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| Talking business: (From left) Jaimini Bhagwati, S. Gopalakrishnan and Peter Sands at the CII summit |
Will Britain learn to love Narendra Modi?
With apologies to Peter Sellers, Britain’s new strategy document on India should be called, “Narendra Modi: or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love NaMo.”
Abandoning the 10-year-old British policy of treating the Gujarat chief minister as a pariah politician, the British high commissioner in India, James Bevan, met Modi in October last year, followed in March this year by a visit by Hugo Swire, Britain’s foreign office minister of state.
“I am now waiting for a formal invitation from the British government to visit the UK,” Modi, who is gratified the British came to see him, confided to a well-connected Gujarati friend of mine.
While Britain will issue a visa if he wants to come to London, it is highly unlikely a formal invitation will be forthcoming, my friend told Modi.
I think my friend is right. Among Gujaratis, who number 4,00,000-5,00,000 in the UK, there is overwhelming support for Modi though some tend to think he is a bit too liberal and secular.
But would the British government and business be prepared to work with Modi were he to become Prime Minister?
This is the question that was posed last week in London when a visiting senior delegation from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) held its annual summit. The theme was “Indo-UK Partnerships: Working towards Global Growth”, with the Indian high commissioner in London, Jaimini Bhagwati, predicting India’s GDP would rise from 5 per cent last year to 6.4 per cent this year.
On the Modi question, Peter Sands, group chief executive of the Standard Chartered Bank, began: “I certainly can’t talk for the British government.”
But Sands, who is co-chairman of the India UK CEO Forum, added: “We have a very long history in India. We opened our first branch in India in 1858 — in fact, we had a branch in India before we had a branch in London. So we have been there for 155 years and we have had our ups and downs as a business and India has had ups and downs as a country. We are completely committed to India. We will continue to invest in and build our business in India.”
Meanwhile, S. Gopalakrishnan, CII president and executive vice-chairman of Infosys, said: “I am not speaking for the UK government or the Indian government; but, from an industry perspective, we have to respect democratic processes and work with every government that is there — that is the role of an industry association.”
Modi is not about to get an honorary degree from Oxford or Cambridge but things are certainly looking up for him.
Back in time
The shortest speech at the CII summit in London last week was also the best received.
Phiroz Vandrevala, vice-chairman and managing director of Diligentia, a subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services, was a panel member who said: “The advantage of being the last speaker is that everyone has said everything I have possibly thought of.”
His take was: “The defining moment for India was the Nineties — till 1991, when the liberalisation process started, India was written off.”
Vandrevala continued in his characteristically droll manner: “So let’s see where India is today — GDP growth is back to 5 per cent; (Jagmohan) Dalmiya is back as president of the BCCI; Sanjay Dutt is in jail; Madhuri Dixit is back in Bollywood; our neighbouring country has the same Prime Minister — he’s back; so we are back to the Nineties. And if the Nineties defined India, then let’s have hope we would take off again. So lot of these concerns that we have will actually get addressed. The other thing I forgot to say is that Narayana Murthy is back at Infosys.”
Nation builder
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| Trusting in God: B.D. Mundhra |
There is something deeply inviting about Scotland that pulls in Indian holidaymakers, the latest of whom is Bithal Das Mundhra, the 70-year-old chairman and managing director of Simplex Infrastructures, now a nearly $1billion group but which began as a British firm in 1924.
“It was very peaceful,” Mundhra told me in London last week.
His company — which has been involved in building the GPO, the Assembly building and the Howrah bridge approaches in Calcutta — has built many prestigious projects in India and the Middle East.
Simplex has a staff of 8,000 and is working on projects that employ 75,000 to 1,00,000 workers. Through the Bharatiya Vidya Mandir, “a sort of NGO”, Mundhra has drawn up plans to train supervisors and form links with British universities. He is also very proud of his 36-year-old son, Rajiv — “he’s the youngest president of the Indian Chambers of Commerce”.
We did not talk much about Mundhra’s plans to invest in the UK but instead about God. In fact, Mundhra, who remembers quite a lot of the science he so enjoyed studying at Scottish Church College, does not see any contradiction between believing in God and being a scientist.
Unlike Nirad C. Chaudhuri, who once told me he saw life as a “battery that is discarded at death”, Mundhra spoke of the “consciousness” that links all humanity. He very kindly left me with two books — Selected Poems of Surdas and Chanakya Niti. Since Mundhra likes books, I walked him over to Waterstone’s in Piccadilly.
“I like science books,” said Mundhra, whereupon I suggested Foyles in Charing Cross Road, a London institution not much visited by Indians.
Summer show
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Summer isn’t summer without the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, now in its 245th consecutive year since the first in 1769. We really should have something as democratic in India where anyone can send in a work for consideration.
This year, 1,200 are in display, having been selected from the thousands sent in to the Royal Academy by artists, established and amateur. They cover the entire field from painting to sculpture, photography printmaking, architecture and film.
The front of Burlington House, where the Royal Academy is located, has been taken over by a 15.6mx25m work, “TSIATSIA — searching for connection”, by El Anatsui, a celebrated Ghanaian artist who has lived in Nigeria. The tapestry is made from aluminium bottle tops, printing plates and roofing sheets among other materials. It has won the £25,000 Charles Wollaston award as “the most distinguished work in the exhibition”.
Indian artists at the exhibition, sponsored by Insight Investment, include Shanti Panchal and Prof. Dhruva Mistry.
Killing Carmen
One suspects Georges Bizet would not have been too pleased with the Bollywood version of his 1875 opera Carmen, which was broadcast live last Sunday from a square in Bradford. It was pleasant in parts with catchy Hindi numbers.
The production, which was a celebration of 100 years of Indian cinema, used a Mumbai import, Abhay Deol, as a narrator for the story.
But the end for Carmen, a Bradford waitress, came rather too abruptly when she was knifed by Don, a jealous security guard.
Tittle tattle
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To borrow Salman Rushdie’s words from his advertising copy writing days, the £12 Banana Float available in the tea shop at Fortnum & Mason in Piccadilly is “naughty but nice”. It’s a must for Indian shoppers. It’s surprising they haven’t yet discovered Fortnum & Mason, possibly the most elegant department store in London.
