Capering Through Corporate Asia
Somewhere out there hordes of foreign businessmen are eager to do business with and in India, but lack information. Their minds are a tangled web of facts and rumours about the wonder economic, social and political that is modern India. Into this confusion publisher Rupa has stepped in with their latest offering, Claudia Craggs The New Maharajahs. Now with the help of this priceless introduction to prospective competitors and partners several foreign businessman are being lulled into believing that they have a ringside view of corporate India.
This is a truly terrifying thought. The New Maharajahs falls into that genre of writing which capitalises on compiling information where little exists, and which no one has bothered to sift before. It is devoted chiefly to providing information about the powerful (business) elite, who together with some non-resident Indians, control many of the sub-continents most powerful conglomerates... In other words it details the promoters of the most important top and middle level business houses in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
A good idea? Definitely. Equally definitely, this is a terrible book. Having promised so much, its principle achievement is to add to the information chaos endemic to the sub-continent.
First, the basic framework of The New Maharajahs has been sub-divided into seven chapters. The first deals with some of the large business houses in India. These are the Ambanis, Tatas, A V Birla, Oberois, Thapars and the Hindujas. Each group has been given a cursory treatment, roughly three or four pages on an average.
In the second, and largest, chapter Cragg gets down to the heart of the matter.
This section details the business activities of around 45 business houses. Listed in alphabetical order, the promoter(s) of the group and its businesses are described briefly, followed by a listing of all the companies therein.
The third and the fourth chapters replicate this pattern, except that they deal with Pakistani and Bangladeshi businessmen. The fifth chapter, Whos Really Who in the Diaspora deals with businessmen of sub-continent origin and who have made it big abroad. Chapter six is devoted to a treatise on the industrial sectors in which the new maharajahs take their most active roles. It approaches things from a top down perspective, that is, the main industrial sectors and the groups active there. The seventh and last chapter is a mercifully short discourse on caste in India.
None of these chapters come across as being anything more than a hurried and casual collection of data. Of course, the book does cover around 60 business houses in all and one cannot expect exhaustive treatment. One can even ignore the naive and simplistic analyses that characterise this work. Who knows, the first time business traveler could even find it informative.
But surely one can expect to rely on basic facts? Then consider this. Claudia Cragg would have you believe that Kesoram Industries belongs to the Reddy Group (of Dr Reddys Labs fame). The B K Birla house must be coughing very hard. Dr Reddys comments on the issue of ownership could be very illuminating. Also, in case your attention has wandered, the author goes on to firmly state that Shahnaz Husains company (Shahnaz Herbals) is listed on the bourses and its value is a 100 million dollars. Shahnaz Herbals, for the uninitiated, is yet to be seen within a thousand miles of any stock exchange in the country.
If you want to believe Cragg, there are five companies in the combined Shri Dhar, Bansi Dhar, Bharat Ram and Charat Ram Group, and their value on the bourses is 380 million dollars.
So much for veracity. In some cases even the positioning of houses becomes irritating. For example, the Oberois of East India Hotels are businessmen who deserve a place in the list of the big players but the R P Goenka Group does not. In other places it appears that whole lines have been either written out of context or added in by some careless editor. On page 114, in the chapter devoted to analysis of industries and under the section Property, one reads of the Ghanshyam Seth family. The latter should surely have figured in an earlier chapter. Howlers such as these abound.
The New Maharajahs is priced at Rs 395. Buy yourselves a good lunch instead.