Business Standard Billionaire Club

Power Play

Movers and shakers

Many billionaires are seen as carrying clout with the powers that be. We highlight a few high profile ones

BS Research Bureau

Item: Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is known to be reluctant to attend private functions. So when he was first asked to inaugurate Reliance's telephone services in Mumbai, he was less than enthusiastic about it. It was then that Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani swung into action. Ultimately, the prime minister made the first telephone call from a Reliance phone on the day the services were formally inaugurated in Mumbai.

Item: The Maharashtra government recently raised the excise duty on strong beer. That sounds innocuous enough. But ask UB group chairman Vijay Mallya's rivals about this and they are quick to make allegations. They claim that this change was engineered by Mallya (remember, Maharashtra is the country's largest beer-consuming state), as the UB group is weak on strong beer (the SABMiller-SWC combine is the leader in the segment with brands like Haywards 5000), while it has a strong presence in mild beer. But then again, this kind of mud-throwing may be little more than competititor frustration on display.

These are often cited, rightly or wrongly, as but two examples of "environment management." Indian businessmen have always thrived on having the right political connections in place. In the licence-permit-quota raj, it was all about securing a licence to produce, which by itself was a passport to success. The house of Birla at one time was sitting on over 160 unutilised licences. But ever since the Narasimha Rao government in the early-1990s set about dismantling the licence raj, environment management has become a euphemism for fighting corporate battles.

Many of India's billionaires have connections in the corridors of power. But a few are more influential and perhaps more active in attempting to mould policies than others. The list includes the Ambanis, Mallya, Sahara group boss Subrata Roy and, increasingly, Bharti group head Sunil Mittal.

You can quarrel with this list and cite several other names too. And it's almost axiomatic that those who run large business empires will be listened to by politicians in power.

In business, power is defined to an extent by the ability to influence government policies. By that yardstick, the Ambanis are widely perceived to be India's most influential billionaires, though such perceptions could also be a legacy of the late Dhirubhai Ambani's legendary ability to shape government policies to his convenience.

But his sons undisputably carry clout. Telecom watchers think that former communications minister Pramod Mahajan's support for fixed line service companies like Reliance Infocomm cost him his job - his department had directed all cellular service companies to provide interconnection to fixed line service companies immediately (something that they had balked at) or face disconnection from the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephones Nigam Ltd. The matter came to a boil when MTNL cancelled interconnection to cellular service companies.

Cellular service companies also cite communications minister Arun Shourie's speech on Dhirubhai Ambani's death anniversary recently (where he said his current views represented a 180-degree turn from his earlier views on the man and his business) as yet another indication of the Ambanis' persuasive skills in winning over former critics.

Yet in the current telecom wars, one man has displayed growing power - Bharti group chairman Sunil Mittal. Cellular service companies privately say that Mittal is the power behind the global systems for mobile (GSM) cellular services lobby in its battle against WLL-based limited mobility service providers, though he has remained carefully in the background.

Says an executive at a cellular services company: "If there is anyone who can match the clout of Reliance, it is him." On his part, Mittal has always maintained that Mukesh Ambani and he are the best of friends. But not everybody buys that. "If you put Mukesh and Sunil in one room, they will come to a solution to the current telecom tangle," says a basic operator.

With his growing empire Mittal has also grown in stature. He has been in the forefront of pushing through an increase in the foreign direct investment limit in telecom to 74 per cent from the existing 49 per cent. But Mittal has not escaped controversy either. Some years ago, Harshad Mehta alleged that Mittal had taken him to then prime minister Narasimha Rao to make a payment of Rs 1 crore - an allegation Mittal denied vehemently.

The third most influential billionaire is perhaps liquor baron Mallya. Being a Rajya Sabha MP, he is friends with national level politicians like Sharad Pawar as well as several power brokers at the state level. Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray considers Mallya a close friend. Mallya is related to Karnataka chief minister S M Krishna - his daughter is married to Mallya's step-brother. Ramakrishna Hegde, of course, is Mallya's political godfather.

Mallya also seems to have established connections with God. A few weeks ago, the helicopter in which Mallya was travelling with his friend, Sanjay Khan, crashed. Though Khan and some others sustained injuries, Mallya walked out of the mangled helicopter almost unscratched. Clearly, God was on his side. For a man who prays every day, does the entire 42-day Sabarimala fast every year - during which he wears only black - and is a keen devotee of Sri Sri Ravishankar of the Art of Living, this was evidence of the gods smiling on him.

The fourth businessman who discreetly carries clout is Subrata Roy of the Sahara India group. His political influence will put many of India's top industrialists to shame - MP Amar Singh calls him a brother, while Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav is a dear friend.

Roy's Sahara India group is, of course, headquartered in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. Roy, who had his beginnings in the small town of Gorakhpur on the borders of Nepal in Uttar Pradesh, was among the clutch of top businessmen like Anil Ambani, Adi Godrej, Nikhil Nanda and Lalit Suri who were present at Yadav's recent swearing-inceremony.

Roy's influence in the film industry too is huge - he can get top stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Ravina Tandon, Govinda, Aishwarya Rai and Karisma Kapur on the same platform in double quick time.

That's not all. His acquaintances include Indian cricket captain Saurav Ganguly, who flies down to meet him at his palatial, well guarded house in Lucknow, Mohamad Kaif and Virendra Sehwag. Roy counts Reliance vice-chairman Anil Ambani and the Big B among his most public friends.
Last but not least is the Pune-based two-wheeler tycoon Rahul Bajaj.

Most business houses maintain huge offices in New Delhi to lobby with the government, while some of them put their view across through industry associations like CII and Ficci. The Bajaj Auto chairman is ceretainly active in CII, but even when CII didn't back him on asking for high tariffs on two-wheeler imports, he met the finance minister and got the job done.

It is an open secret that the now-dying Press Note 18, which requires an overseas company to take the consent of its local partner before setting up shop in the country on its own, was pushed by a business chamber at the behest of a worried member.

And the influence of some businessmen transcends national boundaries. When Polaris boss Arun Jain was put behind bars in Indonesia and the situation seemed to be getting out of control, it took some gentle persuasion by Lalit Mohan Thapar, patriarch of the Thapar group of industries, to get him out.

That Thapar is a close friend of Megawati Sukarnoputri, the Indonesian ruler, helped. On her last visit to India, Sukarnoputri in fact stayed at Thapar's stylish villa on the banks of the Ganga at Haridwar. She even took some Gangajal to be put in the various temples of Indonesia.

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