Middlemen should be banned

By Vijay Mallya, Chairman, UB Group

The chef’s cap was not the only hat Vijay Mallya donned at the ET Cookout. Speaking about industry’s search for land, he looked at both sides of the story and asked for a transparent policy as a solution. “When I took over UB it was the height of the licence raj,” he remembered. Companies set up plants in remote areas “in pursuit of a licence to manufacture”.

Today, the private sector is demanding large tracts of land for projects. Citing international examples, he said in the US, if a state government decides to “earmark land for an infrastructure or other project, it has to give 1.5 times the current economic return or value of the land as the price to the owner.” The lack of a similar policy in India is what causes most of the problems. “This lack of policy extends to labour issues which do not provide for an exit route,” he said, citing the example of the time his three liquor plants in Andhra Pradesh were shut down due to prohibition but he could not lay off the staff.

“There are contradictions in the policy which need to be sorted out and the country’s development cannot be held hostage to the need of the land owner,” he said, adding, “but the land owners emotional and financial needs must be met at the same time. A transparent policy will take care of these problems.”

While canvassing in his constituency, he said, he came across farmers who killed themselves because they were neck-deep in debt. “These middlemen are responsible for our farmers’ plight,” said Mr Mallya. “Ban them and make the farmers go to the PSU banks for loans — that’s the way ahead. There’s a lot of cancer in the system.”

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