04 LEADING THE NEWS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2010, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM
RAMACHANDRA GUHA/HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR
I chose people who were both thinkers and doers
B Y H IMANSHU B HAGAT
himanshu.b@livemint.com
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NEW DELHI
T he well-regarded and in-
fluential writer and his-
torian Ramachandra
Guha is not the author of his
newest book, Makers of Mod-
ern India. Instead, he has se-
lected and compiled the writ-
ings of 19 Indians who he feels
played a formative and pivotal
role in the shaping of modern
India over the last two centu-
ries. In an interview Guha ex-
plains his choices. Edited ex-
cerpts:
Some names in your list are very
familiar while others are virtually
unknown. What selection criteria
did you follow?
I chose people who were ac-
tive in politics and social re-
form, but at the same time left
behind a significant corpus of
writing. That is to say, those
who were both thinkers and
doers. Which is why, for exam-
ple, Sardar Patel is not in the
list—he didn’t leave behind
books or essays of any sub-
stance or depth. Nor did I want
pure writers. So, they had to
bridge the barrier between
thought and action. Then, they
had to speak to their time as
well as ours. Even among the
famous figures, I have high-
lighted their less-known
works. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote
three celebrated books before
Independence, but since I was
interested in Nehru the state
maker, I focused on his fort-
nightly letters to chief minis-
NEW FRONT
DBS aims to widen India focus,
build customer banking base
B Y D INESH U NNIKRISHNAN & The DBS India loan book,
J OEL R EBELLO
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MUMBAI
S ingapore’s largest lender
DBS Bank Ltd, which has
largely limited itself to credit
for large corporations, besides
treasury and advisory services,
aims to widen its focus to build
a consumer banking base in
Asia’s third largest economy.
DBS has chalked out a strat-
egy to generate at least 25-30%
of its deposits from retail cus-
tomers in the next three years
and build a foundation for its
other businesses such as fund-
ing small industrial units,
wealth management and cash
management services, said
Sanjiv Bhasin, general manag-
er and chief executive officer,
DBS Bank, India.
“Our focus is on diversifying
sources of liabilities. Over the
medium term, we plan to have
retail liabilities to contribute at
least a quarter of our total lia-
bility portfolio, which today is
largely wholesale. We are be-
ginning this by tapping our ex-
isting customer base in the
wealth management busi-
ness,” Bhasin said.
The share of revenue from
retail, which includes wealth
management, currently stands
at 1%, and the bank wants to
scale it up to around 5% by
2013, when its retail customer
base is targeted to go up to
nearly three million.
“The consumer business re-
quires management band-
width, a suitable technology
platform, effective systems and
a well-established distribution
network,” Bhasin said. “We are
currently establishing the
proper and requisite infra-
structure to facilitate our retail
foray. We have already
History matters: Guha says Makers of Modern India, a compilation of the writings of 19 Indians who he feels
had a pivotal role in the shaping of modern India, is a book of conversation and argument.
mint INTERVIEW
ters, which deal with minority
rights, foreign policy, econom-
ic planning, etc. Similarly, we
are familiar with the writings
of B.R. Ambedkar on the caste
system, but not with his pro-
found meditations on democ-
racy and constitutionalism.
Is it fair to say that Gandhi is the
most influential person in this list?
It is for the reader to decide
which of these 19 individuals is
the most compelling. This is a
book of conversation and ar-
gument. The two core sections
of the book, sections III and IV,
have Gandhi and Nehru as
Limited presence: DBS India CEO Sanjiv Bhasin says the bank will not
focus on mortgage loans, personal loans and credit cards in the country.
launched our international
platinum debit card offering
and are actively setting up
ATMs.”
DBS will not focus on
mortgage loans, personal loans
and credit cards in India pri-
marily due to its limited pres-
ence, he said.
“We (are) not growing our
assets because it needs assess-
ment of the market and tech-
nology framework and an op-
erating platform which we
don’t have,” Bhasin said.
Traditionally, foreign banks
in India have a limited share in
the total banking business
largely due to restrictions on
the number of branches they
can open each year.
Standard Chartered Plc is
the largest foreign bank with
95 branches followed by Hong
Kong and Shanghai Banking
Corp. and Citibank NA with 50
and 43 branches respectively,
Reserve Bank of India (RBI)
data for the year ended March
their central figures, respec-
tively. In section III, the de-
bates revolve around Gandhi
and his work. In section IV,
Nehru plays the same role.
Thus Nehru’s writings are fol-
lowed by the writings of his
critics to the right, such as Gol-
walkar, and to the left, such as
Ram Manohar Lohia and Jay-
aprakash Narayan (JP). A for-
gotten figure this book rehabil-
itates is the Muslim liberal,
Hamid Dalwai, who spoke of
the need for modernizing Is-
lam. In the 1960s he wrote that
unless an avant garde liberal
elite Muslim developed in In-
dia, there would be a revival of
Hindu conservatism. Dalwai is
ASHESH SHAH/MINT
The Indian arm of
Singaporean lender
seeks to generate
25­30% of deposits
from retail clients
show. Foreign banks had
7.74% of banking assets and
8.37% of profit, while they ac-
counted for 5% of total depos-
its and 4.67% of advances.
Bhasin isn’t worried about
the lack of branches and said
that, given the relatively faster
pace of economic expansion in
India over the next few years,
“it will be easy to scale up in a
growing market”.
DBS currently has 12
branches, eight of which it
opened under the 2009 reci-
procity agreement between the
India and Singapore govern-
HEMANT MISHRA/MINT
relevant not just to present-
day India but to a post-9/11
world.
Gandhi once reportedly referred to
Rammohan Roy as a pygmy. Can
one sum up their different philoso­
phies in a few lines?
You can’t. My hope is for
this book—which is the first
serious compendium of mod-
ern Indian political thought—
to act as a spark for other
books.
There are only three Muslim
names. Are there any common
threads in their ideas?
Syed Ahmed Khan and Ha-
mid Dalwai might have some
aspects in common. I would
like the readers to draw these
ments. Two opened this year.
Also, with RBI having re-
laxed its stance last year and
allowing foreign banks to open
offsite ATMs without prior ap-
proval, DBS has scaled up the
number of such installations to
13 so far this year and plans to
add another 10 by December.
which consists mostly of big-
ticket loans to firms in oil and
gas, retail and realty, grew to
`4,100 crore in fiscal 2010 from
`2,700 crore the previous year.
Consumer banking contributes
1% of total India revenue.
Hatim Broachwala, research
analyst with Mumbai-based
Khandwala Securities Ltd, said
it will be difficult for a bank
like DBS to compete in the do-
mestic market.
“With just 12 branches, it is
difficult to compete with banks
who have a strong branch
presence,” he said. “Even if
they want to limit their retail
operations to deposit mobili-
sation, DBS will have to in-
crease their branch presence.”
DBS’ total customer deposits
doubled to `6,600 crore in fis-
cal 2010 from `3,200 crore in
the previous fiscal. The India
unit’s assets rose 26% to
`15,900 crore.
RBI is expected to announce
liberal guidelines to open up
the country’s banking industry
to foreign lenders soon. It was
slated to do this in 2009, but
the plan got delayed in the
wake of the global credit
crunch. There are 32 foreign
banks operating in India with
310 branches, accounting for
0.43% of the 71,998-strong
branch network across the na-
tion.
Under a 1997 commitment
given to the World Trade Or-
ganization, RBI needs to give
12 new branch licences to for-
eign banks every year, includ-
ing those given to new en-
trants, but the regulator has all
along been allowing foreign
banks to open more branches
than the mandatory require-
ment.
dinesh.n@livemint.com
out. The place of Indian Mus-
lims is very important and
unique because they are a
large minority. In other coun-
tries, Muslims are either an in-
significant minority or the rul-
ing majority. Indian Muslims
thus face peculiar dilemmas.
The theme of inter-religious
relations in a multi-religious
state runs through the book—it
is articulated in different ways
by Dalwai, Syed Ahmad Khan
and Jinnah on the Muslim side
and Gandhi, Golwalkar and
Nehru on the Hindu side.
Mohammad Iqbal is missing.
Iqbal was an interesting and
original poet and thinker, but
he is not among the makers of
modern India. A more real
complaint would be the ab-
sence of Subhas Bose, Patel
and Indira Gandhi.
Would you call any individual a
negative influence on India?
In my epilogue I have writ-
ten that 16 of them are still rel-
evant. The three I excluded are
Golwalkar, Jinnah and Tilak.
Tilak is a representative of mil-
itant nationalism. He saw peo-
ple like Gokhale as being too
accommodating of the British.
Now that we are a free nation
that debate is no longer rele-
vant. Jinnah is not relevant ei-
ther because he wanted a Mus-
lim nation and obtained it.
Golwalkar’s ideas shaped our
society but the fate of Pakistan
and other theocratic countries
is a warning for us not to fol-
low him. These three are im-
portant for historical and anti-
quarian reason, while the oth-
er 16 still speak to us—Tarabai
STAKE SALE
Coal India issue price
fixed at `245 a share
B Y D EVIDUTTA T RIPATHY
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NEW DELHI
T he government on Monday
priced state-run Coal India
Ltd’s IPO at `245, the coal
minister said, buoyed by the
strong response from foreign
investors looking at broader
exposure to India’s economy.
The government will raise
close to $3.5 billion (`15,540
crore) from the sale of a 10%
stake in the world’s largest
coal miner. Coal India’s IPO
will surpass Reliance Power
Ltd’s $3 billion listing in 2008
as India’s largest new issue,
and comes to market amid a
flurry of big deals in Asia.
At this price, Kolkata-based
Coal India, which accounts for
nearly 80% of coal output in
the country, would be worth
$35 billion, ranking it seventh
among India’s listed firms.
The IPO was more than 15
times subscribed by close on
21 October, with most bids at
the top end. The institutional
order book was heavily over-
subscribed, with orders worth
about $27 billion from foreign
investors. Additionally, record
flows from overseas into Indi-
an stocks this year recently
pushed the rupee to a
25-month high.
Coal India shares will begin
trading on 4 November, with
allotments likely to be final-
ized by 1 November.
India is selling stakes in
some 60 firms over the next
few years, and the strong appe-
tite for Coal India contrasts
with sluggish demand for some
recent offerings and adds pres-
sure on New Delhi to price fu-
ture deals attractively.
“This is the right price for
the company. Valuation-wise,
mint
Shinde and Kamaladevi Chat-
topadhyaya on gender, JP on
the rights of the Nagas and
Kashmiris, C. Rajagopalachari
on economic freedom and
election reforms to curb the in-
fluence of money and busi-
ness, and so on.
Who besides Gandhi in this list can
be called a thinker of global signifi­
cance?
Gandhi does have a global
reach, but others are relevant
too. India is a large, diverse
and very complex country. Na-
tion building here was a mas-
sive project. Given the scale of
this enterprise and the quality
of thinkers it has produced, the
Indian experiment is relevant
to the emerging multicultural-
ism in Europe, and to African
transitions from dictatorship
to democracy.
And there are three Bengalis in
this list.
Only two. Bengalis dominate
the humanities in India—and
Bengali historians tend to exag-
gerate the importance of their
compatriots. I didn’t start out
with the idea of debunking the
Bengalis, but the Maharashtri-
an social reformers played a
much more important and fun-
damental role in shaping mod-
ern India. Amartya Sen, for ex-
ample, never talks about
Shinde, Phule and Ambedkar,
while he has plenty of time for
Tagore. In this he is represen-
tative. Our leading historians
and social scientists tend to be
Bengalis; this is to the detri-
ment of the recognition of the
substantial and enduring con-
tributions of other regions.
it is not expensive,” said Deven
Choksey, managing director at
KR Choksey Shares and Securi-
ties. “The government seems
to have learnt their lesson. If
you do right pricing, there is
appetite for stocks.”
Coal India’s offer will be fol-
lowed by a $1.9 billion share
sale in state-run Power Grid
Corp. of India Ltd that opens
on 9 November and a $270 mil-
lion IPO in state miner Manga-
nese Ore India Ltd by the last
week of November.
Demand for coal is forecast
to grow 11% a year in India,
which aims to halve its peak-
hour power deficit of nearly
14% over the next two years
and triple its generation ca-
pacity over the next decade.
Coal India’s dominant posi-
tion in a country that is heavily
reliant on coal-fired power and
an attractive valuation relative
to peers has made it a near
must-own for investors.
Local and foreign brokerag-
es estimated the stock could
see an upside of roughly 30%
from its IPO valuation range,
given its lower earnings vola-
tility, a large undeveloped re-
source base and potential to
increase prices.
Still, risks do exist, including
a Maoist insurgency in key
mining areas and environmen-
tal challenges to new mining
projects in India. The firm also
prices coal about 60% lower
than international prices, in
part because of comparatively
low quality coal.
To counter this, the firm
plans to focus on expanding
margins by selling more high-
quality, higher-priced washed
coal and is currently evaluat-
ing proposals to buy stakes in
coal firms in the US, Australia
and Indonesia. REUTERS