ON A QUIET Tuesday last month, the rooftop res - taurant of a leading central Delhi hotel had four of its dozen tables occupied. One had a senior former editor lunching with a high flying cabinet minister; another a troubleshooter for the Delhi state government with fundraising businessmen; the third had a hushed negotiation between an A-list persuader and a senior bureaucrat; only the fourth table was made up of a clutch of lunching ladies.
In a city of intrigue and counter intrigue, where a small noting on a file can swing millions, and levers of power can be bent in many ways, this is a scene that routinely plays itself out in a dozen other places: the shadowed confines of the Delhi Gymkhana Club, private clubs at Oberoi and Taj Hotel, the exclusive greens of Delhi Golf Club or, in winter months, the verandah tables of the Imperial Hotel’s coffee shop.
Welcome to the world of the influencers. A small tribe of men and women who understand that money cannot make money without managing power. And power is managed in many ways. Careful cartography. Glib conversation. Subtle pressure, media plants, an orchestrated idea of public good and always the final resort: private benefit.
In the US and elsewhere in the world, such management of power is recognised as legitimate activity: lobbying. Instead of intrigue and counter intrigue, there is visible pressure and counter pressure on government decision-making. In India, it is something far more ambiguous. The lunch-mates on the rooftop and elsewhere in the city would prefer to be heard — without being overheard. Or seen.
Until recently, in fact, lobbying in India — the entire business of making friends and wielding influence — was not just ambiguous, it
Feels effective management of the
media is a parallel arm of lobbying in
India: it helps influence decisions
TONY JESUDASAN, RELIANCE ADAG
was patently unseemly. At its worst, it was typified by Big Bull Harshad Mehta and his ubiquitous suitcase of cash. Ranged along that spectrum was the hectic lobbying by the Escorts group at the PMO in the 1980s to stave off a takeover bid by Swaraj Paul’s London-based Caparo Group, and the fabled power of Reliance to secure politicians in every party to actually set favourable policies, not just nudge them.
Things have changed since then — in texture, if not intent. Today the suitcase is subtler and not necessarily enough: the influencer must also have an idea, a business proposition that decision-makers are beguiled into believing will benefit consumer and country. The orchestrated idea of public good. The glib tongue.
This changed game is now for sophisticates. Men and women who understand that influence often works best when it is subliminal, and who manipulate the levers of power to huge effect over lively conversation at power lunches, exclusive parties, regular games of golf or cards, and through media plugs carefully camouflaged as news stories. The sophistication, of course, comes at a fee, and could range from $150,000 (about Rs 60 lakh) a year as just retainership to uncharted figures. But it’s worth it for clients: influencers in India are no longer a thing of disrepute.
“Lobbying is best done by people from a variety of areas. You have chambers of commerce as lobbyists, and there are lawyers,
Is one of the biggest links for investors
from the Middle East; wants to grow
big in cargo airline and food business
DEEPAK TALWAR, DTA
chartered accountants, retired bureaucrats and communications people working as lobbyists, nudging people legitimately involved in the business of policymaking,” says Dilip Cherian, consulting partner, Perfect Relations.
Cherian should know: he’s a pioneering practitioner himself. He started out from the official compound of Shibu Soren, then a member of Parliament. Earlier, advising the Central government on regulatory measures as a consultant to the Bureau of Industrial Costs, Ministry of Industry, helped him develop both a deep understanding of Indian bureaucracy and a wide range of contacts. This was enhanced by later stints as editor with Business India and Business & Political Observer.
Cherian’s biggest success — as a lobbyist and media manager — was his successful defence of ITC against a takeover bid by British American Tobacco (BAT). In the battle of perception in the media, his company Perfect Relations constantly wrong-footed the rival agency, Good Relations, hired by BAT. Business Standard wrote pithily: “It’s not enough to be good, you must be perfect.”
Cherian may not offer any examples of how his team moves files in the corridors of power, but his work for European packaging giant Tetra Pack (which wanted a duty cut in raw material imports) is well documented in media reports. While his men lobbied for the cut, he encouraged milk sellers to tell their MPs they were too poor to buy cartons at prevailing rates. The finance ministry had little choice but to relent.
Refusing to comment on this, Cherian says with a typically disarming laugh, “The impact of such work is best documented in the aviation sector, where many years ago, the lobbying to keep a foreign airline out of India forced the government to change guidelines that still remain in force.” A clear reference to the grounded bid by the Tata-Singapore Airlines alliance, which did not take off in the early 90s because of intense pressure from a private operator.
LOBBYISTS AND clients may often have regulatory change on the agenda, but the crucial thing is to begin by effecting a kind of “climate change” by mobilising media and public opinion. Monsanto understood this when it sought to enter India with its hybrid seeds, and hired a PR outfit for the initial phase of manoeuvring: a blitzkrieg in print and electronic media. Italian clothier Ermenegildo Zegna understood this when it was first denied permission to open boutiques by the commerce industry (permission was later granted.)
Has her pulse on auto, telecom and
aviation. Teamed up with retired
bureaucrats to drive her show
NIIRA RADIA, NEOSIS & VAISHNAVI CORP COMM
At this game of climate control, Cherian is a master. He understands the intricate art of perfect relations. Suave, affable, a classy Havana always in his breast-pocket, the party-hopping Cherian is the best I-will-solve-your-problemmate person in the capital. MPs from Rajasthan seek his help to upstage political rivals, hoteliers seek his help to facilitate projects, and global defence, infrastructure, hydrocarbon and beverage giants seek his help to mould friendly policies. Sheila Dikshit hired him recently to help bolster her image after the BRT fiasco.
Cherian also understands the efficacies of merely putting people together, making connections. If a client wants to meet someone, or just debut in Delhi society, he has the magic wand. As for himself, he is known to have hopped across five parties in one night, picking up decent leads for business, before going to bed after eating a simple homemade sandwich. But Cherian — and a phalanx of other influencers — pale before the Reliance men: V. Balasubramanian, Shankar Adawal and AN Sethuraman.
V. Balasubramanian, or Balu, is the man who once led this power-troika in the undivided Reliance. In the 70s, he used to ride a bicycle from his home in Karol Bagh in West Delhi to work as a lowly manager at the offices of Dharangandha Sugar Mill. The farsighted Dhirubhai Ambani handpicked him to network among babus in the North and South Blocks: a majority of them were Tamil Brahmins — or “TamBrahms” as the diminutive goes — so Balu was the perfect choice. He routinely met a group of ministers — virtually the whole cabinet — with boxes of the classiest Alphonso mangoes, and rose to become Group President, Reliance Industries.
The rest is history. Balu played Luca Brasi to Dhirubhai’s godfather. A man who spoke in chaste Tamil, makeshift English, and unbelievably vulgar Hindi, he often ate a two-rupee dosa on an aluminium plate from the UNI canteen, but his dexterous manipulations helped the Family move ahead in the intense rivalry between the Ambanis, Nusli Wadia, the Tatas and the rest of the Bombay Club that marked the 70s and 80s. And stories of his grasp on the levers of power became legendary.
He boasts of dining with two of
India’s biggest industrialists:
Mukesh Ambani and Ratan Tata
SUHEL SETH, COUNSELAGE
ONCE, THE now-defunct Sunday magazine scooped a scandalous story about the Finance Minister’s office literally copy-pasting Balu’s pre-budget recommendations into the final budget speech. People whispered about ministers bowing outside his office on the fifth floor of Meridien Towers for better portfolios, and of how he could — at any given time — drum up support for any issue from an estimated 150 MPs across party lines. Along with Dhirubhai Ambani, Balu and DN Chaturvedi, the powerful finance head of Reliance, the three were often called the “ABC of the Indian economy”. Till date, no one can match his command in the petroleum ministry.
Balu’s influence extraordinaire, however, was jolted in 1998 when he got into a real estate partnership with Romesh Sharma, who was later exposed as a Dawood henchman. Balu was also charged under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) because of a rank indiscretion by his subordinates who had scribbled and signed written instructions on official government files. Balu spent some humiliating time dodging the CBI, until another Reliance troubleshooter in the capital saved his skin in the OSA case because the government sleuths could not find a shred of paper on him.
Balu’s decline brought Shankar Adawal into the limelight, handpicked by Mukesh Ambani to push the group’s telecom ventures. Once deputy to Balu, Adawal famously cleared every hurdle rivals placed in the group’s path before Reliance could lay its 70,000 km fibre optic network. Though he too had faced imprisonment in the OSA case, Adawal, who is often seen with a walking durbar — five men in front and five at the back — continues to have superb access in the corridors of power, and is currently Mukesh Ambani’s blue-eyed Samurai in Lutyen’s Delhi, able to cut through any bureaucratic red tape that might trip his company.
The soft-spoken AN Sethuraman completes the troika. A nephew of Balu’s (a fact that many claim hampered his growth), Sethuraman has flourished after the de-merger of the brothers, and today has eclipsed his own uncle. Of the troika, he most qualifies as the sophisticate — wielding influence with arguments and palmtop and power point presentations that are quite unlike the traditional Reliance approach. Once an ace influencer in the ministry of petroleum and natural gas, he has — since the demerger — focused on the department of telecom (DoT) and was single-handedly responsible for guiding Anil Ambani’s GSM agenda through the maze of departmental files.
And there is of course the d’Artagnan who is always named after the three musketeers: Tony Jesudasan. He was handpicked by
His grasp on the levers of power is
legendary. Helped the Ambanis fight
many corporate gangwars
V. BALASUBRAMANIAN, RELIANCE INDUSTRIES
Dhirubhai Ambani from the USIS and has since remained with the family. He is Anil Ambani’s troubleshooter in Delhi, has a calling card that bears no designation and is a personal friend of most of the country’s editors. He dines at their homes, discussing rock music, cigars and diet beer, apart from business. With his classy, lowkey style, Jesudasan is in sync with the modern lobbying mantra: mere blandishments alone won’t do the trick; you must have an idea too. “Media matters in lobbying,” says Jesudasan.
Another heavyweight in the firmament of influence is former cargo agent Deepak Talwar. There are those who still remember him driving a Luna moped, occasionally enjoying a whiskey and a 555 cigarette, handling his cargo clearing business. But Talwar’s life now revolves around Montecristo cigars, multi-million dollar accounts, and a hotline to many key ministries.
Talwar has always known how to be ubiquitous, yet invisible, in the world of Indian babus. In fact, he once travelled in a white ambassador himself, complete with a covered flag stand, much like his bureaucratic targets. But Talwar’s entry into power was aided by AN Varma, former principal secretary to PV Narasimha Rao, who was also the head of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board. Such was their closeness, many joked that when Varma went home for lunch, he had a varied menu but only one guest, Deepak Talwar.
TALWAR’S FIRST success came when he swung a lucrative deal for British liquor giant United Distillers (UD). Government regulations required UD to import a factory plant for grain technology. Talwar’s lobbying tweaked this regulation and the liquor giant was allowed to modernise a second-hand plant lying in a Mumbai mill, thereby avoiding a major expense.
This was followed by a successful manipulation for Coca Cola. Britannia’s Rajan Pillai had closed on a joint venture to facilitate Coke’s entry into India. Many remember how Talwar used lowly Ambassador cars to ferry top Coke officials to the ministries. Inexplicably, Pillai was dumped and Talwar had the gates opened for the Atlanta-based multinational to go it alone in India. Pillai threatened legal action and hired another PR outfit to champion his cause, but could not win. Since then, Talwar has handled major clients like American Insurance Group, British American Tobacco (BAT), Du Pont, Glaxo SmithKline and General Motors.
Successfully defended ITC against
BAT. Hops across five parties for biz
leads, yet eats home cooked meals
DILIP CHERIAN, PERFECT RELATIONS
Like Cherian, Talwar understands the significance of “climate control” — the creation of mo - ods and public opinion. Since he opened Integral PR in the late 90s, he often feeds stories against his rivals to media organisations, a strategy that more often succeeds than fails. He may have failed to push the BAT’s agenda in India against ITC and Yogi Deveshwar, but he helped telephony czar Sunil Mittal pick up crucial funds in the initial phase of his career and successfully lobbied to open up the insurance sector.
Talwar also owns Stone Travels and is the general sales agent (GSA) for a number of airlines. He is the biggest link for investors from the Middle East to India. A supplier of dutyfree products on Air India and Jet Airways, he wants to bring a leading airport restaurant chain to India. Recently, he made a presentation to the Intelligence Bureau (IB) for Dubaibased Thuriaya Satphones. The IB, being the IB, started monitoring his activities.
Almost no big corporate group today, in fact, is complete without its artist of influence. For the Tatas, it is Niira Radia, a polished and charming woman, who manages her business with the same facility that David Beckham bends his free kick. With a pulse on the global aviation business, she came to India from England, leaving behind a clutch of bankrupt companies. Radia harboured an ambition to start an airline business by taking over the defunct Modiluft and renaming it Magic Air, but failed to get the necessary clearances.
That did not dissuade Radia. Close to the then aviation minister Ananth Kumar, she learnt the ropes of the aviation business in India and was instrumental in Singapore Airlines giving its ground-handling contract to Air India (now Indian Air) and in working with
Is an ace influencer in Petroleum
and Telecom ministries, relies on his
palmtop presentations
AN SETHURAMAN, RELIANCE ADAG
the Tatas to pick up a majority stake in VSNL.
Her latest adventure is Neosis, for which she has teamed up with former finance secretary CM Vasudev, former Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chairman Pradip Baijal and former Airports Authority of India chairman SK Narula. What better blend for power lobbying among current bureaucrats, than a healthy mix of former bureaucrats?
Neosis is in keeping with a trend Reliance started years ago with its Observer Research Foundation, which had on its board some of the country’s top retired bureaucrats and officers: Arjun Sengupta, Brajesh Mishra, Abid Hussain, Dr S. Narayan, NK Singh and Gen VP Malik (former chief of the army).
In the same mode, Delhi-based Lexicon PR has Supriya Sule, daughter of Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on its board, while Gurgaon- based Genesis PR, taken over by Burson Marsteller, has former bureaucrat Vinay Jha and former Maharashtra chief secretary RM Prem Kumar on board.
High on visibility in this world of influence wielders, but with a lower track record than his contemporaries, is adman Suhel Seth, the Face Book boy of Indian lobbying. If you want someone to champion your cause, you would do well to get him. This silver-tongued thespian of talkshows could be fighting on behalf of Coca-Cola against environmentalist Sunita Narain on the pesticide issue one evening, and catch the next flight for breakfast with Murli Deora to discuss oil policy for Mukesh Ambani.
He loves flashy cars (he once drove a Porsche and a Lamborghini), and is known for flashy parties where some skin and a lot of khadi is on display. Seth is on the board of British Airways and is paid to promote Mukesh and Nita Ambani at the World Economic Forum’s annual Davos meeting. He is one of an extremely small circle of people who can boast of dining with the country’s two biggest industrialists: Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani. His current calling card: “Sorry for being late. I was on a long call with Mukesh.”
Lobbying in India may have acquired new dignities and sophistications but its opponents call the entire business thinly-disguised corruption. “Simple, legalised, corruption is what I would call it,” says Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) who waged a war and lost against the Cola giants on the pesticide issue. “These agents have a peculiar way of muddling the central argument. Eventually, people just get confused and the matter is backtracked.” It is true. Narain’s scientific evidence stood little chance against the sustained crossfire unleashed by Coke’s lobbyists.
Unlike Narain, however, many feel that lobbying should have a place in the business lexicon. Tarun Das, mentor, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), feels the profession has grown because global business groups looking to invest in India find the landscape a little complex. “After all, what works in Rio, Beijing or Seoul need not work in India,” says Das. “India has its own regulatory policies, services and providers, commodities and infrastructure.”
A lobbyist is the best answer, feels Das, because he — or she — knows the local milieu and is equally conversant with global operations, benchmarks and expectations. “It is the lobbyist who can successfully guide a client through the maze of anomalies that is India,” he says.
SO WHICH influencer do you hire to drive your agenda? The just-retired chairman of a nationalised bank, an-about-toretire petroleum secretary, or a think tank with a raft of academicians and bureaucrats on board? Depending on what you want done, you
Can take on the Bejan Daruwallas
with his astrology and can cut
through all bureaucratic red tape
SHANKAR ADAWAL, RELIANCE iNDUSTRIES
might want to hire them all, though perhaps not at the same time.
For senior bureaucrats, of course, post-retirement options were never more lucrative. Months after Rajiv Sikri put in his papers because the UPA government appointed Shiv Shankar Menon as foreign secretary instead of him, Sikri was seen lecturing Reliance managers at Jamnagar and Mumbai. This was the first step towards an alternate career.
“But what I am doing is not lobbying. It is advising clients to understand the Indian canvas,” says former TRAI chairman Pradip Baijal, who has joined Radia’s firm, Neosis. This assertion is a sign of the discomfort and ambiguity that still surrounds the idea of wielding influence on government. What’s more, though the number of lobbyists in India has grown with the new economy, not everyone has flourished equally. To be consistently successful, lobbyists need to be deft cartographers, with a firm grip not just on the levers of power but its changing topography as well. Inducement and the suitcase are apparently no longer enough. There is a new need, the need for a good idea.
“Today, lobbying is based on argument, argument and more argument. The bureaucracy must be convinced by your argument,” says Vishal Mehta, CEO, Vaishnavi Corporate Communications, which collaborates with Neosis.
That means you are not begging, or even buying. You are merely arguing the case. That might be the official, decent face of India’s new breed of influencers. Or it could be a fig leaf. But it is important to remember that to be successful, in lobbying or in cricket, one needs to be a good finisher. You have to close the deal. •
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