This past month I have been pumping the accelerator up and down the Grand Trunk Road to Chandigarh and beyond, to Ludhiana, taking in the sights and smell of the rich countryside, but mostly in search of an answer to what makes Punjab rich. Correct me on that, I’d rather tell you what makes Punjabis rich. For, as the state’s Scotch-loving finance minister Surinder Singla loves to point out, “Punjab is a bankrupt state, Punjabis certainly are not.”
Now Mr Singla, like most Punjabis from Punjab, is a generous host, quite unlike the paani pee lo variety you socialise with in Delhi. So, once he uncorks his Blue Label, he lets it flow like, well, water. Thank you, Mr Singla, for your generosity (though some in the secretariat call you pompous, I have no problem with that). Now, back on the highway, my Chandigarh colleagues help me locate a few ordinary men at whom you and I wouldn’t have cast a second glance in Karol Bagh. It’s time we did. For these ordinary men and women have extraordinary tales to tell. Of how Punjabi enterprise is reaching out to the world when the rest of the country still debates the fallout of globalisation. Take Naresh Nagpal, for one. Several years ago, he tried to venture into Bollywood with a Suresh Oberoi starrer. And predictably, failed. I would have lost hope in hell with that kind of setback. Not Mr Nagpal. For some years now, he’s been exporting Basque berets to stores in the US and Europe. To K-Mart, Perry Ellis and JHC, raking in Rs 4 crore worth of greenbacks every year. What are Basque berets, you may wonder? Well, they are those big round berets, the kind originally sported by Basque nationalists in Spain and later made famous by the anti-establishment Communist icon Che Guevera. Today, they are high society headgear in America.
Then we discover Rajni Bector, a 62-year-old Ludhiana matriarch who once made the best ice creams and puddings in town. But then, ‘discover’ is the wrong word to use. The world discovered Mrs Bector much before we got to know her. Mrs Bector’s Cremica supplies ketchup and mayonnaise and salsa sauce to McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Barista among others.
And if that’s what you think is enterprise, come again. Tucked in a corner of Mohali, we come across Pratap Agarwal. Born to middle-class parents this Punjab da puttar’s set up the state’s most successful BPO outfit executing cutting-edge IT work, including the conversion of jet fighter aircraft blueprints into digital designs. At the other end of the Mohali horizon is Rishi Aggarwal, the country’s biggest bus bodybuilder who also actually manufactures dash pads, steering wheels and other specialised parts for antique Ford Mustangs, Chevorlets and Impalas for the car restoration industry in the US, raking in Rs 4 crore every year.
I could tell you other tales as well. Of Deepak Dumra, for instance, who makes undergarments, tops, sweatshirts, cotton knits and woollen sweaters that find shelf space in high street stores in the West with tags as varied as Tommy Hilfiger, Arrow, Izod, Nautica and Quick Silver. Also helping stack shop shelves across groceries in the UK is a 60-year- an old migrant from the Pakistani part of Punjab, Kewal Dulai. Thirty years after he set foot in the UK, Mr Dulai rediscovered Punjab on this side of the border. His Niranjan Exports, which files Rs 1 crore in tax returns every year, is set to export 20,000 tonnes of basmati to the West worth Rs 60 crore in foreign exchange this year.
The list of ordinary folks who smelled money in the West is endless. And the way they turned dust into gold is the stuff of folklore. What makes that happen? It’s the average Punjabi sense of adventure, I guess, where you don’t need a mai-baap sarkar to handhold you into the big bad outside world. Now when you look at the Nagpals and Bectors and Agarwals of Punjab, it’s not as if they’ve made it to some Fortune 500 list. They haven’t quite made it to the ET 500 even. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying their luck with the buck. That’s how you get to meet so many global Indians tucked in little-known corners of Punjab. And some of them will arrive one day. Like Brij Mohan Lall Munjal who started a tin shed in Ludhiana to emerge as the world’s largest bicycles and motorbikes manufacturer. Or S P Oswal, the country’s biggest yarn and textiles manufacturer whose grandfather peddled yarn on a bicycle carrier. Or the young telephone salesman Sunil Mittal, now the country’s biggest mobile phone operator. What made them tick? I guess I’ve told you what. Say chak de phatte to that.
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