ET Awards 2012: Saluting the sardars of Corporate India

CIRCA 1975. A 19-yearold matriculate arrived in Mumbai with almost nothing but his dreams to make it big. Walking along Marine Drive one day, the young scrap dealer from rural Bihar was spellbound by the sight of the Trident, then known as the Oberoi Sheraton. Entirely innocent of English, and nervous because of grandeur he was unaccustomed to, he didn’t have the gumption to enter Mumbai’s iconic hotel.

Thirty-seven years later, on Saturday evening, Anil Agarwal, the scrap dealer-turned-industrialist, didn’t have to worry about language skills as he stepped up to the podium to receive the coveted Economic Times Business Leader of the Year award. “I have a mother and a grandmother at home with me,” he began, slowly at first. “They say to me sometimes, beta tum itna kaam karte ho, tumko kabhi award nahin milta hai,” he said before holding up the trophy to big applause.

Full Coverage: ET Awards for Corporate Excellence 2012
This year, cynics and Cassandras may be forgiven for dismissing the idea of celebrating business success at a time of deep economic gloom. Prices are high, interest rates are not coming down and investments have dried up. We will be lucky to end the year with a GDP of 6.5%. However, an enduring fact about the Indian economy is the stubborn resilience and never-say-die attitude of entrepreneurs.

On Saturday night, there was plenty of Indian grit and ingenuity on display: Agarwal’s rags-to-riches success, which has made one of India’s biggest and most aggressive industrialists; Aditya Puri’s use of technology and precision-marketing, which has kept HDFC Bank’s cash counters jingling even in times of economic distress; Devi Prasad Shetty’s zeal in creating a successful health care enterprise; Anshu Jain’s financial wizardry leading to his position as the steward of one of the world’s biggest banks; PRS Oberoi’s obsession with quality service.

India Inc’s Vital Signs Strong

“We have built some hotels, but it is not bricks and mortar. Our people, who have made our hotels known worldwide,” Oberoi said in his acceptance speech. The winners represent some of the best qualities that India Inc is known for— passion and resilience. Their success showed that corporate India is not in intensive care but only suffering a temporary bout of flu. Its vital signs are strong.

Even the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, perhaps imbibing the spirit of the evening, showed a different side of his personality as he articulated the government’s resolve in maintaining the momentum of economic reforms launched in September.

The architect of India's economic reforms outlined the new steps planned to restore economic health, singling out the infrastructure sector for special mention. “We have taken several steps in the past few months. Some of the steps were considered by many of our critics as politically impossible. We bit the bullet and did what we felt was the right thing to do.

Undoubtedly, more needs to be done,” he said after honouring the winners of The Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence 2012. Singh also referred to an initiative of The Economic Times last year, which sought to refocus the collective energies of policymakers and businesses on the task of economic rejuvenation. The government has moved forward “substantively” on most of the items in the 10-point ‘Agenda for Renewal and Reform’, he said.

“I hope we will get editorial approval for this,” he remarked to laughter and applause. This year, too, the awards ceremony kept up its focus on the same theme and contained a discussion on 'Agenda for Reforms'.

Cabinet minister Anand Sharma and Kapil Sibal, Unique Identity Authority chairman Nandan Nilekani and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia were part of the panel, which answered questions from HDFC's Deepak Parekh, KV Kamath of ICICI Bank and Infosys, and Sunil Bharti Mittal of Airtel. Union Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal pinned the blame for policy paralysis on the opposition, the media, the Comptroller & Auditor General and the courts.

“If there is any paralysis, it is because parliament is not functioning. If the judiciary starts determining the price of commodities which have to be determined in the market, we are in trouble. The source of the problem is not the government,” he said. Part of the difficulty, Ahluwalia said, is because government agencies occupy their own little worlds and are not working towards a common game plan.

“Nobody is taking a holistic view.” Many economists predict that India's economy will grow by only about 5.5% in the fiscal year to March 2013, its slowest pace in nearly a decade. Inflation continues to be stubbornly high, while the government is having to strain every sinew to keep the fiscal and current account deficits at manageable levels.