At The Helm: A Memoir by V. Krishnamurthy; Collins Business; Price: Rs.599; Pages 305 Although Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) — free India’s iconic first prime minister — dug deep foundations for the nation, which emerged from the crude vivisection of the country in the last year (1947) of almost three centuries of rampant loot and beggarisation, he made an egregious error in ignoring the region’s free enterprise tradition and entrepreneurial capability proven over several millennia, and taking the country down the socialist path. Therefore despite newly independent India being endowed with several large and prospering private sector companies such as Tata Iron & Steel, Tata Airlines, Hindustan Motors and Hindustan Aviation, Scindia Shipping, Birla Jute, and DCM, which had grown in the teeth of often unfair competition during the British Raj, their development was suppressed by an elaborate web of licence-permit-quota regulations. The people’s savings were canalised into heavy industry public sector enterprises (PSEs) manufacturing steel, power equipment, fertilisers, and machine tools in a foolish quest for “self-reliance”, which completely ignored pioneer economist Adam Smith’s theory of international trade. Yet if post-independence India’s PSEs haven’t collapsed in a heap, it’s because of a clutch of high-performing chief executives who in spite of having to manage huge, unwieldy corporations usually sited in backward areas because of political considerations, rose to the occasion and managed to pull them out of shallows and misery. Among the leading lights were V. Krishnamurthy, S.M. Patil (HMT), Air Marshal P.C. Lal (Indian Airlines), K. Appuswamy (Air India), and R.C. Bhargava (Maruti Udyog). But the greatest of them all is undoubtedly V. Krishnamurthy, who laid the foundation for three hugely important PSEs which have not only survived in the post-1991 era of economic liberalisation and deregulation, but continue to make valuable contributions to the Indian economy viz Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, SAIL (formerly Steel Authority of India), and Maruti Udyog (now Maruti Suzuki Ltd). Fortunately even if belatedly, the nonagenarian VK has penned his memoirs which present an insightful ringside view of how he succeeded against all odds in promoting and/or establishing these navratna PSEs. Born into a prosperous Brahmin family in rural Tamil Nadu which lost its wealth during the Great Depression of the 1930s and was forced to migrate to Madras (now Chennai), Krishnamurthy didn’t get a great education, graduating with a diploma in electrical engineering from the city’s CNT Technical Institute in 1943. VK began his career as a temporary technician in charge of electrical installations at two airfields during the Second World War and after the war, landed a job in the electrical department of the Madras Presidency. From these modest beginnings, how he rose to engineer the growth and development of India’s most respected public sector companies, serve as secretary to the government of India and later revolutionise India’s sputtering automobile industry, is well chronicled in this engaging autobiography. VK’s first break came in 1960, when after a two year stint with the Planning Commission, he was posted to Bhopal as officer on special duty…
