The Hindu : Denied their due?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 19, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Denied their due?

It was not until 1992 that an industrialist was considered "appropriate" to be conferred the Bharat Ratna, says Alok Mukherjee.

IT IS perhaps in keeping with the mindset that India developed soon after freeing itself from the British yoke and, by extension, from imperialism and capitalism, that it was not until 1992 that an industrialist was considered "appropriate" to be conferred the nation's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna. That year, the doyen of India's private sector initiative and the prime mover behind the post-Independence "Bombay Plan", Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhai Tata, was given the prestigious award.

The early decades of the 1950s, 1960s and the 1970s was when the Government wore its socialist image on its sleeve and it was not considered appropriate to be seen to be close to the private industrialist. In fact, those were the times when major industries were nationalised, including insurance and banking, because the private industrialist was perceived as one who was selfishly indulging in self-aggrandisement, cheating and looting the poor and the downtrodden. Indian cinema and the media perpetuated that image and it was near blasphemy even for the financial press to quote by name any private industry or industrialist.

It was only in the 1980s that the perception about private industry began to change. Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister did attempt feebly at economic liberalisation and industry was no longer a dirty word. Nonetheless, old dogmas continued and his first Finance Minister, V. P. Singh, took pride in meting out third-degree treatment to "errant" industrialists, no matter how senior or advanced in age they were. Things changed under P. V. Narasimha Rao's premiership when his Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh, successfully manoeuvred a u-turn in India's economic policies. The Prime Minister thought it fit to travel all the way to icy Davos in Switzerland to be part of the annual World Economic Forum jamboree; foreign and private investors were assiduously wooed to take the lead in piloting India's economic growth and the huge Indian domestic market was leveraged to further the country's foreign policy. It is during this time that J. R. D Tata was conferred the Bharat Ratna.

Now, it is no longer politically incorrect for the leadership to be seen in the company of industrialists. In fact, successive Finance Ministers since Manmohan Singh's time have been repeatedly captured by the media in the company of corporate bigwigs. The FICCI and the CII are fora where Finance Ministers interact with the rest of the nation and there is rarely an instance when they are seen in the company of the `ordinary' people, the farmers or the poor. Even Prime Ministers have shared the dais with people facing criminal charges in Indian courts and last July when Dhirubhai Ambani died, a number of Cabinet Ministers, led by the Deputy Prime Minister, L. K. Advani, flew down to Mumbai to pay their last respects.

Despite the changed environment, J. R. D. Tata remains the only industrialist to have been awarded the Bharat Ratna, though many others have made it to the Padma awards. Maybe, the time has come for another Bharat Ratna and media speculation has begun on Dhirubhai's nomination.

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