Take this for a fact. Indians who climb the ladder of success abroad, don’t really make it good in India. That’s because the system still stinks. The last time one heard of a takeover attempt by an NRI, the system revolted so much that Lord Swraj Paul never really could make his final comeback. That was a good 25 years ago. But then, the free- market champions will say 25 years is history. There’s a short answer to that: History repeats itself. Ask the Hinduja brothers. Liberalisation brought the Hindujas out of the closet with promises of billion-dollar investments in the country. And 15 years into reforms, the Hinduja dream remains A Billion Dollar Baby. The sting of Bofors has consumed the Hinduja enterprise here even as they keep reaping profits abroad. There’s a message in it for the world’s third-richest man. Mr Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, please keep off. Thank you for making it big, and we Indians are proud of being counted at the top. But that’s only a Big Thank You. Period.
Now just think of it, Mr Mittal, all it took you to emerge as the world’s biggest steel manufacturer from scrap, was just 30 short years of hard work outside India. In those 30 years, the only other Indian businessman to have emerged on the Indian horizon in terms of the scale of industrial enterprise was Dhirubhai Ambani. It took Mr Ambani his God-given skills to manage the environment to reach where he did in his lifetime, but he never bequeathed a fortune to his sons that were anywhere in the league of global giants. The latest Forbes lists Mr Mittal as the world’s third richest man with a personal fortune worth $25 billion ranks the Ambani brothers at 60 with a combined net worth of only $7 billion. That’s as big as it gets. Even India’s software billionaire, Azim Premji, who has ridden India’s best global bet, IT, into international stardom ranks 30 with a net worth of just about $9.3 billion.
Frankly, having made it as the world’s largest steel maker, is it worth the effort for Mr Mittal to look at his backyard in India? There’s little reason for that other than sentimental (s)crap in case Mr Mittal is still treading the consolidation or acquisitions route. Having acquired operating facilities across 14 countries around the globe, there are still enough pickings outside India to get him to move into Forbes's topmost slot. For one, there’s always Arcelor, the world’s second-biggest steel maker to affect the mother of all mergers. And that’s as big a challenge as he could get. India, on the other hand, provides him with the challenge of turning around a 100-year-old junkyard called Iisco in the back of the beyond in West Bengal. Iisco, for the layman, was first listed for privatisation when the economy opened some 15 years ago. To date, it remains on the list, because of bureaucratic red tape and trade unionism. Now look at that other century-old steel story out of India: Tatas set up Tisco as a 100,000-tonne plant that has grown to 5 million tonnes in 100 years. As for the country’s total steel capacity, it adds up to all of 33 million tonnes against Mr Mittal’s own 70 million tonnes global capacity. This is when India is home to one of the world’s largest iron ore deposits.
So what killed India’s steel story?
There are several reasons on offer. The country’s creaking roads, ports and power stations have little to offer for global success. And despite the much-touted reforms, bureaucratic red tape, militant trade unionism and the all-pervading neta-babu-bania nexus render globalisation stillborn, even when much of Mr Mittal’s global success has been carved out of state-owned monopolies in the erstwhile Communist empire.
It’s a free world outside. And Mr Mittal you know that best.
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