Mohan Guruswamy
January 25, 2007

Published in HardNews

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?' George Bernard Shaw in 'Back to Methuselah' (1921)

The new Mani Ratnam movie "Guru" has been more hyped due to the off the screen romance of its two lead actors than to the quality of work on the screen. Mani Ratnam's movie begins with a disclaimer that any resemblance to a person, living or dead is coincidental. That is about the only fiction there is in the movie. "Guru" is about the life and times of Dhirubhai Ambani, which makes it a great theme. Like any Mani Ratnam movie the music is delectable and the choreography top class. Aishwarya has never danced better or looked lovelier. But in the title role, Abhishek Bachhan is inadequate and exudes little of the infectious magnetism and charisma of Dhirubhai Ambani. Amitabh in "Deewar" endowed the role loosely fashioned around Haji Mastan with a larger than life personality, but young Bachhan just does not have enough in him to justice to Dhirubhai Ambani after whom the title role of Gurukant Desai is loosely fashioned.

On the other hand Mithun Chakravarthy enacting a Ramnath Goenka patterned antagonist turns in a performance that is powerful, restrained and dignified without any of the real life outbursts of passion and lapsing into scatological expression of the newspaper magnate. For that matter even Madhavan as the newsman essays a role that is a composite of Arun Shourie and S Gurumurthy without resorting to the terrier like enthusiasm and willingness to please the master that was the hallmark of the duo. Contrary to what they professed, the truth had little to do with it. There is a small episode in passing which shows a helpless editor in despair as the owner has the front page recast with his foxhounds report as the main story. Which is probably what Suman Dubey did while Goenka unleashed Shourie and Gurumurthy at Ambani and anyone else who came in the way, even Rajiv Gandhi? The role of the Nusli Wadia look alike is glossed over with a superficially etched characterization that does not capture contemptuous arrogance of those born with a silver spoon in their mouths and with which Mohammed Ali Jinnah's grandson treated the yarn brokering Dhirubhai. Dhirubhai Ambani once recalled as to how Wadia would keep him waiting in his reception for hours before sending him off without meeting him. As Ambani would have it, it was in that reception area that soon to be textiles empire was germinated.

But like most other Mani Ratnam movies, "Guru" will keep the cash registers ringing loud and long because it takes a great real life story and fictionalizes it with dollops of rich masala into a great drama which only a master craftsman like him can. It's rich fare that comes at a time when India is finally shedding its socialistic innocence and dynamic businessmen are treated as nation transforming Schumpeterian entrepreneurs rather than as parasites feeding on a resource starved economy.

When the history of our recent times is written the inexorable rise of Dhirubhai Ambani will be one of its more memorable chapters. Because more than the rags to riches quality of the Ambani saga it is a true chronicle of the struggle to transform India from being a laboratory for Lasky inspired social experimentation into an economic powerhouse set to takes it rightful place in the global political economy. I first heard of Ambani in the late sixties when my friend Marin Henry the Managing Director of Madura Coats, the Indian subsidiary of the Scottish multinational - Coats Patons, and then a textile major predicted to me that Reliance will soon be the leader of the textile industry because it made the best fabrics at costs which were unthinkable for companies saddled with huge legacy costs and managerial deadweight. This was at a time when the marquee names of our textile business were now long forgotten names like DCM, Calico, Binny's, Madura, Tata Textiles with only Bombay Dyeing barely surviving now mostly as a maker of bed sheets.

I also remember witnessing in the reception area of my then employer, the advertising agency HTA, a line up of some of Bombay's best looking girls for Nusli Wadia's wife, Maureen a former Air India flight stewardess to pick from models for the company's products. At that time to be a Bombay Dyeing model was an endorsement of good looks that set many a beauty on the road to stardom. And such was the size of the account that HTA, which was a venerable agency even then, was willing be the venue of a meat parade. Nusli Wadia was generally considered a business titan and his company's advertising lionized him in Bombay's marketing and advertising community. So while Ambani focused on making the best textiles and offering the consumer the best value for hard-earned money, Wadia tried to make good with the high class advertising. Dhirubhai Ambani's Vimal was then nowhere on billboard horizon, but by the early eighties it was the brightest corporate star in the firmament and the stock market danced to the Reliance drum beat.

What happened in the textile business happened all over. Of the top ten industrial houses in India in the early eighties only Tata now survives in that list. The new generation of Indian companies, many inspired by Reliance, blazed a new trail with great economies of scale and by escaping the shackles of the license-permit Raj that, while making most existing corporations profitable did so at the cost of productivity, quality and availability. I remember recently having returned from the USA trying to book a Maruti 800 only to be laughed at by the salesgirl at the dealership that I should come back after five years when the booking opened again!

But Ambani found ways to beat the system. In a well documented series of articles by Gurumurthy in The India Express we learnt as to how Reliance imported a PFY plant with twice the capacity than declared for customs and licensed capacity. The Bombay Dyeing and Indian Express partnership went to town with this transgression when the real transgression was how the old firms manipulated the system to limit the capacity of business rivals to systematically bilk the citizen consumer. The public responded by buying more Vimal textiles and buying more Reliance shares. That seems so long ago. Do we remember how Bajaj made the same scooter for decades and made a fortune in the process? Do we remember how the lobbyists in New Delhi worked more to thwart additional capacity and competition as if it was the national enemy? This was the system Ambani took on and exposed as mere hollow hypocrisy, which is why few took the exposes of Shourie and Gurumurthy seriously. The public apparently had a superior perception of what the truth actually was than those professing to be concerned with the truth?

The Ambani saga was still beginning. When Ramnath Goenka could not turn Rajiv Gandhi into an instrument of his will to beat Reliance down, he turned upon him with a vengeance. Goenka, Gurumurthy and Shourie hatched a plan to get President Zail Singh to sack Rajiv Gandhi. As things would have it, thanks to the exertions of people like Amitabh Bachhan Rajiv Gandhi also fell out with VP Singh. Amitabh's business interests had him re-exporting banned items from the West to the erstwhile Soviet Union and also claiming generous export incentives. This had brought him under the scanner of the Finance Ministry. VP Singh was as usual unwilling to oblige and get his hands dirty. It's not with some irony that the very same Amitabh Bachhan is now aligned with Sonia Gandhi's arch foes. VP Singh was a godsend for the Goenka crowd. As one of them said to me, if he didn't show we would have had to create one!

I remember meeting Dhirubhai Ambani for the first time on the eve of the election which saw Rajiv Gandhi defeated. He came to the point very quickly. "What would VP Singh do after he became Prime Minister?" I replied with "What can he do besides having a few cases filed?" I was rather surprised that Ambani was concerned about the ability of even a Prime Minister to harm any individual. What are the courts for and surely he can get the best lawyers to tie up the process in knots? I said that if VP Singh got obsessed with fixing him then he too would go the way of Rajiv Gandhi. As things so happened, Gurumurthy and Arun Jaitly, both hard core RSS men, got VP Singh enmeshed in their vendetta. Because the truth concerned them.

But as it so happened it was the old Wadia-Ambani war again. Both, Gurumurthy and Jaitly were thick as thieves with Wadia and now felt emboldened thinking they had a Prime Minister in their ranks. Ironically for a man who is Jinnah's grandson, Wadia has extremely close links with the RSS. Nanaji Deshmukh was his original mentor. He is also close to LK Advani.

The Narasimha Rao years and the advent of delicensing and the scrapping of the DGTD saw Reliance grow many times over. By the time the Vajpayee government came to office Reliance's annual profit exceeded Bombay Dyeing's turn over. After all, there are limits to what good advertising can do for you? But this saga did not end here. With Advani as Home Minister the old Wadia lobby around him got busy again. I remember the tussle between South Block and North Block on raiding Reliance and Dhirubhai Ambani. The Prime Minister did not want the raid. The Home Minister was insistent. The PM even called up the Director of the CBI to back off, but the Home Minister prevailed. Ambani was raided. Naturally nothing came of it. The Reliance growth saga continued. Even Arun Shourie was forced to comment that what India needed was a hundred Dhirubhai Ambani's.

Towards the end of 1998 the Government of India was contemplating a new board of directors for the Reserve Bank of India. The Finance Minister entrusted me with the task of putting together a list of names. I had Dhirubhai Ambani high up on that list. The list was sent off to the PMO. That night I got a call from Dhirubhai. He thanked me for doing that but said that I will not succeed. As happened the list never got approved or rejected. The PMO was not willing to have Ambani nor was it willing to reject him. As it so happened the RBI board was only reconstituted after Ambani died.

There is no other story in India comparable with Ambani's. The only close parallel internationally would be the saga of Konusuke Matsushita who built the greatest consumer electronics business the world has known has made brands like National, Pioneer and JVC household names world over. Matsushita emerged from the debris of post-war Japan and was driven by an ambition to make Japan great once again. Nothing was allowed to stand in his way. He either took over the competition or ran them to the ground. So much so the USA today does not have a single manufacturer of consumer electronics and only a token presence in domestic appliances. When Matsushita died Presidents and Prime Ministers vied to be at his funeral which was broadcast live to the world. Likewise when Ambani died every political leader and captain of industry stood in a line common people to pay homage to him at Seawind on Bombay's Cuffe Parade. LK Advani cut short his visit to Gujarat and also stood in that line. Dhirubhai Ambani would have chuckled over that and said 'Why not?'.