Rahul Bajaj (1938-2022) was an atypical business tycoon of his era. While most of his peers feasted on distortions in the license permit raj, Bajaj stood out for building a business empire on the simple proposition that two-wheeler mobility was most suited for a developing country like India.As a business journalist in Bombay in the 1980s, Bajaj was my perennial go-to target if one needed to hear anything original about the Indian economy. Sitting at Bajaj Bhavan in Nariman Point during his frequent visits to Bombay, he would use his tall frame and booming voice to maximum effect. Frequently interrupted by aides and telephone calls from some politician in Delhi, Bajaj would drive home the point that there was a viable economic path forward for India if the government simply got out of the way. Sure, there was huge self-interest in his dissection of the state of affairs but there was also bold, original thinking.The seed for this was planted early. Bajaj would recall that when he returned to India in the mid-1960s after securing a Harvard MBA, still a rarity for an Indian of that era, he felt helpless and was adrift for a few years. While Nehru had passed away, India was still in the thrall of Nehruvian socialism, and it was not clear if there was a viable role for the private sector.Bajaj of course belonged to a storied Indian business family whose grandfather had fought alongside Mahatma Gandhi in the freedom struggle. He could have coasted along, as many of his peers did, selling inferior products and benefiting from the family lineage in securing incentives from the government. Bajaj would say that he became obsessed with the idea that India needed a revolution on two wheels. Just as the business model of airlines was to place passenger bums on seats, Bajaj would roar with laughter that his singular obsession was to place as many Indian bums on his marquee two and three-wheelers.Credit: Bajaj HeritageI was a junior reporter for Business India in the early 80s when I met Bajaj for the first time. He was going to be awarded the magazine’s then coveted “Businessman of the year” award and I was accompanying senior editors to Pune for a sit down. What I most recall most about that interaction, which went on for several hours, was Bajaj’s passion for understanding the evolving tastes of the Indian consumer. He fretted, for example, that many middle-aged Indian men who bought his products were becoming obese and would be unable to sit on his scooters (this comment was punctuated by loud laughter). He had the “perfect solution” for this demographic, he claimed by showing us plans for the Bajaj Conti, a scooter with a larger base to enable fatter Indians to travel safely. “This is my aloo paratha demographic” he declared.The man also understood the virtues of what would today be regarded as viral marketing by attention-grabbing launch events for his products. For the launch of his motorcycle venture with Japan’s Kawasaki at the President Hotel, Bajaj got a stuntman to drive the roaring two-wheeler on stage (with attendant smoke and loud music). One journalist sitting in the front row fled for safety believing that the motorcycle would crash into him. He became fodder for much levity from Bajaj who would remind the journalist at future events that a vehicle was headed in his direction.The Bombay clubWhen India eventually opened up in 1991, Bajaj was regarded as an unenthusiastic advocate for reforms and indeed regarded by many as eager to protect the Indian private sector’s privileges against the coming invasion by foreign firms. He was the driving force behind the “Bombay Club”, where a group of Indian tycoons led by Bajaj advocated for a level-playing field for Indian business and a slower pace of opening. Plans for the club were hatched at the exclusive Belvedere, the cossetted members-only club for the Bombay elite at The Oberoi, which was a symbol for why things should change.What was his reasoning for protecting the domestic private sector, when he had pushed for greater competition throughout his career? Bajaj’s position, which was reasonable up to a point, was that he had positioned Bajaj Auto for three decades for precisely the moment when the Indian government would see the light of day and opened the economy. He wanted domestic business to benefit from the first wave of liberalisation, which he claimed would last “no more than a decade” before a “gradual opening up” for foreign firms. Bajaj feared that Indian business with its many distortions and dysfunction would simply not be able to withstand competition from more formidable and better resourced foreign rivals.Credit: Bajaj Heritage.While many disagreed with his thesis, Bajaj to his credit would not shy away from acknowledging to me many years later that the problem with many of his peers at the “Bombay Club” was that they resisted the fundamental idea of competition from any source, domestic or foreign. What I took away from my many encounters with Bajaj over the years is that while India may have changed socially and politically, more drastically in the last decade than in the past, he held on to a few fundamental tenets about the idea of Indian democracy. Bajaj believed that nobody should be sanctioned for speaking out and his public intervention that the Modi government had created an atmosphere of fear was surely a defining moment for corporate India because it exposed the spinelessness of his peers.I met him sporadically over the years, mainly at the annual business ritual at Davos, where his initial reaction to me leaving journalism was disbelief. “You have become a babu” he declared when I told him that I worked for the IMF. He also had the grace to give me a hand when I skidded and fell on an icy sidewalk. “The private sector is coming to the babu’s rescue,” he told me and walked away with his signature laugh.Vasuki Shastry, a business journalist in Bombay in the 1980s, is currently an Associate Asia Fellow at Chatham House. Shastry is the author of Has Asia Lost It? Dynamic Past, Turbulent Future.
