Uncompetitive, unproductive and inefficient are adjectives that are routinely used to describe Indian industry. But if any historian ever attempted to analyse the reasons for these ills by tracing the path traveled by Indian business families over the past 100 years or so, he'd probably end up a more empathetic soul.

Consider: Pre-Independence, Indian industry was by and large one united force-united against the British raj. So we had instances of industrialists actually lending a helping hand to their counterparts. It might seem unimaginable today, but competition within Indian industry hardly existed. If at all it did exist, it would have been with the British companies that had set up shop on Indian soil.

The British eventually left, but Jawaharlal Nehru's brand of socialism did its fair share to delay Indian industry's journey towards competitiveness. Shareholder value meant little then-the purpose of business was to bridge the gap between the rich and poor. That's why the government took it upon itself to provide the nation with products and services. As a result, India's business families got throttled. In the sixties, for instance, G.D. Birla was refused a licence for a steel plant. And between 1960 and 1989 the Tatas made 119 proposals (all were refused) to start new businesses and expand the old ones. Gurcharan Das writes in his book, India Unbound: ''It never did make sense to close an industry to the private sector-it was tantamount to discouraging entrepreneurship. It was prejudice, pure and simple, against the market.''

Successive governments ensured that Indian industry never stepped onto the path of progress. The licence raj of the seventies and eighties played the regressive role to the hilt. As Anil Ambani, Managing Director, Reliance Industries, puts it: ''(In the eighties) strategic and corporate planning was virtually conducted in Udyog Bhawan, Shastri Bhawan and North Block, not in corporate boardrooms.'' The disinclination to allow global competition also meant that the Indian consumer was a pauper rather than king. Choice wasn't a word you'd easily find in her lexicon.

Competition and efficiency became buzzwords for Indian industry only post-1991. And over the past 10 years, monopolies have been shattered, and once-thriving businesses have been either shut down or sold.

Clearly, for many business families their survival is at stake. As a PricewaterhouseCoopers study points out: ''Many of the leading family business houses have split into independent constituent units, a number of them have lost their competitive edge and some businesses that were in the family fold have either been sold or closed down...''

The proof of the pudding lies in the 10-year report card of the Tatas, for decades India's largest private sector enterprise. No longer. Last year, the Ambanis grabbed pole position (we aren't including TCs in the comparison, as it isn't a publicly-listed company). Worse is the erosion in profits of the Tatas' listed companies: in 1991, the group's net profit stood at Rs 699.2 crore. Ten years after: A close to 10 per cent dip, to Rs 605.3 crore. In that period, the Ambanis have managed to show a 44 per cent growth in profits, and the Aditya Birla group's bottomline has swelled by 20 per cent. Some win, some lose.

The Pioneer Patriarchs: Family Businesses Founded Up To 1950

The Tata Group's Ratan Tata: no longer number one

The only link between Indian industry in the pre-Independence and post-liberalisation eras can be summed up in one word: swadeshi. The circumstances of course were entirely different: Pre-1947, building a business wasn't as important as building a nation. Productivity and profitability were not the top priorities, sending the British back home was. Post-1991, however, the swadeshi war cry began to re-echo within those parts of Indian industry that worried about getting steamrolled by foreign competition.

The Godrej Group's Adi (top) and Jamshyd Godrej: Struggling to kee pace

During the British Raj, Indian industry had to maintain a delicate balance-grow the business and at the same time contribute its mite to the freedom movement. So the large business groups of those times-(J.R.D) Tata, Walchand Hirachand, (Jamnalal) Bajaj and Ghanshyam Das Birla-were active in not just creating wealth for themselves but to fuel the struggle. Brotherhood and compassion were the guiding beacons: As noted business family-watcher Gita Piramal points out, Walchand bailed out small Indian shippers, and Kasturbhai Lalbhai actually helped other mill-owners in Ahmedabad improve the quality of their cotton mills.

It's probably this paternalistic mindset that hasn't helped many of the families slip easily into the groove of cut-throat competition. Other than the Tatas, the first flush of Indian industry includes the Kirloskars, Wadias and the Godrejs, all of which are over 100 years old. But maintaining the position of eminence over the years hasn't been easy. Over the past decade, the Wadias and the Kirloskars have steadily lost out to a fresh breed of entrepreneurs. The Tatas may still be all-pervading, but last year they were dethroned from the numero uno position in India's private sector (on the basis of sales of listed companies) by a relative newcomer-one Mr Dhirubhai Ambani. What's worse is that the group's profits (excluding Tata Consultancy) have taken a horrible beating over the past decade, and have actually declined since 1991.

The Kirloskar Group's Vijay Kirloskar: fading glory

The AV Birla Group's Kumar Mangalam Birla: first among Birlas

A few groups just faded into oblivion, the once-dominant pharmaceutical business of the Sarabhais, and the Walchand Hirachand empire being two names that come instantly to mind. An era of outdated products nurtured under a protectionist regime came to an end when Vinod Doshi of Premier Automobiles (earlier part of the Walchand Hirachand group) had little choice but to stop turning out Premier Padmini cars.

If it isn't competition that's changing the old order, the splits within the families, often acrimonious, didn't make things easier. The Birlas split into six factions, the Thapars into four, the Goenkas into two, the Bharat Ram group into three and the Walchand group into two.

Indian business' paranoia about foreign competition post-1991 is ironically juxtaposed by the opportunities the local industry got to buy into foreign companies during the last years of the raj, when most British businessmen withdrew money out of their Indian operations. For instance, the Goenkas acquired Duncans and Octavious Steel from Armenians and the British respectively. B.M. Khaitan bought many estates and engineering companies. S. Anantharamarishnan acquired a clutch of companies including Simpsons and Higginbothams. And J.R.D. Tata acquired Finlay and other small firms. Perhaps Indian industry's current lot could take a cue from history.

-Swati Prasad