The Biz Story

The evolution of India Inc

It is only after long conversations with a variety of business persons inheritors of family-owned businesses,entrepreneurs,traders and financiers that you get some sense of how they contributed to the India Inc of today. Todays generation,however,knows little even about India in the decades before liberalisation. The Oxford India Anthology of Business History,edited by Medha M. Kudasiya,associate professor at the department of history at the National University of Singapore,attempts at giving you a flavour of the evolution of businesses across the length and breadth of the country.

Kudasiya has carefully sifted through interviews,articles,essays and books to present an irresistible bouquet of business stories historian Rajat Kanta Rays description of a bazaar,Chris Baylys peek into Indias merchant communities,the erosion of caste and slow emergence of entrepreneurs during the mid-1970s and 80s by Pieter Gorter and finally what reforms meant for established business houses and new-generation entrepreneurs.

The anthology of business history is divided into five appropriate sections the bazaar,the mercantile communities,the family and firm,the rise of Indian industry and business in the post-reforms era.

Story continues below this ad

The bazaar gives a good understanding of international trade,how the hundi system of indigenous credit co-existed with exchange banks in Europe. A hundi,as L.C. Jain explains,is perhaps the oldest surviving form of a credit instrument. In old days,when travelling with cash was even more risky than it is now,people kept with them the hundis of well-known bankers,which could be easily encashed.

The second section on mercantile communities gives a rare glimpse of the business acumen of the Parsis,Sindhis,Marwaris,Nattukottai Chettiars and the Bohras. Much of it will read like a folktale for many. The rigour with which the writers have delineated the nuances of trade practices of each of these communities is noteworthy. Christine Dobbin,for instance,gives an interesting account of how the Nattukottai Chettiars entered new market towns by acts of religious gifts and collective worship.

The anthology ends with probing interviews of Ratan Tata and Infosys N.R. Narayana Murthy. In an interview in March 2005,Tata candidly says that ethics and values are still a constraint for the group to grow fast enough. But were very heartened that weve not compromised on those [ethics and values and grown the way we have, he says. And Narayana Murthy gives his take on money. The power of money is the power to give… theres no doubt that a majority of what we have will be given to public causes, he says.

Indian business till date in 41 chapters.