Nov 12

Written by: host
11/12/2007 8:14 AM

L.N.Mittal’s takeover of European steel Arcelor for over $32 Billion last year was seen as the rise of Indian business leaders on the global stage.  This multi-billion deal has encouraged many other Indian Business men to think big. Soon the country has seen many billion dollar deals following suit.

Tatas jumped in and bought Corus for over $12 Billion, a company four times bigger than Tatas, , the biggest by any Indian Company. Birla’s Hindalco bought US-based aluminum sheet maker Novelis Inc for about $6 billion. United Spirits of liquor king Vijay Mallya, acquired Scotland based Whyte & Mackay for over one billion dollars to become the second largest liquor company. Reliance purchased US based Flag Telecom and Yipes and so on. Riding on the feel good factor, Indian stock market too reached a peak with SENSEX touching 20,000. This propelled the billionaire Mukesh Ambani to become the world’s richest, surpassing Bill Gates. Now, the country is home to over 100,000 millionaires.

The economy started growing by  8-9 % in recent years.  It took so many decades to break the evil license raj founded and unleashed by earlier Governments in 50’s,60’s and 70’s. There were times when, not just Industries, even Cycles, Radios, TVs too were required to have a license. People used to wait for years together for getting a phone connection, a gas connection or even a Scooter.  Many successful Industries and Banks were nationalized. Later they became a great economical burden to the country’s exchequer. Owing to this, when other Asian Countries, who also got independence from British along with India, were growing at 8-12% rate, India was growing at 3% rate. The Licence Raj which was founded by Nehru and later unleashed by Indira Gandhi, had thrown the country into utter poverty. Instead of calling this appalling growth rate as Nehruvian Growth rate after it’s founder Nehru, people started calling this as Hindu growth rate. One fails to understand in what way the economy was effected by religion. It appears these politicians threw the blame on the religion instead of owning it on their economic policies. It was Mr. PV. Narasimha Rao and Dr. Manmohan singh duo, who were the first to dismantle this evil system in 1991 to save the country from apparent bankruptcy. Licence Raj was similar to Communism, which brought poverty and misery. Communism and it’s leaders were kicked out of Soviet Russia and other Communist nations when it  collapsed but here in India, the perpetrators of this evil Licence Raj still hold demi-god status.

Even though Indian economy still carries the scent of License Raj, kudos to all those Industries and Industrialists who with stood those draconian times and established successful enterprises. And finally, kudos to Shri. L.N.Mittal who brought that little extra courage to Indian Industry to go global.

Copyright ©2007 Narasimha

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