible for the many Jugaads and impossible innovations of which the Nano is the newest example.

This happens only in India!

NO 'NOs' FOR THE NANO

On January 10, 2007, Ratan Tata, the creative soul and father of the Tata Group, stunned the automotive world by launching the cute $2500 Tata car, Nano.

Ratan Tata had dreamt of the car four years back when he saw a family of four on dangerous Indian roads on a scooter. Like millions of other Indians, they had no choice but to brave the dangers and the elements on a two wheeler as they simply could not afford to buy even a cheap car. Ratan Tata decided to make a car that they could afford. Everyone who knew even a little about cars told him then that it was not possible to build a real car for only Rs 1 lakh, almost the price of an Enfield Bullet motorcycle! But Tata persisted, despite the ridicule, and Nano is the shining result.

On this historic occasion, it is only fair to remember the original dreamer of the ‘peoples’ car’, Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of Indira Gandhi, who attempted to build one almost on his own in his factory, Maruti, in Gurgaon which was then in the rural outskirts of Delhi. Sanjay Gandhi even built few crude prototypes, but was not headed anywhere on the project, when he was killed in an air crash while flying a plane in Delhi.

Maruti, his creation, would have died too, had he been another ordinary citizen. But, Indira Gandhi called in the Japanese car maker Suzuki to keep Maruti alive and build the small car which Sanjay Gandhi wanted to. So, an emotional decision made to keep alive the memory of the Prime Ministers’ son resulted in the first car revolution in India. That wave was spearheaded by the Maruti 800 which still going strong after 23 years.

The 800 created a new class of car owners in India and gave a unique sense of confidence to the middle class that, till then, had aspired for little more than a two wheeler! People have forgotten that before Maruti rewrote the rules, High Income Group flats in Delhi came with attached scooter garages! How silly and unbelievable it sounds now.

The price of the Maruti 800, however, was about five times the price of a normal two wheeler. This price gap compelled a huge and fast growing section of the lower middle class, who wanted and needed a car, to make do with a scooter or, in the cities, pathetic public transport. A massive, untapped market was there but no one looked at it simply because everyone thought that it could not be bridged with a proper car that cost just Rs 1 lakh.

Till about five years back, mobile phones in India were mainly for the rich, with the existing players literally fleecing the few who flaunted their phones with exorbitant call charges. Dhirubhai Ambani, the visionary and inspirational founder of Reliance Industries, dreamt of making all Indians speak to each other at the ridiculous and seemingly impossible cost of sending a post card by normal mail. That dream revolutionized the industry and in an unimaginably short span of time, India is poised to have more mobile phone users than even the US has!

Capt GR Gopinath similarly dreamt of making Indians fly at little more than the cost of a train ticket. Air Deccan, India’s first low cost airline, was born and it has rewritten the rules of the game. Passenger air traffic has grown so rapidly that there are now serious infrastructural bottlenecks. No had ever thought that price-sensitive Indians would take to flying in such massive numbers.

The Nano is going to cause an unprecedented revolution on Indian roads, the likely magnitude of which is already giving ‘nightmares’ to some people, particularly environmentalists. Some of these metro based doom sayers seem actually to be worried about the discomfort and inconvenience that they are personally going to face on city roads and parking slots because of the impending Nano invasion on what has been their elitist territory. As far as they are concerned, lesser citizens should stick to the grind of traveling in buses, trains and, as a family, on absolutely unsafe two wheelers!

On January 10, 2008, apart from the Nano, another Indian car, the AmbieRod, designed by Dilip Chhabaria was launched at the Auto Expo in New Delhi. The most stunning car at the Expo, this very limited edition super luxury car, only ten of which will be made, will be powered by a BMW V12 engine that propels the McLaren F1 sports car. Its price? Well you could buy, yes, as many as 400 Nanos for the price of one AmbieRod! For this car, there are only gasps of admiration, no ‘nos’! The ‘nos’ are only for the tiny car which will jostle for road space with this beauty!

The Tatas will, as of now, be able to manufacture a maximum of 350,000 Nanos per year at their upcoming plant at Singur. I think the demand for a car in this segment will far exceed all estimates that are presently being made. Analysts seem to have forgotten what had happened after the launch of Maruti 800, before which only about 30,000 Fiats and Ambassadors were being sold in India annually. At that time, the economy was almost stagnant, taxes were sky high and any display of wealth at the then height of Indian socialism was considered vulgar. The 800 still made people break through all shackles and start an automotive revolution in the country. What is going to happen now when the economy is growing at over 9 percent and Indians have taken to consumerism with a vengeance?

Our planners would, therefore, be well advised to proactively assess the impact that the new Nano revolution will make. Already, the fast growing economy has forced them to order the six-laning of the Golden Quadrilateral and the North-South, East-West Highways, even as the four-laning has not been fully completed. Perhaps they need to upgrade and eight-lane these highways straightaway rather than a little later when the inevitable crisis is upon us. Similarly, in the cities, the road network, parking lots etc need to be substantially upgraded keeping in mind the worst-case impact of the massive number of Nano type cars that will be on the roads faster than present projections suggest.

Bleeding-heart environmentalists and other protectors of ‘history’ would do well to understand that change cannot be stopped; that the old has to give way to the new, as it always has. Above all, none of us has a right to ask that others be denied what we demand for ourselves and enjoy as a right. Is it not weird, for example, that most of those who shout the loudest against others for their cruelty to animals enjoy eating them the most!

The Nano will re-write rules not just in India but across the globe. Ratan Tata’s impossible dream has become a reality for a billion people. This small Indian wonder needs to be celebrated and applauded as one more example of incredible Indian ingenuity and creativity, born out of a simple, honest concern for those are usually ignored, without losing the business angle of it.

There simply can be no ‘nos’ for the Nano.