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| The right chemistry |
| Surajeet Das Gupta & Bhupesh Bhandari / New Delhi Jan 28, 2012, 00:06 IST |
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 R V Kanoria takes over Ficci when Marwaris in Kolkata are apprehensive about their future. Surajeet Das Gupta and Bhupesh Bhandari talk to him.
The first few days for any new president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, or Ficci, are a whirlwind of media interviews and meetings with decision makers. Till last year, the new president spoke to the media under the watchful eye of the industry association’s secretary general, Amit Mitra. But Mitra left last year to contest the West Bengal elections on a Trinamool Congress ticket. He won and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee promptly made him the finance minister. So R V Kanoria, the new president, is on his own. Still, he is measured in his speech and guarded in his comments on the state of affairs on his home turf, Kolkata.
Kanoria, the chairman & managing director of Kanoria Chemicals & Industries, comes from an old Marwari family of Kolkata which made its fortune in the edible oil business. The Marwari community, according to reports emanating from Kolkata, is rattled at the arrest of the Emami families (Goenka and Agarwal) for the fire at the AMRI hospital which killed more than 90 people, though the managers have been left alone. “One should be careful that negative messages are not sent out,” says Kanoria. “The economic agenda is contingent upon the mood. Banerjee needs a broader vision and needs to enunciate it.” He insists the Marwari question is not on Ficci’s agenda, though West Bengal is one of the eight states it will focus on in the next one year.
This is not the first time Kanoria has flirted with the leadership of Ficci, which was set up in 1926 under the guidance of nationalist businessmen like Ghanshyam Das Birla and Lala Shri Ram. Ficci has a three-tiered succession chain: president, senior vice-president and vice-president. Kanoria was vice-president in 2001 and was all set to become senior-vice-president in 2002 and president in 2003. However, towards the end of 2001, A C Muthiah of Spic, who had quit as senior vice-president because he had become the chairman of the Board for Control of Cricket in India, announced his intention to reclaim his position. (Bcci was grappling with the betting scandal and Muthiah felt it would require all his time and energy to sort out the mess. He had, therefore, opted out of the Ficci leadership.) Muthiah’s re-entry would have delayed Kanoria’s ascent to the top slot by another year. In protest, Kanoria resigned from the vice-president’s post.
Ten years later, Kanoria makes light of the incident. “There was no bitterness; otherwise I wouldn’t have been elected president,” he says. Ficci has had in place for long a “rotation” policy under which the president’s post rotates between the four regions: east, west, north and south. Kanoria says there is no such policy. Though he was nominated by the Kolkata-based International Chamber of Commerce and was preceded by Mumbai businessman Harsh Mariwala of Marico, his company is headquartered in New Delhi and his roots are in Kolkata. Curiously, next in line after Kanoria is Naina Lal Kidwai of HSBC. Is she from the west (she operates out of Mumbai) or from the east (she is the granddaughter of Lala Karam Chand Thapar of Kolkata)?
Over the next few days, Kanoria will get the opportunity to air his views on the economy to the government. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will meet industry associations on January 31 to take on board their suggestions for the 2012-13 budget. Kanoria plans to tell him not to raise or cut taxes, ramp up the disinvestment programme, take away the subsidy on diesel, except for farmers (they need it to run water pumps and tractors), and break up the coal monopoly. Kanoria says he will also lobby for foreign investment in multi-brand retail. The government had to put the proposal on the backburner after it was attacked by all political parties — Left, Right and Centre.
Meanwhile, Kanoria will also have to think what to do with the Rs 830 crore he got from the Aditya Birla Group for his chloralkali business. “I am sitting on Rs 400 crore of cash and am debt-free,” he says. One idea Kanoria is keen on is agri-business: he has got consultants to study the possibilities. Till then, Ficci should keep him busy.
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