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Only Dhirubhai!

LLast evening I went to attend an awards ceremony at The Oberoi. An awards ceremony for Dhirubhai Ambani who received the 24th Wharton School Dean's Medal for outstanding achievement as an entrepreneur, business leader and corporate visionary.

The Regal Room was crowded with politicians of all hues, businessmen, journalists, bankers, fixers, bureaucrats and friends of the Ambanis. The speeches were long and mostly tiresome. What was worse, most of the speakers (in their unbridled enthusiasm) missed the whole point of the ceremony. That here was a truly Swadeshi occasion. An occasion that captured the spirit of modern, resurgent, free India. An India that is now slowly becoming a part of the world community. As global India.

But what made the evening almost magical was more than that. It was the fact that, for the first time, corporate India stood centrestage. Proud and infinitely self assured.

It has taken us 51 years to reach this stage. Cutting a swathe through the dense undergrowth of socialist rhetoric and Nehruvian doublespeak, to arrive at a point of history when the nation is ready to admire those who have created wealth for India instead of hounding them with stupid laws, punishing taxes, and a brutish, insensitive bureaucracy that sees every success story as yet another opportunity to harrass, intimidate and blackmail. Particularly when the success story is in the area of corporate enterprise.

As a result, for over four long decades, we were trapped in an economy that could not grow, mature, discover its own genius for coping with the world outside. An economy built on deceit and dishonesty, where only the corrupt and the criminal flourished. Profits were frowned upon. Laziness was encouraged. With the help of protectionist policies and wicked politicians, a small coterie of businessmen manipulated the economy, shortchanged investors and bribed the system to perpetuate their control over corporate India. They generated huge sums of black money which they stashed away in Swiss banks. This money came in useful at election time, when they fielded their own candidates for political office.

Curiously, all this was done in the name of nationalism and socialism. What you could call Swadeshi and swaraj today.

It took one brave man to break that system. P V Narasimha Rao, who brought in Manmohan Singh to preside over the demolition of this evil empire of crime and corruption and introduce what was described as economic reforms. But it was not easy and, after a while, the process of reforms also slowed down. Narasimha Rao himself went in disgrace and is now defending himself in the courts against charges of bribery, corruption and nepotism. But the forces of change that he and Singh unleashed have grown apace. And that is why you now have a political environment in which a man like Dhirubhai is honoured for his enterprise, his innovativeness, his ability to anticipate the future of corporate India.

As I listened to all the eulogies, the empty rhetoric, the pretty turn of phrases I was constantly reminded of my early years in journalism when every journalist went out of his way to paint him and Reliance in the blackest of colours. It was the most fashionable thing to do and many were the scribes who built their reputation on attacking Dhirubhai and his somewhat unusual style of doing business.

Today, as corporate India takes on the might of the economic super powers and is ready to challenge the biggest and the toughest of them all, it is interesting to see how a man like Dhirubhai has emerged as a national hero. A man who has set up, in exactly two decades, a business empire that has outstripped all challenge in India and is now readying to take on its global rivals.

Will he succeed? I have no idea. Business journalism is not my forte. But what I do foresee is an era when Indian businessmen, Indian enterprise will be ready to challenge the world on its own terms. Fifty years of socialism crippled us. So has Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi who enslaved India for four decades just to perpetuate their dynastic hold over our political institutions.

It is only in the early nineties that we came into our own and it is a tribute to men like Dhirubhai that we did not instantly go under but held our own against the world. It was their spirit of enterprise, their fierce ambition, their defiance against the old order that has brought modern India where it is today. Right in the centre of the new world of emerging markets.

What does the award prove? Ten simple but crucial things, I would say.

1. Anything is possible. If you can dream it, you can do it. Dhirubhai created an empire from zero. Twenty years down the road, Reliance is India's biggest company and most amazing success story. Readying to take on the world.

2. It is possible to evolve and sustain your own management style, and make it work. Textbooks do not make success stories; they merely record them. Grit, hard work and innovation does. Dhirubhai has proved that again and again.

3. The stupidest bureaucracy and the stodgiest government cannot hold back the determination of a man to succeed. Dhirubhai demonstrated this at every opportunity. Till even his critics began to admire his resilience.

4. The larger the vision, the more likely it is to be realised. Even as smaller entrepreneurs fell by the wayside, Dhirubhai grew his vision of Reliance larger and larger till it not only consumed him but inspired the entire nation as well.

5. A true fighter, in the long run, makes as many friends as he makes enemies. The awards ceremony was a tribute to this simple fact. It was jam packed with people who came to see him win a tribute that he so richly deserved for a life spent in arduous battle against the establishment.

6. Stick to your core skills and build on them. That is what Reliance has done, even as it has grown manifold. It has diversified, yes, but never beyond its ability to directly manage and directly fund. That is why it remains so well run.

7. Accept the fact that there is a bit of a pirate in all successful people. Do not sit on a moralistic perch. Instead, accept it. Accept the ability of some remarkable men to risk adventure, to dare to do what most of us feel frightened by. Remember, empires are not built by nitpickers.

8. Go for the global vision. Only frogs like to reign in their own well. Men of ambition cannot be held back by the shortsightedness of those who frame policy. Who have enslaved brave Indians from taking on the world.

9. Forget pedigree. Fashion your own legacy. If you are good in what you do, your children will follow you to the end of the world. If you are not, they will rot in their mediocrity. Dhirubhai has not only created a remarkable empire; he has also created his own inheritors.

10. Share your wealth with others. That is the key to the Reliance success story. That Dhirubhai did not only fill his own coffers but also made it possible for millions of small investors to participate in his success and become rich. Their love and admiration has built and reinforced Reliance.

You may wonder why I am saying all this. The reason is simple: Six years ago, after I quit The Times of India Group, I joined the Ambanis in their newspaper and television venture but barely survived for a year there. The management and I were in bitter disagreement on most things. Finally, we agreed to go our own ways.

That is is why I can write this piece on Dhirubhai today. Without prejudice. Without embarrassment. In admiration for a man who could achieve what he set out to-in one amazing lifetime.

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