Whatever the Odds by K.P. Singh with Ramesh Menon & Raman Swamy; HarperCollins; Price: Rs.699; 323 pp One of the reasons why post-independence India’s nefarious licence-permit-quota regime has flourished for over 60 years and counting, is that businessmen and industry leaders who have experienced its most egregious excesses, don’t write memoirs and autobiographies. If towards the end of their innings they had taken the trouble to tell all and name and shame the architects and prime practitioners of high potential India’s neta-babu kleptocracy, the industry and business regulatory system would have self-corrected instead of being stuck in the rut of the so-called Hindu rate of growth (3.5 percent per annum) for over four decades, during which period the country’s population tripled. Perhaps the first genuine, tell-all business memoir to emerge from Indian industry was written by H.P. Nanda (The Days of My Years, 1992), the late promoter-chairman of the Delhi-based Escorts Ltd, who documented the manner in which he had fended off the government-supported hostile takeover of his company in 1983-84 by the London-based NRI Swraj Paul. To write his autobiography — the highlight of which was Paul’s aggressive takeover bid — Nanda roped in professional journalists to style the narrative. Following this tradition, Delhi-based real estate tycoon K.P. Singh, until recently routinely ranked among India’s wealthiest businessmen for having conceptualised and engineered construction of the new township of Gurgaon on the outskirts of Delhi, roped in journalists Ramesh Menon and Raman Swamy to pen a lucid and captivating life story. Whatever the Odds narrates the Dick Whittington story of a village boy who started life as a barefoot student in rural Haryana, near the city of Bulandshahr, went to England to study engineering, transformed into a dashing cavalry officer and later a real estate tycoon who was — and is — the driving force behind the metamorphosis of dry and arid Gurgaon, Haryana, into arguably the finest new township of contemporary India. For youth and the growing number of business management students with dreams of making it big in the business world, there are significant lessons to be learned from this riveting autobiography which hasn’t received the reviews and exposure it deserves. The first insight to be derived from Whatever the Odds is the importance of sports and life skills education, a conspicuous deficiency of contemporary youth. From a young age, K.P. who confesses to never having been “really interested in classrooms and books” was encouraged to play tennis and hockey, among other games. And from his uncle Raghubir who was a captain in the Indian cavalry and ADC to Lord Wavell, the war-time viceroy of India, he learned (with the active encouragement of the viceroy) to become an expert equestrian. “Sports opened up numerous windows for me as did the social graces I learnt at the clubs. Sports also taught me my first lessons in leadership as well as teamwork, both so essential for a successful career,” writes Singh. The good sports education he received in his youth impacted…
