31 October,2010 07:03 AM IST | | Anuvab Pal
Last week, a South Indian company that made a lot of money from frozen chicken cutlets decided to take the next natural step -- no, not getting into fish, but buying an English Premiere League team.
Illustrations/Satish Acharya
It's currently uncertain whether the team, Blackburn Rovers, based in Blackburn, a large industrial coal processing town in the middle of England, will now only be fed a diet of Venky's chicken. When David Cameron announced austerity, I don't think he meant lower division teams should start by replacing their white meat supply.
The media, of course, embraced this as an example of India's financial muscle. Assume the same logic governed a Bangalore-based liquor baron's acquisition of a Formula 1 team which, although somewhat slow, does exist, albeit with the intergalactic name of Force One (George Lucas would be proud). It makes sense that as we get excited about how many dollar millionaires and billionaires we have (the fastest growing apparently), that these people, once never seen in the playgrounds of the global rich and famous, now ask, 'If a Dubai airline can plaster themselves all across Manchester, why can't Indian chicken do that to Lancashire?' Or a Bangalore beer to Monte Carlo's playboys? Old India's wealthy went beserk at Selfridges. New India wants to buy the store.
There were some whispers as to why Indian entrepreneurs don't buy or invest locally, but that argument died a natural death given that those who had, in the IPL, found themselves randomly banned after they had spent millions building a franchise. There was euphoria when IPL was created; this was what new India's business landscape was all about -- no more hiding foreign exchange in belts, no more black money wired through secret Russian middle men -- it was about buying million dollar teams in auctions with US dollars. Transpa-rent and legalised showing off.
Some years on, it's back to asking why money comes from Cayman Islands, how so and so can afford to buy a team, the petty inquiries that reduce wild capitalist ambition to jealousies of others' personal wealth. In the old days, the rich kept their riches quiet while pretending to be socialists. Now we're pretending it's changed and we're open and free but if the rich aren't quiet, we gossip. No wonder these IPL owners are going to court saying the two worlds can't coexist.
The big argument supporting Gandhian restraint had always been that immense wealth suddenly gained is usually corrupt. And often illegal. Therefore be honest, middle class and aspire to contentment. Not an impossible ambition. That philosophy led a generation to retire in two bedroom government flats with water leakage. Their children rise in a booming economy, where there's sudden wealth and that's only possible through their impossible ambition. It's also why it's booming. The old laws didn't help. It was once a criminal offence to carry more than 30 GBP to the UK. Unless one wanted to visit Heathrow, it was somewhat restrictive to a fun vacation.
To the corruption charge, I'll respond with a 95 year-old Parsi gentleman's optimistic view. I stumbled upon his rant in a Colaba park: "Everyone in this country is corrupt. Definitely the people spending the millions. But also the people investigating them. The people putting them in prison. You, me, everyone. People say, the CWG had corruption; therefore we need committees to investigate. All those committees will also have corruption in their own way. Someone will save a friend, someone will take a bribe, and someone will make a file disappear because of political pressure.
u00a0
Look, there's nothing wrong with this. Scandinavians are tall, Japanese people have lovely black hair and we, as a people, are corrupt. The sooner we admit that to ourselves, the happier we'll be". When you've worked insanely hard to build a billion dollar corporation, or become the country's biggest reckless movie star, you want to do things that people anywhere else in the world would do -- like build a billion dollar home or shoot deer. But here, your net worth becomes the subject of debate, opinion and discussion. And laws and arbitrary cricket boards conspire to restrict your flamboyance.
In China, it's not a problem -- the extremely wealthy are connected to the politburo and a citizen's opinion on a billionaire's home may result in a life in jail. That's not suggested here and nor perhaps the demise of an endangered species, but as the billionaire Howard Hughes said when asked why he wanted only midget servants in his 341 room California mansion, "It's my money. I earned it. I'll do what the hell I want".
Anuvab Pal is a Mumbai-based playwright and screenwriter. His plays in Mumbai include Chaos Theory and screenplays for Loins of Punjab Presents (co-written) and The President is Coming. He is currently working on a book on the Bollywood film Disco Dancer for Harper Collins, out later this year.
