Invest in us or miss the bus: PM to London

For an hour, CEOs from energy majors like BP, Shell, Cairns, bankers from Prudential, HSBC, Morgan Stanley (whose American CEO had flown in from across the Atlantic), telecom companies like Vodafone and British Telecom, and influential editors from the Financial Times and the Economist, listened to him in rapt attention.

Singh pointed out that the idea of India, despite disagreement and debate with Left parties at home, was a simple one: If you’re a global company and India is not part of your plans, then you’ve missed the bus.

‘‘We don’t take an ideological view about privatisation (at home),’’ Singh told the CEOs, ‘‘but a pragmatic one. Whatever serves the national purpose will be pursued. In the case of profit-making public sector undertakings, there’s no earth-shattering reason to pursue privatisation.’’ This clearly amounted to an olive branch to the Left parties.

Asked about the Congress government’s policies on insurance, he admitted there was need ‘‘for further dialogue with the Left parties,’’ and expressed the hope that things would work out by the next session of Parliament.

Clearly, it’s been a long time since an Indian prime minister has lobbied, networked, cajoled and sought to persuade the British to return to invest and trade in India. Clearly, too, the PM was appealing to the money-making instincts of top honchos in this ‘‘nation of shop-keepers.’’

But Singh is hardly living in the past. In fact, his emphasis on openness and accountability, on the need to keep India’s doors and windows open so as to let the airs and opinions of other nations to come in, was echoed in his own easy walkabout on board Air India One yesterday as well as in the appealingly egalitarian manner of his reform-minded team that’s accompanying him in this self-confessed ‘‘voyage of discovery’’ to the Western world.

External Affairs minister K Natwar Singh’s red garters made a distinct impression, as did his open manner in discussing the week ahead. Deputy chairman of the Plannign Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia openly accepted that the ‘‘misunderstanding’’ with the Left parties on inviting foreign consultants to participate in the mid-term Plan appraisal could be easily sorted out. While National Security Advisor J N Dixit easily mingled with the media folk at the back of the plane.

But it was the PM’s readiness to answer any question, to dispense with the bureaucratic ‘‘on record or off’’ preconditions of his managers, that seemed most endearing.

Singh’s distinct lack of glamour didn’t cloak the thread of steel that ran through his insistent phrases on the need to continue the reform process at home, even in the face of angry political dissent.

In London, Brand Manmohan is believed to have been first created in those dark days after the Chandra Shekhar government in 1991 pledged a few tonnes of gold to raise a paltry $500 million so as to repay debts. When Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister and Singh his Finance minister, he drew much praise for turning around the economy from economists and entrepreneurs worldwide.

The Bank of England wasn’t there this morning at the PM’s interaction with British CEOs. No matter. Fact is that the public cry against ‘‘outsourcing’’ from British companies to India has been ably contained by the Labour establishment, especially when compared to what’s happening in the US.

But as today’s Times newspaper prominently misspelled ‘‘county’’ for ‘‘country,’’ in an article on India staking its claim to a permanent seat in a reinvented Security Council, it wasn’t clear whether it was time that the English language or, perhaps the newspaper industry, that also needed to be outsourced.