Vote Merchants

From bankrolling politics, businessmen are now taking a chance at getting elected. Not so long ago, Parvez Damania raised eyebrows when Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray occupied the chief guest's chair at a company function and attacked the Centre for suspending Damania Airways flights. Now, Damania moves out of his home in Ahmednagar South shortly after 7 am to tour his constituency and returns only after midnight. Damania is the Shiv Sena's candidate from Ahmednagar South. A political greenhorn, he is challenging sitting Congress MP Maruti Shelke in what is known as the sugar bowl of Maharashtra—and a traditional Congress stronghold.

Damania, whose group has business interests ranging from hatcheries and farming to pharmaceuticals and water transport, feels it is time "educated people with good credentials took to politics". Says he: "People here feel it is a positive step. I think businessmen could be more genuine about their contribution to politics, which, I think, could also be helped with a little management input." Trying to wrest a seat which has been held by the Congress since 1962, Damania is placing his hopes on the fact that the Sena, BJP and an independent won a seat each from Ahmednagar South in the 1995 assembly elections. Shelke's neglect of his constituency and the fact that the Damania family has provided employment to over 4,000 people here would work in his favour, he feels. "I will bring in more industry and address drinking water and education problems," says Damania.

If the suave, English-speaking Parsi industrialist, best known for bringing high quality of service to the airlines business, does not fit the rough Sena image, neither does banker Suresh Prabhu. Chairman of Saraswat Cooperative Bank and holder of numerous other posts—he heads the Maharashtra State Financial Corporation—Prabhu recently returned from a business trip abroad to find a Sena ticket awaiting him. Says he: "I accepted the offer. There are so many ills, someone has to cleanse them. I would rather be a participant than an observer. Whenever the budget is presented, we react. This has no meaning unless you participate in the process."

 Prabhu, a chartered accountant who talks of bringing accounting principles to the political process, defends his choice of the Sena. "All parties talk of reservations, politically. But economically they speak the language of liberalisation. Liberalisation means reducing the size of government, while reservation means offering more and more jobs in the government sector. The two are diametrically opposite and I call this political cheating. The Sena doesn't do this," he says. As he takes on sitting Congress MP Sudhir Sawant and Janata Dal leader Madhu Dandavate, who has represented Rajapur constituency five times, Prabhu is hoping the Sena inroads in this region will help. "There is no sympathy wave for Congress and the JD has done nothing for this constituency. It continues to be neglected like the rest of the region," he says. "

Unlike the rest of them, Prabhu is an activist with an agenda. His work in the constituency should also help," says industrialist Kamal Morarka, the former Rajya Sabha MP who had to suppress ambitions of contesting because of the limited reach of his Samajwadi Janata Party. But a number of business people have moved in, and they are all in it for different reasons, from bringing management inputs and corporate discipline into politics to settling a score—as in the case of Nina Pillai, widow of the biscuit baron Rajan Pillai (see box).

But it is usually industrialists with a political base who succeed. For instance, Praful Patel, the beedi baron from Bhandara in Maharashtra's Vidarbha region. His father, Manharbhai Patel, was president of the Vidarbha Congress and an MLA for four terms. A confidant of Sharad Pawar, Patel's business interests range from granite to packaging, but it is for his beedi business that he is best known. Patel smokes beedis to promote the image of his Rs 500-crore beedi business, and has proved—by speaking the language of farmers and winning the last election from Bhandara—that his Gujarati origins have not made him unacceptable in Maharashtra. 

"Being rich and travelling around in a Mercedes is a disqualification. You have to understand your constituency and people. Future politicians have to be from the street level for this country to come up," says Bombay-based businessman Sudarshan Loyalka, who moved from the Left politics of '60s America to supporting V.P. Singh.

A number of politicians have widespread business interests, like the Kalmadis in Pune and the Deoras in Bombay. And a number of business people have been able to get into the Upper House like Morarka, Viren Shah and, more recently, Mukesh Patel—who is in the Rajya Sabha on a Sena ticket. But for businessmen, the latest attraction seems to be a direct election not a nomination. That is, selling the most important product they have ever had—themselves—directly to the consumers.