A Tale of Two Families * How our sabhyata is surviving?
This week reaffirmed my faith in the Bharatiya sabhyata and sanksriti (s&s) and I thanked Ravi Chopra and Suraj Barjatya for being such stellar custodians of them. What would the state of our society be without them and their movies? And, of course, the most important question of them all – are we paying adequate respect to them here at PFC? To the last question posed, I can provide an answer quite easily.
NO
And that’s a pity. As I have learnt through global events last week, we can’t begin to thank them more profusely.
Let me start with the first incident that happened in New York last week. Bernard Madoff, a former Chairman of Nasdaq and founder of Madoff Investment Securities, was arrested and charged by FBI with securities fraud. It turned out to be the largest investor fraud perpetrated by a single individual and guesstimates put the money lost to be about US$ 50 Billion (to put it in perspective that’s almost twice Reliance Industries annual sales figures of last year). Madoff, who seemed to have watched one film too many of Kader Khan, was running a giant Ponzi scheme which could have put your neighborhood Chit Fund scamster to eternal shame. Assuring an almost guaranteed return of 10%, Madoff would use funds from his new investors to deliver the promised returns to his old ones. Such schemes, reminiscent of the plans of Milawat Ram of Swarg Se Sundar, eventually collapse under their own weight. As they did for Mr. Madoff.
As global markets tanked, many of Madoff’s client sought redemption of their investments leading up to a requirement of about US $ 7 Billion in cash. Madoff knew his game was up. But Madoff wasn’t a Nazir Hussain or Manmohan Krishna to have a cardiac arrest right when his beti’s doli was about to leave home. Instead, like Pinchu Kapoor, he summoned his two sons, Mark and Andrew, and told them about the scam that he has been running for decades. This was where the script slipped into Kader Khan’s seminal ‘Baap Numbri Beta Dus Numbri’ terrain. The sons had absolutely no clue about their father’s underhanded skullduggery and one of them, Andrew, had apparently invested a substantial part of his life’s income into his father’s investment schemes. The sons promptly called up their lawyers and the next morning, it was goodbye Long Island mansion, hello FBI.
On the other hand, look at how admirably the Raju family, the promoters of Satyam, behaved this week. In the time honored tradition of the great Indian family, they helped each other out in their times of distress. It was straight out of Waqt- race against time.
Ramalinga Raju built up Satyam to be the fourth largest software exporter in India over the course of a decade and half. He took the company public, diluted his and his family’s share to about 8% and made the management ‘professional’. His sons, Teja Raju and Rama Raju Jr, come back with their MBA degress from the States and get into the family’s traditional business of construction. They name their firm, Maytas, that’s Satyam spelt backwards. I’m sure there were a few family songs thrown in between too (Shava Shava stuff).
Maytas does well during the boom in the construction sector till credit crunch, higher interest rates and inflation kicks in. Now, Maytas has a few important projects lined up but it’s difficult to raise cash in the market for them.
Time for a bailout.
But kaun kare bailout?
Wait, isn’t Papa’s firm (of which he owns only 8% or so) sitting on a pile of US$ 1.2 Billion? Wouldn’t it be great if Papa transferred that cash pile to us by buying our firm up? Why should the other 92% shareholders mind? Yeh hamare ghar ki baat hai, afterall!
In great Indian families, such thoughts immediately equate action. So the Satyam board immediately decides that it is good time to derisk IT business by getting into Infrastructure. Afterall, the employees aren’t called cyber coolies for nothing. “Agar coolie ho toh saari duniya ka bojh kyun nahin uthaa sakte?” How different can working on IT maintenance projects be different from managing Maintenance in a high-rise apartment complex?
The valuation arrived at for the infrastructure companies of the ‘betas’ is a small US$ 1.6 Billion and before you could say ‘Satyam’, the deal was done. The valuation, apparently, was done by an anonymous ‘Big 4’ firm which shall never be named. There’s a rumor that it might have been done by the firm run by Boman Irani equivalent in the family circle. More songs followed till the investors saw red and many threats and countless expressions of outrage later, Satyam decided that it wasn’t really wise to continue with the deal. Ah! Tragedy in the Raju household!
The tragic nature of the above episode doesn’t take away from its silver lining. That great Indian families, unlike those in America, still stick together!! While you may complain that the Chopras and Johars only showcase Punjabi families, the truth (Satyam) is that the values they preach are being adopted ardently south of Vindhyas. This is the real power of their films. They shape our society. They uphold our ‘middle class’ mores. They keep us Indian. Without them, the Raju kids might have emulated their Madoff cousins. Ghor Kalyug would have descended upon us then. That it didn’t should make us realize the importance of the great Bollywood family and their purveyors.
Tags: Barjatya, Chopra, Chor Machaye Shor, johar, Madoff, Raju
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Abhay Deol
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Onir
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Sujoy Ghosh
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Shivajee
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Partho Sen-Gupta
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Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Lol. Awesome article.
LOL – Subrat that was something awesome.Your sense of imagination just rocks.Comparing the 2 recent issues in the limelight with bollywood family drama’s is a wonderful idea.Speaking of this, where is Kadar Khan these days???
Sharp and incisive as always, Subrat.
Must read post. Brilliant.
Awesome post. Really insightful. Forgive my ignorance, but how could the shareholders collectively expressed their grievance against the Maytas deal? Is there any Satyam Shareholder Association or something?
Brilliant as usual Subrat..
Incidentally Maytas being the opposite of SAtyam was doomed to make Satyam do the Ulta things only..
@ RoadRow..
Minutes after the deal was announced the Satyam ADR crashed by over 50%. This was more than enough to show how disgruntled the investors were..
Many fund managers of major Indian Mutual Funds also strongly voiced their disapproval which prompted Satyam to backtrack and announce the cancellation of the deal reportedly at 3am IST. So while there were no investor association as such, the large chunk of Financial investors in Satyam played their part in reversing the deal..
Subrat: one of the people who seem to know everything about everything. Jai ho!
in times of such financial traahi-traahi, ur posts provide succor and humor.
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been a while mate. what u been upto? drop a line.
Omprakash, Sethu – Thanks. Where indedd is Kader Khan?
Navdeep – all well?
Roodrow: In this case it was the Institutional investors (FIIS, MFs, Brokerages) which raised an alarm. Had it been good for them, it might not have caused such a ruckus. There are many instances where the small investors are screwed in India and companies get away by just keeping the institutions happy. Shareholder activism hasn’t arrived yet in India
Kenny: It’s hard work but someone’s got to do it
Dabba: All well. Dropped a line
Subrat..as usual, very aptly put! Now, the saga of Dariya Dil shall begin..tears, Pushpa, I hate tears!!
Its all about loving your company here Subrat.
So i guess we have the next Vipul Shah movie( since KJo has decided to move away from family flicks).
AB playing a biziness tycoon, who wants to hand it over to his beta Akshay, but bad FII’s put a spanner in the deal, and the Family fights out it against those bad pardesis. Yeah movie will be set in London, and to provide a counter example of the Bad Bad Paschim, we will have a family, where Ungrateful Aulad, report their Dad( maybe played by Rishi Kapoor) to the cops, because Dad does not give the company to them.
Voila i got a script ready here.
BTW i was an ex employee of Satyam, and for all of Raju’s talk about professionalism and corporate Governance, it is no better than a Sarkari company. The bureaucracy, the back biting, the internal politics are as bad as in any Sarkaari organization.
Subrat, that’s a very fine example of life imitating art. I always used to feel that filmi influences were superficial
Great read!
Awesome post Subrat!
And Kader Khan looks straight into the camera, asks the camera man to zoomin and says to you:
Ye baap betay ki jodi toh bahut shatir nikli. Ye toh capitalism ki woh gandi makhiya hai jo paisay kay Halway say aisay chipak gaye hai ki unhey public rupee halwaee kay kamzor haath ka zara bhi darr nahi raha. Bin bina rahay hai dono is tarah…
And he would have gone one for another couple of minutes. Miss him!
Sudhir and Subrat,
thanks for the clarification.
LOL @Subrat and @Vinayak.
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and Kader Khan would have probably added stuff like ‘latkhori’, ‘paisa’, ‘rass’, ‘keeda’ etc. instead of Capitalism etc
Used to really like his wise analogies/metaphors