How KK Birla outwitted Charan Singh

In the last few weeks, commentators and journalists alike have rediscovered Saroj Poddar. The soft-spoken Marwari from Kolkata is fighting Deepak Fertilizers for the control of Mangalore Chemicals & Fertilizers, is locked in a confrontation with Gillette and is out to save little-known Kalindee Rail Nirman from predators. Till these corporate battles erupted, Poddar was known as an avid art collector, the man who brought Gillette to India and Krishna Kumar Birla's son-in-law (Poddar is married to his daughter, Jyotsna). This piece is about Birla.

K K Birla (1918-2008) was Ghanshyam Das "GD" Birla's (1894 to 1983) son. It is said that Birla did not inherit much of his father's wealth because he had only daughters - three of them - and no son. The various incidents of Birla's life can be found in his 2009 autobiography, Brushes with History (Penguin). Much of the book deals with family history and his association with leaders and charitable work. Business accounts for just 11 of the 665 pages: "My Business Activities" is the last of the 40 chapters of the book. Nevertheless, if it interests you to know the interplay between business and politics, especially in the days of the Licence Raj, this book is money well spent.

K K Birla may not have inherited his father's wealth (most of it went to Aditya Birla, his nephew and Basant Kumar Birla's son) but he did inherit his deep interest in public life. G D Birla's closeness to Mahatma Gandhi is well known, though his relationship with Jawaharlal Nehru was somewhat frosty. Nehru's socialist bent of mind had made him suspicious of businessmen. G D Birla, in turn, couldn't stomach Nehru's openly socialist worldview. There were several flashpoints between the businessman and the leader who went on to become India's first prime minister. In spite of this history, K K Birla enjoyed a close relationship with Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter.

After the Janata Party came to power in 1977, Chaudhary Charan Singh, the home minister, lost no time going after Indira Gandhi and the people close to her. Birla was on that list because his companies had placed advertisements in Congress souvenirs and gave some Jeeps to the party for election work. Birla first went to Jayaprakash Narayan, the Janata Party ideologue who had at one time served as his father's secretary, for help. But there was nothing he could do. All attempts to resolve the issue came to naught. Birla left the country just in time to evade arrest. In Brushes with History, Birla says he was able to outfox Singh because of then foreign minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The government had been trying to impound Birla's passport to keep him confined to India. With Vajpayee's intervention, Birla was able to keep his passport. A few weeks before his planned arrest, Vajpayee tipped off Birla who booked himself on a flight to Paris. A few months later, he returned to India after the all-clear signal from Vajpayee.

In this book, Birla also makes the disclosure that Sanjay Gandhi, when his pet project to make an inexpensive people's car wasn't making much headway, had approached him to become a shareholder in the company and infuse some capital. But Birla felt it would have to be a large-scale project requiring large investments. He even told Indira Gandhi that her son was leading an unwise project and needed to be restrained. Had he agreed to Sanjay Gandhi's offer, Birla would have become a shareholder in Maruti Udyog, the country's largest car company!

bhupesh.bhandari@bsmail.in