JANUARY 01, 2020

By Vijay Kumar

RAHUL Bajaj, 81, one of India's richest businessmen, knows how to make scooters, but unfortunately is not good at praising people, especially the government ones. He himself admitted this while raising all kinds of wrong questions at the ET Summit 2019. With three top ministers present, Rahul Bajaj blurted out something like this-

"Nobody from our industrialist friends will speak, I will say openly… You (government) are doing good work, but despite that we don't have the confidence that you will appreciate if we criticize you openly."

In spite of his long years in the industry, Rahul Bajaj has not understood that nobody and least of all, the powers that be, would appreciate criticism. That is why, we find business gatherings attended by captains of industry and top government functionaries including ministers, a good occasion for the businessmen to express their genuine feelings of gratitude to the benign ministers and commissioners.

Rahul Bajaj's grandfather was considered by Mahatma Gandhi as his fifth son. Rahul Bajaj remembers being in the Mahatma's lap. Rahul Bajaj at the age of 30 became the CEO of Bajaj Auto and unlike industrialists who lived in the metros, he lived with his family in a small house in the small village of Akurdi near Pune. He lived through the licence raj, when you had to get a permit even to produce more.

Many of us remember that the Bajaj scooter had a ten-year delivery period. It meant instead of going to a dealer and driving your scooter home, you had to make a booking, and your turn would come probably after ten years. This scooter became a prized commodity in all of India, especially northern India, to be given as a gift, or as part of dowry, at the time of a wedding. You couldn't get married in northern India, in a middle-class family, unless the girl's family was ready to give a Bajaj scooter. Now, that would be a ten-year delivery period. So, there were only two ways to do it: people started booking a Bajaj scooter the moment they had a child born in the family, or people purchased in the black market at double the price. But why couldn't they produce more scooters? The Government would not give permission. 'Excess capacity' was frowned upon. Once Rahul Bajaj said, "You could expand, but a lot of things were required- bribes -and we would never give a bribe, so our growth was slow." But he added, "What about the industrialists? There are corrupt industrialists as well. If the minister took money, somebody gave him the money."

Was Rahul Bajaj speaking for the Indian Businessman? Is the Indian Businessman afraid of the Government? His son Rajiv Bajaj says, "Yes, he has always been uncommonly courageous in this respect and people do admire him for it. ………. But nobody joins him; they conveniently cheer from the side-lines." That is what happens when somebody raises his voice against the mighty.

I have a personal story of another industrialist. Let us see it in his own words:-

I was born in a small village, but had the good fortune of good college and university education. At that time, fifty years ago, the choice of youngsters in life was either agriculture, if you were not good at studies or a government job if you were good. After a brilliant academic march, I got a job in a premier PSU. After working there for about fifteen years, strokes of patriotism hit me and I decided that I should be doing something for my village, rather than roaming around the world as a PSU executive. My colleagues thought I was insane and/or foolish and told me that I could become the CMD of the PSU. (which exalted status three of my juniors attained.) I quit the job and came back to my village to start a small factory with capital from friends and relatives and my own savings. Very soon, I realised that finding oil in Gujarat was far more easy than getting through the maze of the omnipotent and omnipresent government. Nothing moved unless you bribed the smallest to the very big. And how do you bribe? Where do you get the unaccounted money to bribe the babus and netas? I had to generate black money. Soon I became an expert in dealing with and handling the powers. My colleague entrepreneurs made me their leader and used my services as a trouble-shooter. I would never criticise or find fault with any government officer or minister. I would fawn before the lowest government functionary and shower praises even when they do what is required of them after I satisfied them. I am considered successful and am friends with many mighty government servants. I have always worked to the satisfaction of these powerful servants .

I am seventy now. Looking back, I regret the days and nights spent in the corridors struggling to get whatever was legally my right. Unfortunately, both my sons have succeeded me in this business. I only hope they have a better life.

Gurudev said, where the mind is without fear ….

But then can we live without fear of God and fear of Government?

An interesting judgement in a Bajaj case

Excerpts from a Bombay High Court judgement in a Bajaj Auto case delivered in 1991 - 2003-TIOL-1460-HC-MUM-CX

1. 'Bajaj' is a by-word for many Indian industrial Products. Among them are those on wheels, Two wheelers and Three wheelers as they are popularly referred to. Manufacture of these wheeled vehicles entails enormous imports. Imported steel is itself a prominent component in the manufacturing activity of the petitioners - Bajaj Auto Ltd. The petitioner-Company has its factories in Pune and Aurangabad.

2. The manufactured products are exigible to excisable duty. Self-Removal procedure is convenient, alike for administration and the assessee. That was resorted to by the petitioners as well. So long as the movements are correct, the accounts accurate and the assessment reasonable, everything will go smooth. Any doubt or dispute in the system will have its halting effect. The petitioner Company had a rub with the Department about the duty payable under the Central Excises & Salt Act. The dispute was not in relation to the material imported nor in the final products taken out of the factories. It centered round the vistas of "waste" as the term is understood in Excise parlance in the relevant context.

3. The matter had received attention at one stage by someone fairly high in the hierarchy. The decision was in favour of the petitioner Company. The passage of time and possession of further materials apparently prompted the Department to have a second-thought on the issue. They took the view that a larger duty was due from the petitioner Company. The feel is not enough. A final verdict is necessary. Many steps have taken and many hurdles crossed, before a final verdict is reached. The very first one is for the Departmental authority of the lowest rung; he has to come to a definite, even though tentative, conclusion. Here again, the procedural safeguards - the hallmark of a fair regime of the Rule of Law - require effective and full opportunity being afforded to a person before even a paise is taken from his pocket. Issuance of a show cause notice is one such preliminary step for effectively ensuring the observance of the principles of natural justice. Ordinarily, no assessee could have a complaint on the issue of such a notice. He should only be too happy to have an opportunity to show his palm and his cards and to earn a good chit as it were, from the Department. The petitioner-company felt otherwise, - It has its own reason for feeling so. The very jurisdiction according to the petitioner-Company, for issue of such a notice was non-existent. If power be lacking, it is only an avoidable waste for the petitioner to wander along the corridors of office and to climb up the different and difficult steps in the difficult ladders of officialdom.

4. After furnishing a reply, the petitioner company assailed the notice by approaching this Court. A Bench of this Court issued Rule, the objections of the Revenue notwithstanding.

5. The Revenue did not take kindly to that order. The matter was taken up by Special Leave, in S.L.P. (Civil) No. 8123 of 1991. The Supreme Court by its order dated 10th May, 1991 directed the High Court to dispose of the Writ Petition finally within three months from the date of the order.

7. The petitioner company has to meet a threshold objection. A right royal road is available to the petitioner to take his wheelers, with halting points at the adjudicating authority, appellate/revisional authorities. That is a right conferred by the statute itself. If he feels aggrieved even by the ultimate order passed by the authorities or the Tribunal, a gate-way is open to the High Court, and a narrower one even to the Supreme Court. In such circumstances, a party would ordinarily be directed to pursue that well defined path in his litigational journey. Bye-lanes or blind alleys should not ordinarily be resorted to by a party.

31. History contains a Kaleidoscopic view of many curious events. The very concept of the Fundamental Rights and the Constitutional Courts, would appear to have gathered significance and momentum from time when the people in Princely States were as eager to move into the main stream of the democratic set up as their brethren of British India, as the area was known at that time. Mahatma Gandhi, who was to sit at the Round Table, and talk on behalf of the Indian People, was furnished with a note for safe-guarding the rights of the people in the Princely States. That Note continued a reference to the concept of the Fundamental Rights. Later agitations were organised for the realisation of those goals. Gandhiji had led it in Rajkot and Bajaj in Jaipur. (See British Policy Towards India 1905-1939 by Ashton) Soon the country witnessed the ushering in of a Constitution guaranteeing to the citizens precious Fundamental Rights. Two of the Bajajs have sought reliefs in this case from this Court for the enforcement of their fundamental and legal rights. We have considered their contentions, demanding those reliefs. We have ultimately come to the conclusion that having regard to the larger aspects of the working of the Constitution and the restraints which are necessary to keep the Constitutional machinery within its workable sphere, that immediate and direct reliefs should be declined, and that the Petitioners should be directed to pursue another forum where they could get remedy, if deserved. The Writ Petition is dismissed.

Ultimately, Bajaj won - you can't beat a Bajaj!

Happy New Year

Until next week