THE Hindujas finally had their way with visiting Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. The earlier government could not disregard the family. And they showed in London last week that this one wont either.
THE Hindujas finally had their way with visiting Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. The earlier government could not disregard the family. And they showed in London last week that this one wont either.
Frantic officials at the Indian High Commission had to shuffle the itinerant ministers programme at the last minute to make room for a Hinduja protest.
That protest arose after a report that Chidambaram was not meeting NRIs during his visit to London. The list of those who Chidambaram would meet was long and impressive. Chief executives of almost every major British manufacturing company at a lunch meeting hosted by the CII, a power breakfast with investment managers hosted by Goldman Sachs, another lunch pow-wow with more investment managers under the auspices of BZW, still more meetings with groups invited by Cazanone and Morgan Stanley, chats with officials from the Department of Trade and Industry and the Foreign Office, tete-a-tetes with members of the Association of British Insurers. But no NRIs.
Who woke up to this fact a couple of days before the visit? Shantoo Ruparell, a leading consultant on NRI investment in India, said that Chidambaram and the NRIs were missing a good opportunity to meet and talk. Ignoring NRIs would be Indias loss, he said.
Shrichand Hinduja reacted promptly. He sent a copy of the report to the office of the finance minister by courier, and followed it up with a telephone call in which, he told some NRIs, he expressed himself "plainly". Meanwhile, Gopichand Hinduja spoke of a possible boycott by NRIs the next time an Indian minister came around; they often do.
India House had to quickly make amends. An interview with Financial Times was rescheduled and relocated at India House to make a half-hour with NRIs possible. Since there was no time to post invitations, many were faxed, stamped "urgent". So the NRI meeting happened, with Shrichand and Gopichand Hinduja in prominent attendance. And then another meeting was squeezed in, this one just between the Hindujas and Chidambaram. The Hindujas did not get the hour they wanted, but 15 minutes still made a point.
The successful insistence of the Hindujas has now turned out to be a mild embarrassment for India House. In deference to its sensitivities, Gopichand Hinduja has said that the family had little to do with the Chidambaram-NRI meeting. India House has called it a routine meeting, arranged through government protocol, not Hinduja provocation. But to NRIs here, the bureaucratic curtain was a rather transparent cover over what they see as Hinduja leadership. After all, the office of the Hindujas at New Zealand House near Piccadilly Circus has been a regular port of call for visiting Indian ministers and chief ministers through the years of the last government. The Indian leaders who paid their respects were not from the Congress party alone. Now that these parties have come together, the old story looks set to continue.
If there is an exception, it is Jyoti Basu and his colleagues from the Left. Somnath Chatterjee who found himself sailing on the same boat as the Hindujas on the Thames last summer had said then that he felt like jumping overboard when he discovered the identity of his hosts. Home Minister Indrajit Gupta was on the same boat, displeased but with no urge to drown in the Thames. But most others look set to sail along with the Hindujas.