Letters: Reminiscing Talwar
Apropos T N Ninan’s column “The ‘Talwar Amendment’” (Weekend Ruminations, June 23), here is another Talwar moment. R K Talwar had shown exceptional foresight and commitment in the early seventies by getting State Bank of India (SBI) to finance an agri-business venture, the first such project by any Indian bank. In the first half of 1976, a colleague from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and I were retained to advise Mr Talwar and his top-level team at SBI about the serious problems the firm faced back then and possible solutions. We concluded that the promoter’s errors of judgment in dealing with unforeseen circumstances were the root cause. We worked out a detailed nursing plan, with the promoter managing the company’s affairs under far stricter SBI oversight. Talwar accepted this, but Mr Natarajan, then third in the hierarchy, strongly opposed it. The cement company case was very much the talk of the SBI Head Office Executive Floor. I asked Talwar, who had grown very friendly in an avuncular sort of way, whether he was acting in a contradictory manner in the two cases. He firmly said no, it was a matter of intention behind the act and not the actor per se.
Soon thereafter, Talwar was replaced by P C D Nambiar (who passed away recently) and Mr Natarajan became MD. SBI rejected our advice and instituted legal proceedings. The case went on for 17 long years. Mr Talwar took no part in it and remained in his Pondicherry exile. I had to brief many of his successors about the case. Finally, the promoter, who fought his own case, prevailed with his honour intact, but little else. The firm was wound up and his family faced penury and estrangement. SBI incurred huge legal costs, and agri-business finance earned an undeserved bad name.
Shreekant Sambrani Vadodara
...and his legacy
The iconic banker, R K Talwar, as succinctly narrated by T N Ninan, displayed extraordinary courage by standing up to his political masters during his eventful career at SBI. Those who have worked in SBI are also aware of how Talwar resisted Sanjay Gandhi’s demand to finance Maruti Udyog (MU). It may be noted that Talwar did not like the way Gandhi short-circuited the proper channels in the Bank and directly approached the chairman to take up the application of MU. Talwar was a steadfast practitioner of the principles of corporate governance, employee empowerment and delegation much before the terms became buzzwords of modern-day management.
K V Rao Bangalore
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