KTWV Volume 13 Issue 15: Budget Battleground Part 2

NDTV seems to have taken a firm place in our home in Finland.

Today I watched the Budget Battleground Part 2 from St. Andrew,s College, Mumbai. (I reported on the panelists in Part 1 in my earlier blog entry.)

One of the reasons I watched was that 54er/58er Rahul Bajaj, 54er from Cathedral School and 58er from St. Stephen's College, Chairman of Bajaj Enterprises and an Independent Rajya Sabha member was among the panelists. In 2009, when Annikki and I visited Delhi, Rahul stayed back one weekend evening so he could meet up with us in a party organized for us by Cathedralites led by 64er Deepak Deshpande.

I was under the impression that Adi Godrej was a Cathedralite, like his nephew 65er Jamshyd Godrej, who passed through Finland last year with his wife 65er Pheroza. Although I could not meet up with Jamshyd, I had a long chat with Pheroza, also a Cathedrtalite.

Adi Godrej was, however, from St. Xavier's School and College in Bombay.

There was another member of the alumni on the panel that was from my alma mater. It was 73er Vikram Singh Mehta, the Chairman of Shell, about 10 years my junior, but known for his bringing the Royal Shell Oil group back to India. I have not had the pleasure or benefit of meeting Vikram. He came into prominence well after I left India in 1984. Being from the same professional area, I did watch his career rise with interest.

The fourth panelist was one who I have not met but am associated with indirectly as he is the brother-in-law of one of my dearest friends, the late 59er Ashok Kapur, former Chairman of YES Bank. Rana Kapur is now in the top spot of the bank. I do not know him personally, so am unable to comment on his  stature.

The discussion was not very memorable in that nothing new was really thrown up. The focus was on the disinvestment of the Government of India from Public Sector companies as well as privatization.
Certainly, as leaders in the Private Sector, as family run companies in the case of Adi and Rahul, and as a leader of a MNC as Royal Dutch Shell, in the case of Vikram, and as the head of an outstanding private bank set up by Ashok in his heyday, the general opinion was that the Government should stick to Governing while industrialists and professional managers should stick to running businesses professionally.

It was one question from the students that really summed up the situation. Is the outsourcing boom was not far away. I am glad that a young student could recognize this as it will not be long before we see this side of the contribution to Indian growth completely dry up as localities as Vietnam, start to cut into our traditional business strongholds.

You can watch this episode in the NDTV archives.  Hope this link works:

http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/ndtv-special-ndtv-24x7/budget-battleground-what-india-expects-from-pranab-babu/226057

Enjoy.

KTWV Volume 13 Issue 14: Budget Battleground

This post is made in three of my blogs as it of interest to all my readers of Jacob's Blog, and more specifically the readers of my Mumbai Cathedral and John Connon School Blog, Seventh Heaven, and readers of the Stephanian Blog, Kooler Talk (Web Version).
I apologize for this multi-blog posting, as many of you are readers of all the three blogs!
Budget Battleground was  event that took place against the backdrop of my alma mater, St. Stephen's College, beautifully lit in the background, had a selected audience of young economists from Delhi School of Economics, Shri Ram College and St. Stephen's College, three of the many premier colleges in Delhi.
The anchorman was NDTV Managing Director, Dr. Prannoy Roy, who was connected with another good friend, great economist with tremendous wit, the person who turned around Doordarshan in the late eighties and early nineties and then went on to head Rupert Murdoch's Star TV and then his own channel, Broadcast Worldwide Ltd.,  and also a Stephanian, 61er/63er Rathikant Basu.
This is from the Wikipedia entry for NDTV Managing Director, Prannoy Roy:

Controversy
On 20 January 1998 Central Bureau of Investigation filed cases against New Delhi Television (NDTV) managing director Prannoy Roy, former Director General of Doordarshan R Basu and five other top officials of Doordarshan under Section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for criminal conspiracy and under the Prevention of Corruption Act. According to the CBI charge-sheet, Doordarshan suffered a loss of over Rs 3.52 crore due to the “undue favours” shown to NDTV as its programme The World This Week (TWTW) was put in `A’ category instead of `special A’ category

The two in the hot seats were 63er Montek Singh Alhuwalia, who was very much present in St. Stephen's College during my three years there, and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen (difficult to say whether he is an Indian or Bangladeshi as both countries have laid claim to him).
One can never forget 63er Montek, not for his knowledge, but for the unique way he wore his turban and certain mannerisms (the nervous laugh when he knows what he is saying is not what he believes), which have not changed, even as of today. The way he argued a point was always from a point that he could not be wrong, although many times, he was and is!
I give below three extract from the autobiography of Amartya Sen (Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1998). In these extracts you will see the mention of a name - Mumbai Cathedral School 59er Sudhir Anand, my classmate who is Professor of Economics at both Oxford and Harvard, a brilliant economist and undoubtedly a brain who influenced Amartya Sen considerably more than a three time  mention in his autobiography.
59er Sudhir was from our Mumbai Cathedral and John Connon School. Although unable to make it top our 50th year reunion in 2009, he was very much there in spirit.

"I was also fortunate to have colleagues who were working on serious social choice problems, including Peter Hammond, Charles Blackorby, Kotaro Suzumura, Geoffrey Heal, Gracieda Chichilnisky, Ken Binmore, Wulf Gaertner, Eric Maskin, John Muellbauer, Kevin Roberts, Susan Hurley, at LSE or Oxford, or neighbouring British universities. (I also learned greatly from conversations with economists who were in other fields, but whose works were of great interest to me, including Sudhir Anand, Tony Atkinson, Christopher Bliss, Meghnad Desai, Terence Gorman, Frank Hahn, David Hendry, Richard Layard, James Mirrlees, John Muellbauer, Steve Nickel, among others.) I also had the opportunity of collaboration with social choice theorists elsewhere, such as Claude d'Aspremont and Louis Gevers in Belgium, Koichi Hamada and Ken-ichi Inada in Japan (joined later by Suzumura when he returned there), and many others in America, Canada, Israel, Australia, Russia, and elsewhere). There were many new formal results and informal understandings that emerged in these works, and the gloom of "impossibility results" ceased to be the only prominent theme in the field. The 1970s were probably the golden years of social choice theory across the world. Personally, I had the sense of having a ball.
From social choice to inequality and poverty
The constructive possibilities that the new literature on social choice produced directed us immediately to making use of available statistics for a variety of economic and social appraisals: measuring economic inequality, judging poverty, evaluating projects, analyzing unemployment, investigating the principles and implications of liberty and rights, assessing gender inequality, and so on. My work on inequality was much inspired and stimulated by that of Tony Atkinson. I also worked for a while with Partha Dasgupta and David Starrett on measuring inequality (after having worked with Dasgupta and Stephen Marglin on project evaluation), and later, more extensively, with Sudhir Anand and James Foster."

Later he says in his autobiography:

"During my Harvard years up to about 1991, I was much involved in analyzing the overall implications of this perspective on welfare economics and political philosophy (this is reported in my book, Inequality Reexamined, published in 1992). But it was also very nice to get involved in some new problems, including the characterization of rationality, the demands of objectivity, and the relation between facts and values. I used the old technique of offering courses on them (sometimes jointly with Robert Nozick) and through that learning as much as I taught. I started taking an interest also in health equity (and in public health in particular, in close collaboration with Sudhir Anand), a challenging field of application for concepts of equity and justice. Harvard's ample strength in an immense variety of subjects gives one scope for much freedom in the choice of work and of colleagues to talk to, and the high quality of the students was a total delight as well. My work on inequality in terms of variables other than incomes was also helped by the collaboration of Angus Deaton and James Foster.

Readers of Seventh Heaven will remember how I have written about Sudhir and the Nobel Prize awarded to Amartya Sen!
The discussion was lack lustre. Montek took the view that he could not discuss the Budget (the whole point of the programme) and gave no real answer for the blazing question how the poor of India had not improved their lot during the time he has been at the head of the Planning Commission. (At one point he says "We have said, the Government has said,…." )
Montek minced  words as only a political chamcha can do!
Roy was not hard-hitting in his position as Anchorman. He was being pleasant to his guests!!
Amartya Sen was his own self and wanted to be nice to everyone.
Not a receipe for a successful  discussion, but for me, being in the setting of our beautiful college was good enough to sit through the 45 minute discussion!
Anyway, it was good to be away from the depressing media coverage of our hallowed institution which has been plaguing us for almost half a decade!

KTWV 10 Issue 07: Driving 1100 km on the same day

(Also on Jacob's Blog and the Seventh Heaven Blog..)

After a hectic weekend, when I went to Tampere with Sunil, in a van taking materials to set up four apartments and which included a side trip to Helsinki to check on how Raantel apartments were doing there, we left Tampere late on Saturday evening to return to Oulu so that I could speak at the Free Speech Day in Oulu Otto Karhi Park.

We arrived back at Oulu about 6 am on Sunday morning. I had a nap and went with Annikki to the public park, equipped with my speaking stand.

The opening procedure was just taking place and the Chief Editor of Kaleva Newspaper, a new person, was making the welcome remarks.

He ended by saying that each speaker would be given 5 minutes at the mike.

My talk, which this year was about "Justice Delayed is Justice Denied" would have taken the good part of 1 and half hours.

Ii approached the gentleman and asked that I set up my own stand as in previous years and be allowed to speak. He rejected the idea saying he had no powers to allow that. After much persuasion, he pointed me to a lady. She said that I could do that away from the main central area.

But it was clear that they did not want to move away from their prepared script. Annikki and I decided against making a speech this year under these conditions.

In short - this was no copy of Hyde Park Corner as this was a very controlled exercise to make Finns believe that they have Freedom of Speech - which they don't.

I had promised to meet Ajeet on Monday in South Finland. He and Sari are on a flying trip here to take part in a couple of conferences. So our Alumni meets were scheduled for Monday at 10:30 am, and this time in Toijala, wher he was staying.

I left Oulu by car at 3:50 am and because of the GPS Navigator (the cheap one), I did the trip to Tampere in just 5 hours (477 km). After attending to some Raantel work there, I drove on to Toijala to be greeted by Ajeet and his wife, Sari.

Our joyous Cathedralite and Stephanian Finland Chapter Alumni Reunion was a working one. 100 % attendance as usual!

I exploited the combined legal expertese of Ajeet and Sari.

Ajeet confirmed he would be in Bombay for the November 12th Cathedral Founders Day event. After my 50th year Golden Reunion Celebrations are complete, Annikki and I will go to Ahmedabad where I will give a talk at the Indian Institute of Management about the new developments in technology taking place and their implications on world society.

Then we would all spend a few days at Mount Abu, where Annikki and I have never been.

I left at 14:30, stopped at Tampere to attend to some more Raantel Oy work, left Tampere at 16:30 and arrived back in Oulu at 22:30.

A 20 hour round trip of 1100 km - and because of the hectic weekend of travel and work, this one partially knocked me out.

I got a good scolding from Annikki who thought I was on a leisurely train trip to Tampere!!

KTWV 9 Issue 14: The ever youthful Rahul is 70

Young and dynamic Rahul Bajaj in 1986
Copyright The Hindu

At the top in 2006, Rahul Bajaj
Copyright The Frontline

“Do whatever you think best, but be best at whatever you do.”
– Member of Rajya Sabha Padma Bhushan Rahul Bajaj

Like a handful of people of the 1950’s as 57er Ashok (Tony) Jaitley, 58er Dr. Peter Philip, 59ers Sujit Bhattacharaya, and myself, 54er Rahul Bajaj was a Mumbai Cathedralite and a Delhi Stephanian. (There is an earlier blog entry on both blogs listing several more who share this common heritage.)

Ashok Jaitley, Tony to most of us, wrote a book about St. Stephen’s College. Rahul released the book where Mani Shankar Aiyar, another Stephanian of our era spoke. Here is a quote from Tony’s book:

"The same spirit of striving for the best was infused in all other activities despite the cultivated air of nonchalance that Stephanians have always sought to project about themselves. But this has not deterred the real achievers from being clear about their own perspective. Rahul Bajaj, one of the most innovative and successful captains of Indian industry, recalls his days in College as the second most powerful influence after his school in Bombay: 'It was the first whiff of freedom...and as the Cat Stevens number goes, "the first cut is the deepest." The notion of a performing elite was imprinted in my mind at College. We are all here to make a difference and we should be very good at something, is the essence of Stephania."

Also like Peter and me, Rahul was a Savageite and also House Captain. There, however, the similarity ends, as Rahul is one of the topmost industrialists in India and also ranks extremely high in the world.

It is reputed that Rahul was a sportsman. He was an outstanding boxer and won his weight most years. He is remembered as being part of the School Table Tennis Team. I also remember him as an long distance athlete. As I was just a newcomer to school in 1954, the year Rahul graduated, I am not fully and personally conversant with all his accomplishments at school.

The Bajaj Enterprise started as a sugar manufacturing factory in 1931. It has now grown to become one of the country’s largest business houses.

Rahul took over the running of the Bajaj Auto company in 1965. Activities encompass the manufacture of a whole range of products.

In 2001 the Bajaj Group had a sales turnover in excess of US$ 1,300 million. The Net Assets were worth US$ 1,333 million and the Net Profit was US$ 58 million. It was ranked as the 5th largest business family in India by the Centre for Monitoring Indian economy (CMIE).

It has under its umbrella over 25 companies and a strength of over 25000 employees.

It’s core strength, however, is the unshakeable foundation based on its tradition of trust.

Rahul's most recent interview with Chris Morris from the BBC was about the small car of Bajaj Auto, in relation to the Tata Nano. It can be found at this link.

The interesting similarity between Ratan Tata and Rahul Bajaj is that when Ratan was Chairman of Air India, Rahul was Chairman of Indian Airlines. (I do not remember Ratan as a Cathedralite but younger brother, Jimmy, was a 57er and played hockey and cricket with us.)

Rahul received the Padma Bhushan in 2001.

Cathedralite 54er and Stephanian 57er, Independent Rajya Sabha member, Chairman of Bajaj Group, Rahul Bajaj will turn 70 this Tuesday.

I hope as many of you that can will wish this outstanding Cathedralite / Stephanian and wish him many many more years of service to our nation.

(Many thanks to Cathedralite 56er HS Uberoi and Cathedralite / Stephanian 57er Ashok Jaitley (and his brother Ravi, Rahul’s classmate) for their valuable contributions when writing this tribute.)

KTWV 08 Issue 40: 60/62er Kamalesh Sharma

Posted on the Kooler Talk (Web Version) Blog and my Jacob's Blog.

College ragging is much in the news.

The first person who "ragged" me in college was Kamalesh Sharma!

He, along with his friends, Jerry and Chinmoy Banerji, took me, after my very first college dinner, to Kamala Nagar to buy me a masala dosai and a cup of coffee!

I still remember the knock on my darkened college room window on my first night in college. When I opened it, I saw this huge guy, whom I had never met before, telling me to get dressed and accompany three of them for a walk!

During the 10 minute walk to Kamala Nagar they never revealed who they were but asked me probing questions. My heart pounded not knowing where I was being taken! And when they ordered the dosai and coffee, I thought I was being made to pay for their after dinner snack!

It was only after we finished eating they all laughed and introduced themselves as block-mates and friends of my elder brother who had lived in Rudra North (Q Block) during the previous three years!

It was with this friendship and their solid support that I was able to be elected as JCR President the next year, the first second year student to enjoy that honour.



As I watched the tv yesterday, the BREAKING NEWS was that our very own 60/62er Kamalesh Sharma had been elected as the Secretary General of the Commonwealth.

Queen Elizabeth is the head of the Commonwealth, but it is the secretary general who is responsible for its effective day to day functioning.

The Indian Diplomatic corps and especially our Stephanian alumni scored a major diplomatic success in Kampala, yesterday, when Commonwealth leaders chose the current Indian High Commissioner to the UK, Kamlesh Sharma, as the new secretary general of the 53-nation grouping.

Sharma, 66, was the pick of the Commonwealth when its leaders met at the retreat at Munyonyo.

Outgoing Secretary General Don McKinnon, a former New Zealand foreign minister, announced that Sharma was the unanimous choice of the Commonwealth, a grouping of English speaking countries that works on the principle of consensus.

"I would like to express my gratitude to all the leaders for the responsibility and trust they have given me to carry forward the task of the Commonwealth," said Kamalesh, who will take charge in April 2008. "It is an honour and privilege to serve this great institution."

Kamalesh is one of the few Indians who has won such an honour in a major international body. [Mr. K. M. Philip, my late mother's elder brother, now 95 and still playing golf, father of Stephanian 62er Peter (Tubby) Philip, uncle of 63er myself and 64er Mammen Mathew, was the first Indian who served as the President of the World Alliance of YMCAs (Young Men's Christian Associations)].

Kamalesh has also been India's representative on the Board of Governors of the Commonwealth since 2004. He was the first Special Representative of the UN Secretary General to East Timor in 2002-04 with the rank of Under Secretary General.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was "delighted" by the selection of Kamalesh.

"(Kamalesh's) long record of public service in the international community has been capped by this recognition of his capability and his inclusive vision of the Commonwealth," the prime minister said in a statement.

"I am confident that he will acquit himself well in his higher responsibilities as the first servant of the entire Commonwealth."

Besides doing his English Honours, B. A., and his M. A., from our alma mater, he went to King's College, Cambridge.

Kamalesh has been a member of the Indian Foreign Service from 1965 to 2001 and has been India's ambassador five times.

Kamalesh also served as the permanent representative of India to the UN in Geneva where he was spokesman for developing countries in the UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad).

Kamalesh later became permanent representative of India to the UN in New York during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations (1996-2001).

I remember that when he was in this post, he was interviewed by the B.B.C. on Kashmir. When I heard this interview, in which he expressed the issue about Kashmir in a crystal clear format, I emailed him. He expressed surprise that someone had actually heard that interview!

An official said that throughout his career Kamalesh had shown a strong commitment to all facets of equitable global relationships, enlightened governance, gender equity and engagement with issues of global regimes involving trade, technology and finance.

Congrats Kamalesh. All Stephanians will be watching your performance in this important post and we know you will do us great credit. The Kooler Talk (Web Version) Blog will be recording your historic tenure.

KTWV 08 Issue 38: 25 years on

Posted on my Jacob's Blog and the Stephanian Kooler Talk Blog.

On Tuesday, I went Oulu Airport to receive a friend, a very dear friend. In fact, my very best friend when I was in College between 1960 and 1963. He was my inseparable friend of those years.

Ajay arrives in Oulu.

Ajay Verma did Mathematics Honours between 1960 and 1963. Like me, he lived in Mukerji Court. There was only one Mukerji Building block those days. He was in T Block while I was in S Block. We went together for breakfast and dinner. Spent the evening hours after college together going for some scrambled egg on toast for tea and later, after dinner again went to the Cafe to have coffee and a smoke.

We played table tennis together in the JCR or played chess, draughts (checkers) or bridge. He was my bridge partner and together we almost won the first JCR Bridge Championship, except to beaten on the very last hand by the twins, the Rai brothers, Suraj and Chander, who bid an unbelievable 7 spades against our bid of 7 clubs and made that hand. Only the intertwined thinking of identical twins snatched certain victory out of our hands!

Ajay came to College from Pondicherry, where his mother lived in the Arubindo Village. He completed his pre-university from Loyala College, Madras before joining College, although he would have preferred to do engineering at one of the IITs.

Ajay left college and joined the Indian Army by going to the Officer School at Dehra Dun. From there he went into the artillery at Deolali near Nasik and then to Cooch Behar in West Bengal. He was sent to the front line in the war against Pakistan and had the narrowest of escapes when the shelter he was in was blown up just a couple of minutes after he had stepped outside for a cigarette. (So I hardly blame him for continuing this habit!)

He left the army after the war and joined Bata's as a trainee and worked in Calcutta and Faridabad. Ajay did not see much future then and set off to Canada to make his fortune. He stopped at Copenhagen, met his life partner, Else, and settled down in Lund, Sweden. He started work in the Hotel industry and worked for SAS Hotels and then in Airline catering till he finished his career with a series of jobs in SAS Radisson, ending at the Beijing hotel till his retirement late last year. He now consults but is enjoying himself in retirement dabbling in the Swedish stock exchange, more for fun than profit.

He has bought an apartment in Pondicherry and is off in a few days to winter there, away fron the dark and cold winters in Scandinavia. Unfortunately, before he could enjoy his time there, he got news last Friday that his 91 year old mother had passed away.


Ajay talks to Else in Lund.

In his "busy" travel schedule, he has done 15 long haul flights this year, he took a few days off to drop in on Annikki and me. I was wild with him when he told me that when we were meeting after 25 years, he was off in just 3 days. But things were happening in Lund, so I had to let him go.


Ajay sees a windy blustery autumn sunset in Oulu.


Annikki at the Nallikari beach.


Ajay at a windy Nallikari.

During the time in Oulu we had a rip roaring time that only dear friends can enjoy together. We shared news about our past lives and careers, laughed incessantly at all our past pranks, I showed him my small town and with Annikki enjoyed the bitterly cold wind and amazing autumn sunset of the Oulu Nallikari beach.

Like me, he is an early riser, being up ay 5 am, so we enjoyed long days together. It was with great sadness that I bid farewell to him on Friday morning and it was as if a void had descended on Kampitie after his departure.


It is already time for Ajay to leave.

The real spirit of Stephania prevailed in our residence for the short time he was here, urging me to give serious thought to organising a reunion of 1960-1963 Stephanians in Delhi in 2009, when Annikki and I are scheduled to make our next visit to India.