India
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40. The full dataset and analysis of the “Family Politics” project are available on The IndiaSite.com, for free public use. We estimate that 3 percent of Lok Sabha MPs could arguably be switched to a different category of political background. If any member of the Lok Sabha would like to provide more information about his or her route to Parliament, or feels he or she has been placed in the wrong category, please get in touch with me directly or through TheIndiaSite.com. The “Family Politics” project will be updated after each general election in India. I should restate that I am not suggesting a “hereditary” MP is a bad MP, merely that this system excludes the overwhelming majority of Indians from participation in politics at a national level.
PART II LAKSHMI • WEALTH
5. THE VISIONS OF JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES
1. Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes. Volume One: Hopes Betrayed 1883–1920, London, 1983, p. 178.
2. See Arnold P. Kaminsky, “The India Office in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Robert I. Crane and N. Gerald Barrier, British Imperial Policy in India and Sri Lanka 1858–1912: A Reassessment, New Delhi, 1981, pp. 30–37.
3. Sir Josiah Stamp, Some Economic Factors in Modern Life, London, 1929, pp. 258–59.
4. Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, p. 177.
5. David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj, New York, 2006, p. 48.
6. This analysis draws in part on D. E. Moggridge, Maynard Keynes: An Economist’s Biography, London, 1992, pp. 201–2.
7. Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, London, 1899 (first perf. Feb. 1895), p. 61.
8. Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, p. 274. See also Wendy Moffat, A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster, New York, 2010, p. 128. While Keynes and Furness were in Egypt, their mutual friend E. M. Forster was by coincidence on his first trip to India, mooning after Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s grandson Syed Ross Masood.
9. See Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, pp. 272–77. See also Sudhir Mulji, “India’s Role in Keynes’s Economic Theory,” Rediff.com, 11 March 2004.
10. John Maynard Keynes, Indian Currency and Finance, London, 1913, pp. 40–42.
11. P. L. Gupta, Paper Money of India, Mumbai, 2000.
12. Keynes, Indian Currency and Finance, pp. 99–100.
13. Ibid., pp. 165–66.
14. See Moggridge, Maynard Keynes, pp. 214–16 and Annex 1. The most intense phase of the relationship between Keynes and Sarkar appears to have been between 1912 and 1913, which coincided with the conceptualization, writing and editing of Indian Currency and Finance. See King’s College, Cambridge, Archive Centre, JMK/PP/45/282. Sarkar appears to have worked for Indian Political Intelligence during the First World War.
15. Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, pp. 260–61.
16. Financial Times, 24 March 2009. Zhou Xiaochuan proposed a development of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, based on a new basket of currencies: individual governments would pass a proportion of their Special Drawing Right reserves to the IMF, and these would gradually replace reserve currencies.
17. National Archives, Kew, CAB 66/65/247-257. I have written about this process in greater detail in Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division, London, 1997.
18. Alison Light, “Lady Talky,” London Review of Books, 18 December 2008.
19. John Bruce, Annals of the Honorable East-India Company, Vol. 1, London, 1810, p. 146.
20. See Allister Hinds, Britain’s Sterling Colonial Policy and Decolonization, 1939–1958, Westport, 2001, pp. 5–21.
21. Durga Das (ed.), Sardar Patel’s Correspondence 1945–50, Ahmedabad, 1971–74, Vol. 3, p. 226.
22. See G. Balachandran, The Reserve Bank of India, 1951–1967, Vol. 2, New Delhi, 1998, pp. 595–601.
23. United Nations Treaty Series, No. 1796, 1952.
24. See Meghnad Desai, “Drains, Hoards and Foreigners: Does the 19th Century Indian Economy Have Any Lessons for the 21st Century India?,” Reserve Bank of India P. R. Brahmananda Memorial Lecture, London, 20 September 2004.
25. Balachandran, Reserve Bank of India, p. 605.
26. Nehru, The Discovery of India, New Delhi, 2004 (first publ. 1946), pp. 437–38.
27. Bidyut Chakrabarty, “Jawaharlal Nehru and Planning, 1938–41: India at the Crossroads,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1992, pp. 275–87.
28. J. M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, London, 1936, pp. 383–84.
29. Pulapre Balakrishnan, Visible Hand: Public Policy and Economic Growth in the Nehru Era, Centre for Development Studies, Working Paper No. 391, November 2007, p. 26.
30. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, London, 1973, p. 383.
31. Quoted in Judith M. Brown, Nehru: A Political Life, New Haven, 2003, p. 352.
32. Valerian Rodrigues (ed.), The Essential Writings of B. R. Ambedkar, New Delhi, 2002, p. 159.
33. Quoted in Vivek Chibber, Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India, Princeton, 2003, p. 96.
34. The contemporary figure is extrapolated from census data for 1991. See Alain Bertaud, “Mumbai FSI Conundrum,” June 2004, available at www.alain-bertaud.com.
35. Purshotamdas Thakurdas et al., A Plan of Economic Development for India, Bombay, 1944, pp. 3–45.
36. See Ashok Rudra, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis: A Biography, New Delhi, 1996.
37. Somesh Dasgupta, “The Evolution of the D2-Statistic of Mahalanobis,” in Sankhya: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Special Volume 55, Series A, Pt 3, 1993, pp. 442–49.
38. The original model was devised in 1928 by the Soviet economist G. A. Feldman.
39. During the Second World War, John Matthai’s daughter Valsa had disappeared mysteriously during a snowstorm while studying at Columbia University in New York. Two months later her body was found in the Hudson River.
40. Quoted in Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India, London, 1997, p. 85. See pp. 75–95.
41. See Arvind Panagariya, “Heed the Words of Wisdom,” Economic Times, 24 October 2001.
42. Rakesh Batabyal (ed.), The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Speeches: 1877 to the Present, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 576–81.
43. Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, New York, 2002 (first publ. 1998), p. 58.
44. Rudra, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, p. 247.
45. Balakrishnan, Visible Hand, p. 45.
46. S. Sivasubramonian, The Sources of Economic Growth in India, 1950–51 to 1999–2000, New Delhi, 2004, p. 4, Table 1.1.
47. Author’s interview with Gopal Srinivasan, 27 January 2009.
48. Author’s interview with B. Santhanam, 27 January 2009.
49. Heavy Engineering Corporation, Annual Report 2008–2009.
50. Ravi Ramamurti, State-Owned Enterprises in High Technology Industries: Studies in India and Brazil, New York, 1987, p. 141. These figures are based on a reading of Table 4.5. Background research on India’s state-owned industries by Aaditya Dar.
51. Starred question no. 252, 25 June 1980, quoted in Ramamurti, State-Owned Enterprises in High Technology Industries, p. 169.
52. Ramamurti, State-Owned Enterprises in High Technology Industries, p. 153.
53. Prabhu Nath Singh, Some Aspects of the Managerial and Economic Problems of Public Enterprises in India, New Delhi, 1979, pp. 150–83.
54. Ramamurti, State-Owned Enterprises in High Technology Industries, pp. 138–49; M. M. Luther, Public Sector Reforms: Myths & Realities, New Delhi, 1998.
55. Committee on Public Undertakings, 28th Report, New Delhi, April 1979, quoting Ministry of Industrial Development and Company Affairs, January 1969.
56. Public Enterprises Survey, Annual Report on Working of Industrial and Commercial Undertaking of the Central Government, Vols. I and II, 1974–75 to 1990–91, New Delhi.
57. Rajiv Kumar, “Nationalisation by Default: The Case of Coal in India,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 16, No. 17, 25 April 1981.
58. Ministry of Steel, Mines and Metals, National Coal Development Corporation Committee, 1967 Report—First, New Delhi, 1968.
59. Dorothy Norman, Indira Gandhi: Letters to a Friend 1950–1984, London, 1985, p. 146. Mrs. Gandhi may here have been following the stereotypical north Indian perception that if somebody from the south has made good, he or she ought to be a Brahmin. Although Kumaramangalam’s mother was a Saraswat Brahmin and social activist, his father, P. Subbarayan, was a scion of a well-known Gounder zamindari family, a prominent agrarian caste concentrated mainly in western Tamil Nadu.
60. Lok Sabha Debates, 10 March 1986.
61. Planning Commission, Fifth Five Year Plan 1974–79, New Delhi, 1976. The revised Fifth Five Year Plan outlay for social welfare was $104.7m (Rs.86.1 crore) and for nutritional programmes $140.6m (Rs.115.7 crore). Both totalled $245.3m (Rs.201.8 crore), still less than $257.9m (Rs.212.2 crore).
62. See C. D. Bhattacharya, Public Sector Enterprises in India, New Delhi, 1990, pp. 164–70.
63. Bhattacharya, Public Sector Enterprises in India, p. 167.
64. See Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction website, www.bifr.nic.in.
65. The subsidiary is now making a healthy profit. Business Standard, 10 April 2008.
66. S. S. Chattopadhyay, “Technological Strides,” Frontline, 7–20 November 2009.
67. See Richard Orange, “The Dark Heart of India’s Economic Rise,” Spectator.co.uk, 9 September 2009.
6. A DISMAL PROSPECT
1. Author’s interview with C. K. Ranganathan, 27 January 2009.
2. www.atatwork.org/page/384; Tehelka, 29 August 2009; www.truthdive.com/tag/stayfree.
3. Author’s interview with Daman Singh (Manmohan Singh’s daughter), 2 June 2010; Jatin Gandhi, “Manmohan’s India,” Open, 8 August 2009; interview with Manmohan Singh on The Charlie Rose Show, 21 September 2004, available at www.tinyurl.com/333rgco.
4. This refers to the period 1861–1900. See Meghnad Desai, “Drains, Hoards and Foreigners: Does the 19th Century Indian Economy Have Any Lessons for the 21st Century India?,” Reserve Bank of India P. R. Brahmananda Memorial Lecture, London, 20 September 2004. Desai draws on data in P. R. Brahmananda, Money, Income, Prices in 19th Century India: A Historical, Quantitative and Theoretical Study, Mumbai, 2001.
5. T. N. Srinivasan and Suresh D. Tendulkar, Reintegrating India with the World Economy, Washington DC, 2003, p. 13.
6. Business Week, 23 January 2006.
7. Desai, “Drains, Hoards and Foreigners.”
8. Manmohan Singh, India’s Export Trends and the Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth, Oxford, 1964, p. v.
9. Ibid., p. 303.
10. Ibid., p. 337.
11. Private information.
12. See Vijay Joshi and I. M. D. Little, India’s Economic Reforms, 1991–2001, Oxford, 1996; Valerie Cerra and S. C. Saxena, “What Caused the 1991 Currency Crisis in India?,” IMF Staff Papers, Vol. 49, No. 3, 2002; Arjun Sengupta, “Financial Sector and Economic Reforms in India,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, No. 1, 7 January 1995.
13. Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, New York, 2002 (first publ. 1998), p. 184.
14. See Ramesh Chandra, “Reinvestigating Export-Led Growth in India Using a Multivariate Cointegration Framework,” The Journal of Developing Areas, Vol. 37, No. 1, Fall 2003, p. 83, Table 4.
15. Interview with Manmohan Singh for the PBS series Commanding Heights, 2 June 2001, www.tinyurl.com/3xykvq7.
16. Interview with P. Chidambaram for the PBS series Commanding Heights, 2 June 2001, www.tinyurl.com/34wedxm.
17. Private information.
18. Private information.
19. Rakesh Batabyal (ed.), The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Speeches: 1877 to the Present, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 599–604.
20. See Ajoy Bose, Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati, New Delhi, 2008, p. 135.
21. The source for my graph is Government of India, Economic Survey 2009–10, New Delhi, 2010, Table 7.1 (A), Table 7.1 (B), pp. A81–2, originating from the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS), Kolkata. The figure of $177.2bn for the financial year 2010–11 has been estimated assuming a rate of growth of 20.02 percent, which was the average rate of growth of Indian exports between 2000–2001 and 2008–9 using data in $m in Economic Survey. (The figures in Rs. crore in Economic Survey give a slightly higher growth rate of 20.57 percent because of exchange rate fluctuations; the DGCIS converts rupee to dollar figures using a simple average of the monthly exchange rate issued by the Reserve Bank of India.) The year 2009–10 was not considered in calculating the average rate of growth because it was an outlier, caused by the effects of the global recession.
22. See pewglobal.org/database.
23. Sanjaya Baru, “The Turnaround Man,” Tehelka, 4 April 2009.
24. Bloomberg.com, 3 November 2009.
25. See Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, London, 2009, pp. 444–47.
26. See www.pmindia.nic.in/lspeech.asp?id=695.
27. Sandeep Pandey, “Diagnosing the Doctor,” Tehelka, 4 April 2009.
28. Rediff.com, 23 March 2008.
29. Michael Lewis, “The End,” Portfolio.com, 11 November 2008.
30. Kaushik Basu, “Markets, Laws and Governments,” in Bimal Jalan (ed.), The Indian Economy: Problems and Prospects, New Delhi, 2004 (first publ. 1992).
31. The Industrial Disputes Act came into force in April 1947.
32. Private information.
33. Mail Today, 18 January 2010.
34. Ibid., 2 September 2009.
35. Times of India, 18 October 2006. See www.aahoa.com.
36. Author’s interviews with K. Srinivas Reddy, 12 February 2002 and 7 April 2010.
37. Rahul Pandita, “We Shall Certainly Defeat the Government,” Open, 17 October 2009. This is Muppala Laxman Rao’s most detailed interview.
38. Author’s interview with Rahul Pandita, 10 April 2010.
39. See Jaideep Saikia (ed.), Frontier in Flames: North East India in Turmoil, New Delhi, 2007.
40. See Sanjib Baruah, Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India, New Delhi, 2005.
41. Author’s interview with Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, 19 May 2010.
42. Author’s interview with Munish Tamang, 21 May 2010.
43. Author’s interview with Rahul Pandita, 10 April 2010.
44. Some of this material is taken from my article “The Longest March,” Telegraph Magazine, 11 May 2002, and from interviews done at that time. Background information comes from K. Srinivas Reddy and from other local journalists and Maoist sources who wished to remain anonymous.
45. Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs Annual Report 2008–09, New Delhi.
46. Author’s interview with a CRPF constable, 30 November 2009.
47. Open, 22 May 2010.
48. Outlook, 19 April 2010.
49. Tusha Mittal, “I Am the Real Desh Bhakt,” Tehelka, 21 November 2009.
50. Author’s interview with K. P. Unnikrishnan, 24 January 2009. A couple of months after this interview, I met a man at a party in a Knightsbridge wine bar. He seemed like the usual young Indian banker, doing well at Barclays Capital and zipping between the UK, the United States and Asia. Somehow the subject of the first Gulf War came up, and he told me—over the noise of a white rapper and entourage, who were shooting a video in the bar—how he had been caught, as a terrified teenager, in the desert between Kuwait and Jordan, parched and starving. The meeting between Saddam Hussein and K. P. Unnikrishnan had probably saved his life.
51. Jyoti Punwani, “Memories of a Naxalite Friend,” Times of India, 20 April 2008. See also “Regular Rebels,” IndianExpress.com, 27 September 2009; Open, 27 February 2010; Jyoti Punwani, “The Kobad Ghandy I Knew,” Hindustan Times, 22 September 2009; and Swapan Dasgupta, “Absolving Maoists of Their Crimes,” Pioneer, 27
September 2009.
52. Visit to Tihar jail, 13 November 2009.
7. FALCON 900
1. Forbes.com, 3 May 2008; www.CarlosSlim.com/biografia.html.
2. Economic Times, 22 June 2010.
3. See Peter Cappelli et al., The India Way: How India’s Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management, Boston, 2010, pp. 132–38.
4. Author’s interview with Sunil Bharti Mittal, 24 June 2010.
5. Interview with CNBC-TV18, available at MoneyControl.com, 26 June 2010. See also Economic Times, 24 June 2010.
6. Forbes.com, 30 April 2008.
7. Matthew Kaminski, “Heavy Mittal,” Wall Street Journal, 4 February 2006.
8. Swraj Paul, Beyond Boundaries: A Memoir, New Delhi, 1998, p. 159.
9. Independent, 25 August 1996.
10. Full disclosure: I was a member of the India–UK Round Table before being sacked for insubordination.
11. Quoted in Katherine Frank, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, London, 2001, p. 434.
12. See Daily Telegraph, 15 August 2007; Hindu, 24 June 2007; Sunday Times, 11 October 2009.
13. Guardian, 31 March 2010; CNN-IBN, 1 April 2010.
14. Economic Times, 28 March 2010.
15. Raju Bist, “Ambani: A Tycoon for All Seasons,” Asia Times, 9 July 2002.
16. Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050, Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper No. 99, 1 October 2003.
17. Dheeraj Sinha, “Three Generations, One Big Market,” Esomar, Asia Pacific 2008, www.tinyurl.com/2vzgh8s.
18. Private information.
19. India’s Rising Growth Potential, Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper No. 152, 22 January 2007.
20. Author’s interview with Dilip Mathur (pseudonym), 13 November 2009.
21. Financial Times, 10 January 2008; Time, 14 December 2007.
22. Simon Winder had a terrible experience with a Double Decker bar in Mussoorie.
23. www.cadburyindia.com/media/press39.asp.
24. Economic Times, 24 February 2010; Financial Times, 1 June 2009; Sunday Times, 29 November 2009; PTI, 8 February 2010; background research on Vishnu Garden by Mandakini Gahlot, with additional information from Sanjay Purohit of Cadbury India, 4 September 2009.