India's headline inflation rate is likely to hover at 8 to 9 percent for some time and will hit double digits before declining in the last quarter of calendar 2008, its chief statistician said on Tuesday.
India's most widely watched inflation measure, the wholesale price index (WPI), is already at a seven-year high of 8.75 percent and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) unexpectedly raised its key lending rate last week to 8.0 percent in an effort to calm prices.
Economists expect the impact of a hike in government-set fuel prices early in June will push the WPI to a 13-year peak above 9 percent this month. The early June data is due this Friday.
Pronab Sen, secretary at the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, told Reuters in an interview primary price increases had been factored in but second-round increases were now coming through into the inflation numbers.
"Numerically, I suspect it's going to hang around at somewhere between the 8 and 9 percent mark for a while," Sen said.
Asked if inflation would reach double digits, he replied: "It will touch it but it's not likely to stay there for very long."
Rising costs of raw materials, food and energy worldwide have stoked prices in Asia's third-largest economy, prompting the government to ban some exports and slash some import duties to keep supplies up and prices down.
Inflation is well above the RBI's comfort zone of 5.5 percent and is posing a major policy headache for the communist-backed ruling coalition in the run-up to key state and federal polls later this year and in 2009, as rising prices hit the poorer members of the population the hardest.
BACK TO TREND
India's economy grew 9 percent in the fiscal year which ended in March and Sen said growth was moderating.
"Now we are starting to taper down to the trend and the trend would be somewhere between 8 and 8.5 percent. So I suspect we'll be there somewhere."
But he added that with inflation and efforts to control it, as well as a global slowdown, growth might drop below trend.
"We might actually overshoot on the downward trajectory a little bit, so we might dip slightly below 8 percent but eventually we'll catch up."
The economy has averaged 8.8 percent in the past four years. The RBI expects it will expand at 8-8.5 percent this fiscal year to March, while some economists and policymakers say it could be lower.
On prices, Sen said the peak would depend on how soon demand was compressed and when new industrial capacity came on stream.
"So I'm really looking at the last quarter of the calendar for it to start coming down."
Demand was hard to gauge because of lack of data but there was some evidence of moderation in fast-moving consumer goods and white goods, he said.
Except for steel, capacity was being created across sectors, including pharmaceuticals, auto components, autos and cement, while capital goods, such as engineering plant and machinery, had gained in strength after a late start to capacity addition in 2006.
Inflation eased quickly in late 2007, dropping to just above 3 percent, and Sen said that base effect would give the headline rate an artificial "push-up" at the same time this year.
Where it ended the fiscal year next March would depend on the government's policy on domestic fuel prices, he said.
"A lot depends on what is done on oil prices and that's a policy matter," he said.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Pranab meets Karat to push n-deal
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee met CPI-M leader Prakash Karat for half an hour Monday night and sought the Left's support in finalising an India-specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA - a crucial step in the conclusion of its nuclear deal with the United States.
Mukherjee, who heads the 15-member United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-Left nuclear panel, had a one-hour talk with Karat during which he reiterated the government's request to allow them to finalise the safeguards agreement that is applicable only to India before International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed El Baradei completes his term in July, well placed sources confirmed to IANS.
Mukherjee is believed to have told Karat that the communists' apprehension that finalising the IAEA pact would put the politically contentious agreement on auto pilot is 'wrong'.
The UPA-Left panel holds a crucial meeting Wednesday.
According to the sources, Mukherjee, considered the most important member of the cabinet after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, told Karat that the Left has to 'trust' the government and that the government has not taken any steps without the communist allies' consent so far.
Karat reportedly told Mukherjee that the Left still has apprehensions over the deal but he would discuss the minister's new appeal with the other Left allies and get back to the government. The meeting was held from 8.30-9.30 p.m. at Mukherjee's residence, the sources said.
The minister is also said to have told Karat that the government would in future not make any move without discussing with the Left parties. The sources also said Mukherjee told the Left leader that the UPA government would sign this deal only with adequate parliamentary backing.
According to a senior Congress minister, even party chief Sonia Gandhi has clarified that the nuclear deal should not come at the cost of 'sacrificing the government.'
'We do not want to create a bad precedent by pushing the deal if the government is reduced to a minority,' the minister, who did not wish to be identified, told IANS.
Once the IAEA agreement is finalised, it will be placed before the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to get an 'India-specific' waiver to its guideline, thus clearing the way for nuclear commerce between New Delhi and NSG member countries.
Once it passes through the NSG, the US Congress will have to decide if it wants to give its nod to the 123 Agreement to change its domestic laws to allow trade between US companies and India on civilian nuclear energy and technology.
The CPI-M-led Left parties, which extend crucial legislative support to the UPA government, had given the green signal for negotiation with the IAEA - but insisted that it could not be finalised without their approval.
Mukherjee, who heads the 15-member United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-Left nuclear panel, had a one-hour talk with Karat during which he reiterated the government's request to allow them to finalise the safeguards agreement that is applicable only to India before International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed El Baradei completes his term in July, well placed sources confirmed to IANS.
Mukherjee is believed to have told Karat that the communists' apprehension that finalising the IAEA pact would put the politically contentious agreement on auto pilot is 'wrong'.
The UPA-Left panel holds a crucial meeting Wednesday.
According to the sources, Mukherjee, considered the most important member of the cabinet after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, told Karat that the Left has to 'trust' the government and that the government has not taken any steps without the communist allies' consent so far.
Karat reportedly told Mukherjee that the Left still has apprehensions over the deal but he would discuss the minister's new appeal with the other Left allies and get back to the government. The meeting was held from 8.30-9.30 p.m. at Mukherjee's residence, the sources said.
The minister is also said to have told Karat that the government would in future not make any move without discussing with the Left parties. The sources also said Mukherjee told the Left leader that the UPA government would sign this deal only with adequate parliamentary backing.
According to a senior Congress minister, even party chief Sonia Gandhi has clarified that the nuclear deal should not come at the cost of 'sacrificing the government.'
'We do not want to create a bad precedent by pushing the deal if the government is reduced to a minority,' the minister, who did not wish to be identified, told IANS.
Once the IAEA agreement is finalised, it will be placed before the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to get an 'India-specific' waiver to its guideline, thus clearing the way for nuclear commerce between New Delhi and NSG member countries.
Once it passes through the NSG, the US Congress will have to decide if it wants to give its nod to the 123 Agreement to change its domestic laws to allow trade between US companies and India on civilian nuclear energy and technology.
The CPI-M-led Left parties, which extend crucial legislative support to the UPA government, had given the green signal for negotiation with the IAEA - but insisted that it could not be finalised without their approval.
No signs of water yet from Mars lander
In its first chemical analysis of soil from Mars' northern plains, NASA's Phoenix lander has turned up no evidence of water, scientists said Monday.
Still, researchers remained confident that the craft is in the right place to uncover veins of ice believed to lie only inches beneath the surface.
Archive: Phoenix on Mars NASA's Mars Phoenix lander is really cooking nowA soil sample was cooked twice in one of Phoenix's eight ovens over the last few days, according to William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. The first test reached 95 degrees, the second 350 degrees.
"Had there been any ice, it would have melted," Boynton said. "We saw no water in the soil whatsoever."
The instrument detected carbon dioxide, hardly a surprise since the thin Martian atmosphere is primarily made up of CO2.
The goal of the $420-million Phoenix mission is to find out whether Mars is, or ever was, suitable for rudimentary life forms. Phoenix landed near Mars' north pole May 25.
The science team at the University of Arizona and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge were not disappointed by the failure to turn up water on the first test sample. Phoenix's nearly 8-foot-long robotic arm has only dug 2 to 3 inches into the soil, at a region named Dodo-Goldilocks. The ice layer, they said, is probably farther down.
The latest images of the trench from which the soil was taken show light-toned material that the scientists think could be ice protruding from the trench's side.
"It looks like we clipped the edge of the top of a polygon," said Ray Arvidson, the lead scientist for the lander's robotic arm.
The polygonal land forms -- small mounds bounded by shallow trenches -- are similar to features that scientists have seen in the Arctic on Earth caused by subsurface ice.
"This could be the tip of the iceberg," Arvidson said.
The science team will next turn its attention to a nearby region called Wonderland, where it thinks the ice layer is close to the surface.
The TEGA ovens are designed to reach 1,800 degrees, because different elements burn off at different temperatures. Tests over the next few weeks should help uncover any water bound up with the minerals, if not water itself, scientists said.
NASA's twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have found evidence that water was once plentiful in the form of standing lakes and streams on Mars' surface.
Scientists now hope to find and test water to help determine whether present-day Mars could be habitable.
The last NASA landers to test for habitability on Mars were the twin Viking probes, which landed in 1976. Neither found any organic molecules that would be a good indicator of Mars' suitability for life.
That caused planetary scientists to virtually abandon Mars for two decades, until a new generation of scientists proposed that life-sustaining conditions might be found underground at the poles.
Scientists were encouraged by findings from the gamma ray spectrometer on the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which in 2002 detected a large concentration of hydrogen in the top few feet of soil at the pole. Scientists believed that indicated vast quantities of ice underground.
Still, researchers remained confident that the craft is in the right place to uncover veins of ice believed to lie only inches beneath the surface.
Archive: Phoenix on Mars NASA's Mars Phoenix lander is really cooking nowA soil sample was cooked twice in one of Phoenix's eight ovens over the last few days, according to William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. The first test reached 95 degrees, the second 350 degrees.
"Had there been any ice, it would have melted," Boynton said. "We saw no water in the soil whatsoever."
The instrument detected carbon dioxide, hardly a surprise since the thin Martian atmosphere is primarily made up of CO2.
The goal of the $420-million Phoenix mission is to find out whether Mars is, or ever was, suitable for rudimentary life forms. Phoenix landed near Mars' north pole May 25.
The science team at the University of Arizona and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge were not disappointed by the failure to turn up water on the first test sample. Phoenix's nearly 8-foot-long robotic arm has only dug 2 to 3 inches into the soil, at a region named Dodo-Goldilocks. The ice layer, they said, is probably farther down.
The latest images of the trench from which the soil was taken show light-toned material that the scientists think could be ice protruding from the trench's side.
"It looks like we clipped the edge of the top of a polygon," said Ray Arvidson, the lead scientist for the lander's robotic arm.
The polygonal land forms -- small mounds bounded by shallow trenches -- are similar to features that scientists have seen in the Arctic on Earth caused by subsurface ice.
"This could be the tip of the iceberg," Arvidson said.
The science team will next turn its attention to a nearby region called Wonderland, where it thinks the ice layer is close to the surface.
The TEGA ovens are designed to reach 1,800 degrees, because different elements burn off at different temperatures. Tests over the next few weeks should help uncover any water bound up with the minerals, if not water itself, scientists said.
NASA's twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have found evidence that water was once plentiful in the form of standing lakes and streams on Mars' surface.
Scientists now hope to find and test water to help determine whether present-day Mars could be habitable.
The last NASA landers to test for habitability on Mars were the twin Viking probes, which landed in 1976. Neither found any organic molecules that would be a good indicator of Mars' suitability for life.
That caused planetary scientists to virtually abandon Mars for two decades, until a new generation of scientists proposed that life-sustaining conditions might be found underground at the poles.
Scientists were encouraged by findings from the gamma ray spectrometer on the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which in 2002 detected a large concentration of hydrogen in the top few feet of soil at the pole. Scientists believed that indicated vast quantities of ice underground.
Same-Sex Marriages Begin in California
With a series of simple “I dos,” gay couples across California inaugurated the state’s court-approved and potentially short-lived legalization of same-sex marriage on Monday, the first of what is expected to be a crush of such unions in coming weeks.
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Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Del Martin, seated, and Phyllis Lyon were the first same-sex couple in San Francisco to exchange wedding vows on Monday. Mayor Gavin Newsom, left, presided.
Related
Share Your Stories: Gay Marriage in California
The weddings began in a handful of locations around the state at exactly 5:01 p.m., the earliest time allowed by last month’s decision by the California Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage. Many more ceremonies will be held on Tuesday when all 58 counties will be issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
In San Francisco, Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 84, longtime gay rights activists, were the first and only couple to be wed here, saying their vows in the office of Mayor Gavin Newsom, before emerging to a throng of reporters and screaming well-wishers.
Ms. Martin and Ms. Lyon, who have been together for more than 50 years, seemed touched, if a little amazed by all the attention.
“When we first got together we weren’t thinking about getting married,” Ms. Lyon said before cutting a wedding cake. “I think it’s a wonderful day.”
Outside City Hall, several hundred supporters and protesters chanted, cheered and jeered in equal measure, giving an unruly carnival feel to the scene, complete with a marching band playing wedding songs and signs reading “Homo Sex is Sin.”
In Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco, Mayor Ron Dellums presided over more than a dozen marriages in the City Council chambers, which had been transformed into a de facto wedding chapel, with stands of flowers and a standing-room-only crowd.
In Sonoma County, the wine-rich region north of here, 18 couples were scheduled to be wed on Monday, including Chris Lechman, 37, and Mark Gren, 42, who called to book their nuptials shortly after the court’s decision.
“We’ve been on pins and needles,” said Mr. Lechman, who celebrated the 15th anniversary of meeting Mr. Gren on Monday. “We are thrilled to be part of history.”
Janice Atkinson, the Sonoma County clerk, said her office would stay open late for the rest of the month to accommodate what she expected would be a heavy load of same-sex weddings.
On Sunday, Ms. Atkinson and staff members were at a gay pride celebration in Sonoma handing out applications for marriage licenses to prospective newlyweds.
“We’re expecting some very happy couples,” she said. “And a lot of media.”
The selection of Ms. Martin and Ms. Lyon as San Francisco’s first same-sex couple was symbolic; the couple wed here in 2004, when the city broke state law by issuing more than 4,000 marriage licenses and conducting weddings in City Hall. Those marriages were later invalidated by the state Supreme Court.
On May 15, however, the same court struck down the two California laws that prohibited such unions, opening the door for California to becomes the second, and largest, American state to legalize same-sex marriage. Massachusetts did so in 2004, and more than 10,500 couples have wed there.
Same-sex marriage has been hotly contested nationwide and state by state in the courts and at the ballot box, and California is no exception.
Voters in the state will decide a ballot measure in November that would effectively overturn the court’s decision by defining marriage as “between a man and a woman.”
Forty-four states already have some sort of legal barrier — either a law or constitutional amendment — barring such unions. In 2004 alone, 13 states passed ballot measures banning same-sex marriage.
This year, however, supporters have found encouragement in both the California Supreme Court decision and in a subsequent order by Gov. David A. Paterson of New York to force his state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages from elsewhere. The California court has also rebuffed several challenges to its May 15 decision made by two conservative legal groups and Republican attorneys general who fear that the marriages will cause legal challenges to be brought in their own states.
One legal challenge was filed last week by the Liberty Counsel, a group based in Florida that wants the California Court of Appeal to halt the weddings to allow the State Legislature time to work out discrepancies in marriage law created by the state Supreme Court’s decision.
Mathew D. Staver, the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said Monday’s ceremonies “make a mockery of marriage.”
“Marriage has traditionally been known, across continents and all geographical regions, as between a man and a woman,” said Mr. Staver, who is 51 and married. “Marriage between the same sex may be some sort of union, but it’s certainly not marriage.”
There has also been some local opposition to the ceremonies. In rural Kern County, north of Los Angeles, the county clerk has canceled all weddings performed by her office, a position she took after consulting with the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona legal group that argues against marriage for gay men and lesbians. Weddings at the county clerk’s office — long an affordable, no-frills option for couples — have also been called off in Butte County, north of Sacramento, the state capital.
In more liberal parts of the state, however, the weddings were being warmly embraced.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Del Martin, seated, and Phyllis Lyon were the first same-sex couple in San Francisco to exchange wedding vows on Monday. Mayor Gavin Newsom, left, presided.
Related
Share Your Stories: Gay Marriage in California
The weddings began in a handful of locations around the state at exactly 5:01 p.m., the earliest time allowed by last month’s decision by the California Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage. Many more ceremonies will be held on Tuesday when all 58 counties will be issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
In San Francisco, Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 84, longtime gay rights activists, were the first and only couple to be wed here, saying their vows in the office of Mayor Gavin Newsom, before emerging to a throng of reporters and screaming well-wishers.
Ms. Martin and Ms. Lyon, who have been together for more than 50 years, seemed touched, if a little amazed by all the attention.
“When we first got together we weren’t thinking about getting married,” Ms. Lyon said before cutting a wedding cake. “I think it’s a wonderful day.”
Outside City Hall, several hundred supporters and protesters chanted, cheered and jeered in equal measure, giving an unruly carnival feel to the scene, complete with a marching band playing wedding songs and signs reading “Homo Sex is Sin.”
In Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco, Mayor Ron Dellums presided over more than a dozen marriages in the City Council chambers, which had been transformed into a de facto wedding chapel, with stands of flowers and a standing-room-only crowd.
In Sonoma County, the wine-rich region north of here, 18 couples were scheduled to be wed on Monday, including Chris Lechman, 37, and Mark Gren, 42, who called to book their nuptials shortly after the court’s decision.
“We’ve been on pins and needles,” said Mr. Lechman, who celebrated the 15th anniversary of meeting Mr. Gren on Monday. “We are thrilled to be part of history.”
Janice Atkinson, the Sonoma County clerk, said her office would stay open late for the rest of the month to accommodate what she expected would be a heavy load of same-sex weddings.
On Sunday, Ms. Atkinson and staff members were at a gay pride celebration in Sonoma handing out applications for marriage licenses to prospective newlyweds.
“We’re expecting some very happy couples,” she said. “And a lot of media.”
The selection of Ms. Martin and Ms. Lyon as San Francisco’s first same-sex couple was symbolic; the couple wed here in 2004, when the city broke state law by issuing more than 4,000 marriage licenses and conducting weddings in City Hall. Those marriages were later invalidated by the state Supreme Court.
On May 15, however, the same court struck down the two California laws that prohibited such unions, opening the door for California to becomes the second, and largest, American state to legalize same-sex marriage. Massachusetts did so in 2004, and more than 10,500 couples have wed there.
Same-sex marriage has been hotly contested nationwide and state by state in the courts and at the ballot box, and California is no exception.
Voters in the state will decide a ballot measure in November that would effectively overturn the court’s decision by defining marriage as “between a man and a woman.”
Forty-four states already have some sort of legal barrier — either a law or constitutional amendment — barring such unions. In 2004 alone, 13 states passed ballot measures banning same-sex marriage.
This year, however, supporters have found encouragement in both the California Supreme Court decision and in a subsequent order by Gov. David A. Paterson of New York to force his state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages from elsewhere. The California court has also rebuffed several challenges to its May 15 decision made by two conservative legal groups and Republican attorneys general who fear that the marriages will cause legal challenges to be brought in their own states.
One legal challenge was filed last week by the Liberty Counsel, a group based in Florida that wants the California Court of Appeal to halt the weddings to allow the State Legislature time to work out discrepancies in marriage law created by the state Supreme Court’s decision.
Mathew D. Staver, the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said Monday’s ceremonies “make a mockery of marriage.”
“Marriage has traditionally been known, across continents and all geographical regions, as between a man and a woman,” said Mr. Staver, who is 51 and married. “Marriage between the same sex may be some sort of union, but it’s certainly not marriage.”
There has also been some local opposition to the ceremonies. In rural Kern County, north of Los Angeles, the county clerk has canceled all weddings performed by her office, a position she took after consulting with the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona legal group that argues against marriage for gay men and lesbians. Weddings at the county clerk’s office — long an affordable, no-frills option for couples — have also been called off in Butte County, north of Sacramento, the state capital.
In more liberal parts of the state, however, the weddings were being warmly embraced.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Forked Tongues And Artful Nudges
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. •
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. •
Lesbian pioneer activists see wish fulfilled
Lesbian rights pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, together for more than half a century, will get married in San Francisco City Hall this evening wearing the same pastel-colored pantsuits they donned four years ago when they wed the first time.
Once again, they will be the first of thousands of same-sex couples rushing to marry. But this time their wedding will be carried by the strength of a California Supreme Court decision that granted lesbian and gay couples the constitutional right to marry.
Another change: Their pantsuits. The hems have been taken up since Martin, in pale purple, and Lyon, in powder blue, put them on for their first wedding in City Hall on Feb. 12, 2004. The nuptials that San Francisco city officials sanctioned four years ago were later deemed illegitimate by the state.
"We're both getting shorter," said Lyon, who at 83 is four years younger than her partner.
What hasn't shrunk is the San Francisco couple's willingness to be at the forefront of a decadeslong civil rights battle, starting for them in an era when homosexuality could get you fired, denied an apartment or arrested during one of the frequent police raids on bars catering to gay men and lesbians.
Their life together as activists has entwined the political and the personal and has been marked by a series of groundbreaking and often controversial undertakings.
Where they started
They founded the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, the first national lesbian organization. In 1964, they helped launch the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, bringing together national religious leaders and gay and lesbian activists to discuss homosexual rights. Lyon, in a challenge to the leadership of the feminist movement, was the first open lesbian on the board of the National Organization for Women in 1973. Martin, meanwhile, helped lead a successful campaign to get the American Psychiatric Association to take homosexuality off its list of mental illnesses.
The couple made international headlines in 2004 when they became the first same-sex couple to wed after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera decided to test state law by allowing more than 4,000 gay and lesbian couples to marry. After a month, the California Supreme Court halted the weddings on the grounds that city officials acted without proper authority.
Attention will turn to Martin and Lyon again this evening when they become the first same-sex couple in San Francisco, and perhaps in all of California, to marry when the state Supreme Court's decision officially takes effect just after 5 p.m.
"It's really just amazing the progress we've made," Lyon said.
Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a public interest law firm that joined the legal battle to overturn the ban on same-sex marriage, said the moment rightfully belongs to them.
"It would not be happening were it not for Del and Phyllis," she said. "They and a small cadre of others sacrificed everything to build a foundation that got us to this historic place where we are today."
Kendell, who met the couple 14 years ago, has become their de facto gatekeeper and helped plan their wedding.
The invitation-only ceremony will take place behind closed doors in the Mayor's Office at City Hall with about 50 family members, friends, neighbors and political allies in attendance. Newsom will preside.
"We have to remember to say, 'I do.' OK?" Lyon said.
"I think we can do that," Martin said.
The interchange was both playful and poignant. The years are catching up with Lyon and Martin. The timing of the California Supreme Court's ruling isn't lost on them.
"We're not getting younger," said Martin, quieter and frailer than her partner, during an interview last week in their Noe Valley home.
Decades together
The thought of being able to get married was not one they could even imagine when the two first shared after-work drinks in Seattle in 1950, a get-together that at first sparked a friendship and two years later a love affair that has endured.
To grasp the longevity of their relationship, one only has to know what they paid in 1955 for their small hillside home with a sweeping view of San Francisco. Their paltry salaries as a secretary and a bookkeeper helped them cover the $11,000 price.
The years of their accomplishments and passions are displayed on their walls: plaques of appreciation from politicians and civil rights groups and photographs and drawings of such public figures as Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, Shirley Chisholm and Eleanor Roosevelt. There is the collection of campaign buttons for Democratic candidates, the baseball autographed by Giants players, and a vast collection of books, including copies of "Lesbian/Woman," which they co-wrote in 1972.
They said they spend a lot of time at home now - getting up and down the steep stairs that separate their front door from the sidewalk isn't as easy as it once was.
A limousine will pick them up this afternoon for the ride to City Hall, where they probably will be met by cheers from well-wishers and, perhaps, jeers from protesters who believe marriage should be reserved just for heterosexuals.
After Martin and Lyon finalize the paperwork and take their vows, they are scheduled to step onto the balcony overlooking the ornate City Hall rotunda for a public cake-cutting ceremony. That will be followed by a private reception at a nearby restaurant, and then it's back home again.
There will be no honeymoon.
Their daughter, born to Martin 66 years ago during a brief marriage that ended in divorce, will be with them to share in the day's events.
"It's really a big deal for them and for me to have this happen at this point in their lives," said Kendra Mon, a social worker from Petaluma who was raised by her two moms and her dad and his new wife. "It's like icing on the cake and a reminder of how far we've come."
She thought more about the significance for a few minutes and then likened it to the classic Christmas movie "It's a Wonderful Life" - but with a twist.
In the movie, the character played by James Stewart gets to see what his small town and family would be like if he hadn't existed.
"But," Mon said, "this is like my moms get to see what life is like because they've been here
Once again, they will be the first of thousands of same-sex couples rushing to marry. But this time their wedding will be carried by the strength of a California Supreme Court decision that granted lesbian and gay couples the constitutional right to marry.
Another change: Their pantsuits. The hems have been taken up since Martin, in pale purple, and Lyon, in powder blue, put them on for their first wedding in City Hall on Feb. 12, 2004. The nuptials that San Francisco city officials sanctioned four years ago were later deemed illegitimate by the state.
"We're both getting shorter," said Lyon, who at 83 is four years younger than her partner.
What hasn't shrunk is the San Francisco couple's willingness to be at the forefront of a decadeslong civil rights battle, starting for them in an era when homosexuality could get you fired, denied an apartment or arrested during one of the frequent police raids on bars catering to gay men and lesbians.
Their life together as activists has entwined the political and the personal and has been marked by a series of groundbreaking and often controversial undertakings.
Where they started
They founded the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, the first national lesbian organization. In 1964, they helped launch the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, bringing together national religious leaders and gay and lesbian activists to discuss homosexual rights. Lyon, in a challenge to the leadership of the feminist movement, was the first open lesbian on the board of the National Organization for Women in 1973. Martin, meanwhile, helped lead a successful campaign to get the American Psychiatric Association to take homosexuality off its list of mental illnesses.
The couple made international headlines in 2004 when they became the first same-sex couple to wed after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera decided to test state law by allowing more than 4,000 gay and lesbian couples to marry. After a month, the California Supreme Court halted the weddings on the grounds that city officials acted without proper authority.
Attention will turn to Martin and Lyon again this evening when they become the first same-sex couple in San Francisco, and perhaps in all of California, to marry when the state Supreme Court's decision officially takes effect just after 5 p.m.
"It's really just amazing the progress we've made," Lyon said.
Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a public interest law firm that joined the legal battle to overturn the ban on same-sex marriage, said the moment rightfully belongs to them.
"It would not be happening were it not for Del and Phyllis," she said. "They and a small cadre of others sacrificed everything to build a foundation that got us to this historic place where we are today."
Kendell, who met the couple 14 years ago, has become their de facto gatekeeper and helped plan their wedding.
The invitation-only ceremony will take place behind closed doors in the Mayor's Office at City Hall with about 50 family members, friends, neighbors and political allies in attendance. Newsom will preside.
"We have to remember to say, 'I do.' OK?" Lyon said.
"I think we can do that," Martin said.
The interchange was both playful and poignant. The years are catching up with Lyon and Martin. The timing of the California Supreme Court's ruling isn't lost on them.
"We're not getting younger," said Martin, quieter and frailer than her partner, during an interview last week in their Noe Valley home.
Decades together
The thought of being able to get married was not one they could even imagine when the two first shared after-work drinks in Seattle in 1950, a get-together that at first sparked a friendship and two years later a love affair that has endured.
To grasp the longevity of their relationship, one only has to know what they paid in 1955 for their small hillside home with a sweeping view of San Francisco. Their paltry salaries as a secretary and a bookkeeper helped them cover the $11,000 price.
The years of their accomplishments and passions are displayed on their walls: plaques of appreciation from politicians and civil rights groups and photographs and drawings of such public figures as Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, Shirley Chisholm and Eleanor Roosevelt. There is the collection of campaign buttons for Democratic candidates, the baseball autographed by Giants players, and a vast collection of books, including copies of "Lesbian/Woman," which they co-wrote in 1972.
They said they spend a lot of time at home now - getting up and down the steep stairs that separate their front door from the sidewalk isn't as easy as it once was.
A limousine will pick them up this afternoon for the ride to City Hall, where they probably will be met by cheers from well-wishers and, perhaps, jeers from protesters who believe marriage should be reserved just for heterosexuals.
After Martin and Lyon finalize the paperwork and take their vows, they are scheduled to step onto the balcony overlooking the ornate City Hall rotunda for a public cake-cutting ceremony. That will be followed by a private reception at a nearby restaurant, and then it's back home again.
There will be no honeymoon.
Their daughter, born to Martin 66 years ago during a brief marriage that ended in divorce, will be with them to share in the day's events.
"It's really a big deal for them and for me to have this happen at this point in their lives," said Kendra Mon, a social worker from Petaluma who was raised by her two moms and her dad and his new wife. "It's like icing on the cake and a reminder of how far we've come."
She thought more about the significance for a few minutes and then likened it to the classic Christmas movie "It's a Wonderful Life" - but with a twist.
In the movie, the character played by James Stewart gets to see what his small town and family would be like if he hadn't existed.
"But," Mon said, "this is like my moms get to see what life is like because they've been here
Icahn: Yahoo's Google Deal 'Might Have Merit', 'May Be Better Than Microsoft'
Could Carl Icahn have actually been placated by Yahoo's picking Google over his favoured candidate, Microsoft? The proxy marshall told Reuters, in what the newswire said were his first comments since the purply one opted for a Google ( NSDQ: GOOG) ad-deal rather than a Microsoft ( NSDQ: MSFT) buy-out: " While the Google deal is not the same as an offer of $34.375 per share for Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), I am continuing to study it, and it might have some merit."
"I continue to be extremely disappointed with the Yahoo management, but the Google deal might have some merit and seems to be better then the alternative deal proposed by Microsoft." Better only than the scaled-back Microsoft option, of course.
"Disappointing" Icahn would hardly rank amongst the biggest regrets for Yang & Co., though the billionaire financier declined to say whether his proxy battle to replace the board would continue. With these more positive noises, and Google deal's " change in control" provisions, however, appear to have assuaged the threat for now?
Reuters: "Icahn hinted that the change of control provision might be sufficient reason to pull back on his campaign to replace the Yahoo board. Alternatively, Icahn could accept minority board representation which may not prompt Google to walk away." If Icahn were to seek a bigger stake, it could prompt Google to walk away, leaving him to renew Microsoft talks.
Related
Yahoo Call: Flexibility Is Key; Voluntary 3.5 Month Delay For DOJ; May Partner On Google Display Ads
Yahoo-Google: Defining A Change In Control; Google?s Revenue Guarantee
Yahoo And Google In Non-Exclusive Search Ad Deal; $250-$450 Million Extra Op Cash Flow
Yahoo: Severance Plan Not ?Nuts?; Not Easily Revoked; And It Wouldn?t Cost Microsoft $2.4 Billion
"I continue to be extremely disappointed with the Yahoo management, but the Google deal might have some merit and seems to be better then the alternative deal proposed by Microsoft." Better only than the scaled-back Microsoft option, of course.
"Disappointing" Icahn would hardly rank amongst the biggest regrets for Yang & Co., though the billionaire financier declined to say whether his proxy battle to replace the board would continue. With these more positive noises, and Google deal's " change in control" provisions, however, appear to have assuaged the threat for now?
Reuters: "Icahn hinted that the change of control provision might be sufficient reason to pull back on his campaign to replace the Yahoo board. Alternatively, Icahn could accept minority board representation which may not prompt Google to walk away." If Icahn were to seek a bigger stake, it could prompt Google to walk away, leaving him to renew Microsoft talks.
Related
Yahoo Call: Flexibility Is Key; Voluntary 3.5 Month Delay For DOJ; May Partner On Google Display Ads
Yahoo-Google: Defining A Change In Control; Google?s Revenue Guarantee
Yahoo And Google In Non-Exclusive Search Ad Deal; $250-$450 Million Extra Op Cash Flow
Yahoo: Severance Plan Not ?Nuts?; Not Easily Revoked; And It Wouldn?t Cost Microsoft $2.4 Billion
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