Incredibly industrious India

There are coffee table books on India galore, but it's rare to see one on Indian enterprise, especially, such a detailed one. That is the refreshing thing about this book. It fills a much-needed gap.

And certainly, reams can now be written on the spirit of Indian enterprise. The past two decades post-liberalisation have spawned such an entrepreneurial zeal that it has propelled the country forward and made us a force to reckon with. So, there is enough meat available for the author, Ashok Malik, to lay out a sumptuous repast for those interested in tasting slices of Indian business history.

As he sets the context in his introduction –”It's a book about how a developing country pulled itself up by its bootstraps and pushed its way into the big league.”

Feel-good stories

Clearly, it's another Incredible India story then. Mostly feel-good stories of entrepreneurs or companies that have been immensely successful. As T.N. Ninan, who has written the foreword, points out, India's rise is best told through these success stories.

So, of course, all the usual suspects – the Tatas, the Mittals, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw – are there. Some of those stories are well told, but some, like the Biocon one, only perfunctorily, dry as dust, without any colour or romance.

Some, such as the Raymond story, through which India's textile tale is spun, provide you with amusing vignettes. It's an eye-opener to read that the smartly dressed Japanese businessmen one meets everywhere could be wearing a Made in India Raymond suit! Of the 1.5 million jackets that Raymond makes at its Bangalore factory, most are apparently exported to Japan But it's no easy task weaving together such a disparate bunch of stories into a cohesive whole, especially if the story of Indian business begins 5,000 years ago.

In fact, the flashback to those times is one of the most fascinating chapters in the book. History Professor, Dr Tasneem Suhrawardy, engrossingly recounts maritime trade and other economic activity from the Harappan civilisation days to the Buddhist period of 325 BC down to the Mauryan and Mughal Empires.

From that historical perch, the book suddenly leapfrogs into modern India, racing through the public sector era. After that, no particular chronology is followed – rather a sectoral approach is used. So, the book is divided into sectors such as textiles, IT, aviation, healthcare, telecom , hospitality and so on. What's nice is that even the businesses of Bollywood and art are included.

Non-chronological approach

In fact, this non-chronological approach of documenting Indian enterprise works better – making the book a zippier read.

The photographs and illustrations are pretty eye-catching too. Dull subjects such as textile mills, hospital and office interiors have been shot with imagination so that the compositions really look dramatic. Which is why I have a quibble – in the back flap, where the author Ashok Malik and T.N. Ninan's biographical notes have been provided, why has the profile of Ashima Narain, who is credited with photography for the book, been left out?

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