He also took the CBS crew to his hometown of Lahore and, in what can best be described as a Slumdog moment, said: “See how hard things are? Power’s going out, it’s 108 degrees. It’s tough. I think the biggest impediment here is that hope, getting to the next stage, it doesn’t matter how hard you work, there are forces that kind of prevent you from being the best you can be.”
What he missed out, probably because he has not experienced it, are the racist ‘attacks’ on the rich. I use the term racist in a broad sense of anti-elitist apartheid. Today, it is travesty to compare the two gentlemen, but bring Khan back to Pakistan, let him fail at just one thing and the same people who would have partaken of his magnanimity would disappear. The silence of the wolves.
This is happening with Mallya, a man who poses with girls in bikinis, brings out the famous swimsuit calendars which many people would like to have on their walls, parties in his yacht, jets in his private carrier, part owns a car racing team and owns horses. No one ever had a problem with any of these, until his Kingfisher Airline started losing ground. He hasn’t paid his staff. He owes money to banks. He let down his shareholders. He is, according to ancient Indian wisdom, a sinner who needs to do penance instead of attending the Grand Prix, which he is, to a great extent, responsible for making popular in India. Interestingly, he is not pulled up for donating some more gold for a temple door during this same period of ‘mourning’.
He is absolutely answerable to the government, the ministry of aviation, shareholders, the staff, and, to an extent, his loyal clientele. I am setting aside all the technical, legal and contractual issues for now.
Mallya is not the failure he is made out to be; he is a success that has failed once. This is not just his misfortune, but of how we view wealth in our society. On a flight to Delhi, as his image appeared on screen, the scion of an industrial house sitting next to me said, “This man is amazing. But the best way to fail is to start an airline.” This was in 2007. Kingfisher’s staff loved being part of the Midas Mallya empire.
Did everything he touch turn into gold? He wasn’t a self-made man. That is the problem. Most self-made men are propped up by several factors. Ambition cannot exist in a vacuum, or every person selling lemonade would be lauded. Dhirubhai Ambani had to fix deals, buy people at the very top. He did not benefit from the Licence Permit Raj; he engineered it.
Shahid Khan did not inherit money. His success cannot be reduced at the altar of racism, which he dealt with an “it’s not really my problem, it’s their problem” attitude. But it is time to call out our own ‘brownies’ who earn points over those better off than them with a flick of self-righteousness.
Almost all big industries are legacies; most of them have been in cahoots with the powers that rule. While India is ready to bring in foreign investment, indigenous private enterprise has always had to either be obsequious or play with the government. The hitch is that Mallya does not know how to be the good guy. He tried the regular route to what we consider respectable — a Rajya Sabha seat from his home state of Karnataka, promoting the Art of Living, visiting temples. Those who thought there was a transformation did not see the smokescreen arising from the incense sticks he used to light up at spiritual ‘dos’. This was “part of the brand building” he had confessed to regarding his other excesses.
There are many industrialists who just go about their business and do not need to show off. Mallya may have houses overseas but he never quite got the respectability of the Hindujas and the Mittals. He, therefore, did what someone with a lot of loose change does in India: started throwing it around. It was junta-pleasing time, a junta that has the history of such largesse from the rajas. He caricatured himself before anybody else could.
And he got to places before many could. Today, when the guy from Domino’s brings you your thin-crust, time to flashback to the 1980s when Mallya started a pizza chain; it fell flat on its pan. A businessman analysed that this man could start companies but not maintain them.
Does it mean that he can only build on what is already there, inherited from his father Vittal Mallya, who had abandoned him as a child and then reclaimed him? He knows our mentality. We like sob stories, so he used this tragedy and the stories about starting from scratch at the office, omitting the details about feather pillows and fluffy duvets when he got home.
It was a neat tactic, but for that you’ve got to be ahead of the herd. In the ‘let’s feel the pinch’ department, Mallya is a dud. Unlike the Narayan Murthys and Azim Premjis who subtly do so by making a song and dance about travelling economy, Mallya was attending the Indian Derby in a flaming orange jacket and bling.
His haughtiness has not reduced. It makes us angry, not because we care about his staff. We just hate it when, besides money, people can afford arrogance, too.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 3rd, 2012.
COMMENTS (35)
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One more absurd piece from FV.. There is no 'racism or /broad sense of anti-elitist apartheid'. The guy acted irresponsibly, not paying his staff, letting down his investors and inconveniencing the public. The whole model of KF was wrong - enough analysis has been done in the Indian media which FV should have been aware of. Bringing in extraneous factors such as his religious beliefs was unnecessary and do not shed any light on why Mallya failed in this venture.
Pathetic article
@bball if iam a middle class earning INR 100K and showing off my big Car and flashy life-style,while not paying my maid and chauffeur their salaries for months forcing them to commit suicide,then i don't think people would applaud me for my acts.....
Farzana, You should have read this before you wrote the piece.
http://kaipullai.com/2011/11/28/the-curious-case-of-vijay-mallya-and-his-bailout-and-one-more-scam/
Racism against the rich
Really?
Now I have seen it all.
Murthy & Premji do a song and dance about travelling economy class?? That's news!!
They never publicise their frugal living habits or their massive charity activities. Some papers picked this trait and played it up.
Even the weddings of their children were low key affairs.
@Author Maybe next time write about the victims of Mallya or his ethical conduct instead of defending him and twisting political terms to your benefit.Everyone works hard but its only the lucky ones that make it big in life.
yes.. his donation to temple was despicable.
I think my 10th grade Cousin should start writing some articles for Express Tribune as well after reading this article. The usage of the words Racism and Apartheid really amazed me.
This article is like Mallya's failed ventures.
No Indian newspaper is ready to publish the articles of this woman?
I am still scratching my head - What exactly is this lady saying?
The author is making a point that we, the middle class, love to throw stones at the successful perhaps out of their hautyness, and perhaps also out of jealousy. We show off to other our great houses, our great car and our great jobs, which makes it sound like we are really really important and are doing ground-breaking work. Whereas we are being paid what for it? 1 lakh in India/pakistan? or $80k or 100k in u.s.? Whereas someone who has elevated himself to the point where he employs thousands of people - middle class professionals like us -- we easily comment that he doesn't deserve it or that's not much of an accomplishment. Of course he needs to backpay his employs and compensate for delayed payments. But if he ain't special, then what about the blinkard world that view ourselves to be in.
The bigger worry for India now is from the likes of DLF,Ambanies
Mallaya thought he is Richard branson & guess what..he was destined to fail..
the author seems to have a habit of writing pages and pages without making any sense.
Painfully contrived. He is absolutely answerable to the government, the ministry of aviation, shareholders, the staff, and, to an extent, his loyal clientele. I am setting aside all the technical, legal and contractual issues for now. This is the problem with this piece; there is only one issue that Mallya needs to address which is fulfilling his responsibilities to employees and shareholders; his (predictable) personal life in the meantime is of no interest; when he refuses to pay salaries but continues to live life king-size, it naturally attracts negative attention from the media, as this op-ed proves; if he can live with that, more power to him. Anti-elistist movements can be called just that - by your logic any movement that has its principal support base in the proletariat would be racist. I also don't see the point of bringing Mallya's religious beliefs and actions into the picture - or do they play some mysterious role in the losses his airline business is making? Further, there are several business houses which have been expanded by the 2nd/ 3rd generation scions into large and profitable empires - AV Birla group and Wipro come almost immediately to mind; do not try to establish some random connection where none exists.
I think Ms Varsey has written an excellent piece. She has just laid some facts on the table and tried to show even the third side of the coin. On Mallya: the higher, the harder the fall. On Shahid's comments about the life of some rich in Karachi: its true, they are haunted and despised as if some of them are rich at the poor people's cost. I tend to agree that no matter how hard one tries in Pakistan, it is miraculous to make money with fair means - the opposite may be true elsewhere, like the U.S. The uneven distribution of wealth is a constant of history. We can try to alleviate poverty by making Pakistan a truly welfare state. That means: 1) the rich pay taxes - especially the untaxed feudal elite; 2) People don't change sect months before Zakaat day; 3) Taxes and Zakaat are not eaten up by the government and spent and distributed with justice; 4) and regulate the economy. As Anatol Lieven said, "Pakistan is a hard country."
Pesudo intellect
There is a sub-textual metaphor that oozes from even single of FV's column. I have gone from being mildly pained to being scalded by the tone and tenor of these articles. For starters most people never really cared for the staff since the middle class employees by now understand the volatility of free markets (Satyam was enough to awaken the naysayers). What is problematic is that there was a huge exposure of Public Sector banks to the airline long after its wings were down and out. Such exposure raises pertinent questions. Also government initiative to liberalize FDI in aviation and other actions seem to suggest that government mistook Kingfisher for Indian airlines.
There is no song and dance about the economies of the IT czars and similarly no sensible person bats an eyelid for the opulence of Mallya. His display of wealth is akin to the princes of yore and we are used to such shenanigans. Mallya is a big boy and he will weather the storm and the last thing he needs is someone's patronizing defense.
And your impish observations at the end left me ROTFLMAO. Please stay in Delhi for a while and you will for sure realize the that Indians can in fact afford arrogance. In fact arrogance is cheap to the point that most people come off as obscenely rude.
P.S. I always had a hard time trying to digest the biased coverage of Foxnews and the paradoxical nature of having their tag line as fair and balanced. I am starting to understand that "manufacturing balance" and "fairness" is something people might actually partake for intellect thereby attracting a larger audience. So if one is to manufacture balance one may need to put Sally Kohn on one side and FV on the other. But the point that we miss is that sometimes there is no balance and there are no two sides to a story because stories are abstract as opposed to a 2-D coin. This entire column tried hard to shed light on the other side but actually there was none.
churning class or group war as usual
Also another tidbit/ anecdote, He is gifted with a second life, which he is leading today. I remember this very well, some time in 2003, during the campaigning for the assembly elections in 2003 in the state of Karnataka for his own political party which he had set up then, Yes he had started that too which flopped miserably, Both Mr Mallya and Sanjay Khan (of the Sword of Tippu Sultan Fame Serial) had survived a helicopter plunge from almost 300 to 400 feet. It is still a miracle to this day as to how every one on board survived. Also his other misadventures were setting up a Bollywood Production house and producing few movies, I remember vividly one movie had Abhishekh Bachan and the other one Bipasha Basu, again the projects were total Disasters. It seams the less said the better about him these days. Rgds P
Wow. Capitalism galore! A horrible "defense" of a person sitting at the top of the hierarchy. Either the author has shares in the airlines, or there's a Freudian i-shall-be-a-billionaire-too fantasy going on here. Despicable.
Remember a joke he had said on a TV show or was quoted in a newspaper, dont remember where exactly. The joke....." How to become a Millionaire?, Become a Billionaire first and start an airline company, You would for sure become a Millionaire one day"
Unsure what the point is. His employees have not been paid for 7 months - so we should feel sorry for Mallya because his Dad neglected him? ALso please do not use the race card where it does not apply, it diminishes the harm that true racism leads to.
What nonsense! Mallya can do whatever the heck ke wants to do, I don't think any Indian cares. But his staff, some of whom commmited suicide, must be paid and his bank loans must be repaid before he goes partying in his yacht. Is that too much to ask?