PATALGANGA BHOOMIPUJAN: Dhirubhai and wife Kokilaben lead the ground-breaking ceremony for the polyester project in Patalganga, which marked Reliance's first step in backward integration

By the time I got around to covering the Reliance group in Mumbai-roughly a decade ago-Dhirubhai Ambani was already out-of-bounds for most financial journalists. Getting an interview with him was impossible and the only glimpse you could get of him was at the crowded annual general meetings-sometimes held in huge stadiums-that, despite the first debilitating cerebral stroke he suffered in 1986, Dhirubhai religiously attended. Yet, you couldn't be a financial journalist in Mumbai in the 1990s and not be affected by his presence. His name always cropped up: in chats with stockbrokers in their Dalal Street cubbyholes, in the chairman's corner-room at a powerful financial institution or bank, at sundry corporate cocktail parties, everywhere. Dhirubhai Ambani was ubiquitous. Omnipresent even. If the markets boomed or crashed or a securities scandal was unearthed throwing everything out of gear, you could be sure that sooner or later Dhirubhai Ambani's name would surface in people's conversations. His reputation had reached such mythical proportions by then that even tidings from Delhi, like a major Cabinet reshuffle or a sweeping change in some policy or even the Union budget's provisions would be attributed to the powers that he purportedly wielded.

By the early 1990s, Anil Ambani had already become the external face of Reliance, briefing journalists or giving interviews on the group's affairs. Elder brother Mukesh, though accessible, preferred to keep a lower profile, while the ever-flamboyant Anil did the articulation. On occasion Anil would talk about their Papa, sometimes a quick reference to some of his witty sayings or an anecdote or two. On the fourth floor headquarters of Reliance in Maker Chamber IV that's as close as you would come to Dhirubhai.

But five years ago I had a journalistic windfall-an opportunity to see the man in action for more than two hours. It was November 1997 and I was in Jamnagar, where on a 7,000-acre site Reliance was building a 15 million tonne (the capacity was later increased to 27 million tonnes) oil refinery straight from the grassroots. Nearly 80,000 workers crawled all over the site, which was crowded with huge cranes, earthmoving equipment and semi-complete towers, tanks and pipelines. In the middle of the bustle, a hard-hatted Mukesh Ambani smuggled me into a prefabricated makeshift conference room bang in the middle of the site. It was a review meeting with the top project managers, for the refinery complex and one that, I learnt to my surprise, would be chaired by Dhirubhai himself. By the time we got inside the room, it was packed with engineers and managers and up in front was a special heavily padded burgundy leather chair that had become Dhirubhai's trademark chair since his 1986 stroke. Soon Dhirubhai came in, assisted by Mukesh and the meeting took off.

US giant Bechtel was the lead firm constructing Reliance's refinery and its onsite team leader was a burly American called Carl Rau. He and 12 lead managers of the team-a mix of people from Reliance and Bechtel-began by making presentations. One by one the managers got up and demonstrated the progress on various fronts-civil construction, electrical, the pipelines, the refinery and its components. Through the presentations, Dhirubhai kept interjecting and asking questions. The paralytic stroke may have affected his movements and impaired his speech but the legendary razor sharp mind was obviously unaffected. At one point, when one of the engineers was making a few excuses about a small delay, Dhirubhai pointedly asked: ''How many of these critical factors are you in control of?'' And then to everyone in general: ''We must be on target.''

After two hours of presentations, Dhirubhai sat back in his chair and said: "I have seen the progress and I'm delighted." The managers in the jampacked room collectively sighed in relief. Then leaning forward a little in his chair, he dropped the bombshell. "We now need to finish the project by December 1998. Try to work backwards from that date and achieve it." December 1998? Did everyone hear that? The official deadline for the project was the second quarter of 1999, a stretch target in itself because that would mean pulling off a refinery project in 29-30 months as against 36-40 that most refineries are built in. And Dhirubhai had just shortened it to 24 months. A feather could have felled the engineers and managers in that jampacked room. Then Mukesh stepped in and, leveraging what his father had just said, exhorted the team to do it. "If the impossible has to be converted to the possible, then it's this team that can do it," he told the managers. "We have only four quarters to go; let's do our best." The atmosphere in the room had turned suddenly electric. A grey-haired manager sitting next to me turned around and said, his voice hoarse with excitement: "We will do it!" His eyes were all lit up. The meeting was over but before leaving the room, Dhirubhai made one last announcement. He told the team of his plans to visit the site once a month to "check on how things were moving" and yes, those visits would be unannounced.

Seven months later in the effete surroundings of the ballroom in one of Mumbai's luxury hotels, I got to see Dhirubhai again. The Wharton School of Business-his son Anil's alma mater-was awarding the prestigious dean's medal to Dhirubhai. The room was packed. Heavyweight politicians jostled with industrialists and Bollywood stars. After a short presentation ceremony, Dhirubhai read out his acceptance speech. And the paragraph that keeps coming back to me is this one: "But if one Dhirubhai can do so much, just think what a thousand Dhirubhais can do for this country. There are easily a thousand Dhirubhais, if not more. I firmly, and sincerely believe in this. They are raring to join the race. Compete with the world. And make India an economic superpower. All we have to do is to remove the roadblocks.''

1 2 3