Indian business elites and their rhetorical superlatives ‘to curry favour’

The Telegraph, 20 January 2009

A HERO FOR THE PEOPLE
by Malvika Singh

Watching the captains of Indian industry adulate Narendra Modi, by suggesting that he was the best man to lead India, and then, a few days later, to see the same men, possibly wearing the same suits, flattering the prime minister in Mumbai, virtually in denial about what they had said loud and clear in Ahmedabad, was sickening, to say the least. One would have expected Ratan Tata and Sunil Bharti Mittal, two exceptional businessmen, to have been businesslike: keep their distance from Modi or any other politician, control their emotions and thereby set a new benchmark, which would determine the future relationship between business and politics that have got tangled in knots of togetherness. The ghost of the command economy, which had caused the two to become completely interdependent, and had, in the process, set the stage for corruption and malpractice to enter the scene, seems to be alive and kicking.

The phrase, ‘to curry favour’, a strange Indianism, is an apt one to describe almost everyone in the business community. Yet, the recent hypocrisy that the public was witness to was unwarranted. Hailing Modi in rhetorical superlatives and then praising Manmohan Singh for what he has accomplished during his tenure, all in the same breath, left much to be desired. If only the prime minister, in his speech at the the Economic Times Awards ceremony, had responded to their muted praise, had compared it with their earlier gung-ho comments on the expertise of Modi, had then poked some fun at them, forcing them to fiddle about in their chairs, it would have made for some entertaining visuals on television and a good copy. The real problem is that the businessmen are a pampered lot, forever whining about what they have not been given, wanting everything on a platter, including ‘safeguards’ for themselves, even as they deliver speeches about the free market economy and the need to take risks.