Lunch with BS: Vikram Mehta

Food for thought

Why did he leave Shell, his employer of 23 years, just six months shy of retirement, I ask Vikram Mehta, now India chairman of the world's best-recognised think tank, The Brookings Institution. "Well, in a way you're right that I moved earlier than I needed to. I was clear in my head what I would not do, and that was continuing in the corporate world in an executive role," says Mehta. He left without a job in hand - so to speak - but the opportunity that he was looking for knocked soon. "I wanted to see if I can be at the cross section of academics and policy, and Brookings offered that opportunity," says Mehta. We're at The Oberoi's Threesixty Degrees (New Delhi), an omnibus coffee shop and gourmet restaurant. Mehta has another appointment to catch in an hour, so we do the ordering first, tomato-basil soup and avocado and asparagus salad with "extra" pine nuts for him and a well-done Irish mignon for myself, writes Shailesh Dobhal.

How did the Brookings offer come about? "Well, I always believed that India should have more think tanks. I vaguely knew Strobe [Talbott, former US deputy secretary of state and currently Brookings' president] and Martin Indyk [director of foreign policy at Brookings], and when the feelers came in right after I announced my retirement from Shell last April, I was interested."

It's of a piece, with his family's traditional association with public policy and service that goes beyond his father. Pre-Independence, the family traces its lineage as diwans of the princely state of Udaipur. His grandfather, Mohan Singh Mehta, was the country's high commissioner to Pakistan and a member of the Constituent Assembly of India. His father, Jagat Singh Mehta, retired as India's foreign secretary. His mother, Rama, was the first woman in the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) but quit because of an archaic rule that barred spouses from serving in the IFS together, back in the 1950s. Mehta, too, spent two years in the late 1970s in the civil service as a probationer, before quitting abruptly to join Phillips Petroleum (now ConcoPhillips), and then Shell - first in London in 1989 and later in India as the country's head of the Shell group of companies in 1994.

Given that Brookings is one of the world's most influential think tanks, and the Indian think tank ecosystem is underdeveloped and often compromised because of overdependence on the government for funding, how does he see himself working in such a milieu? "Like everything in India, the situation evolves. Twenty-five years ago when I was an adviser to the Government of India, it wasn't too receptive to advice from outside - whether it was from think tanks, or indeed, advisers inside. Today, the environment is much more complex and policy-making is dynamic. You now find that the government has committees with people from business, non-governmental organisations and think tanks. It's a porous system." He is quick to add that one still could not compare the decision-making process in the government vis-à-vis think tanks in India with what exists in the US, where the osmosis is stronger. "The challenge for advisers and think tanks is to provide the government with advice that is practical, grounded in solid empirical data, has cutting-edge intellectual quality and independent of interest groups."

Mehta, a columnist with a general broadsheet, argued recently that the shift in the direction of Indian policy is a Sisyphean challenge. Given this, how does he plan to make Brookings India more effective? "I am for incremental change, taking the first small step in the right direction that will generate the momentum for a larger one in the same direction. I hope we will be able to identify the avoidable inefficiencies that can be corrected without asking for any radical shift in government thinking."

He goes back to the oil industry to illustrate just what he means by "avoidable inefficiencies". According to Mehta, the recovery rate in India's oil and gas fields is 28 per cent - "not my number, but the Government of India's number," he emphasises. And the comparable figure globally is 40 to 45 per cent, he adds. But isn't this more of a business challenge than a policy one? "So why is the shift from 28 per cent to 40 to 45 per cent not happening?" he asks, and then supplies the answer. "The reasons may be multiple, but if someone were to identify this fact, and say it's feasible, does not require the government to change the nature of technology and provide some practicable solutions to sort it out, the policy makers may be able to act on it."

How does Brookings plough a furrow independent of influences that its powerful and moneyed funders - "The Founders' Circle" of the Tatas, Birlas, Ambanis, Bajajs and Bhartias - may invariably bring along? To start with, Mehta says each of the two-dozen-odd Indian founders have contributed equal amounts of money, so that no one enjoys a disproportionate influence over the think tank. "Twenty-one of the 24 founding members are Indians. And Brookings will be led and staffed by Indians. The founding circle will be involved in an advisory capacity and that's the extent of its involvement. Brookings will determine its own research agenda, and it does not have a political or interest group-led agenda." And unlike Brookings China or Doha, where the focus is largely foreign policy, Brookings India will be a multi-disciplinary organisation looking at the whole gamut of areas from international affairs, economics, energy and environment to infrastructure. "And my reporting is straight to Strobe," says Mehta, unlike the heads of Brookings China and Doha who report to the foreign policy head, Indyk, in the US.

Mehta says he's looking at an office in New Delhi to house Brookings in India, and also needs to fill key positions in director research and operations. I drop a name doing the rounds in the capital's policy circuit for Brookings' research director, but Mehta wouldn't reveal much, and says the think tank hasn't made any appointment. I sense Mehta has clamped up, so just to open up the conversation, I digress to his British-built house in the Kumaon hills in the middle of the Binsar bird sanctuary. It works, and here he lets me into a secret. He bought the four-bedroom, two-acre house in 1988, from its gardener-owner - who had inherited it after the death of his British master's mistress - for a sum that was, well, pretty low. Just back from the US, Mehta was working as an adviser with the ministry of petroleum back then on a four-figure salary, and did not even have the few lakhs that the gardener was asking for. So he sold his four-year-old Volkswagen Golf to pay for the house. "This property is the car," says Mehta, remembering his days as an avid trekker who stumbled on this bargain by chance.

Mehta seems to be in a hurry to catch his next appointment, but I manage to slip in one last question: his views on the growing feeling that multinationals - much like his erstwhile employer Shell - are getting away without paying their fair share of taxes. "As an Indian, I feel that we're mismanaging the nature of relationship with these companies, especially the ones investing in infrastructure. And we don't realise how fragile the confidence is, and we may just choke off interest. We have to address the perception as much as the reality, and the perception today is that India is not consistent with its policy."