First among equals: G.D. Birla (right), India Inc's chief strategist, with his brother B.M. Birla

BACK OF THE BOOK

Offhand, the glittering cover of this book on India's transition to the ''industrial phase of business''-interaction with Europe being a ''critical factor''-is reason enough to dig in. On closer thought, though, there are at least three other facts that underscore this subject's global importance: that the East India Company is regarded as a prototype of the globe-girdling joint stock corporation, that the 18th Century saw economic power shift decisively from Asia to Europe, and that India's history is fraught with controversy. If Alfred Chandler gave America its first big volume on the 'managerial revolution', Dwijendra Tripathi presents an authoritative take on the Industrial Revolution's relevance to India.

Starting in 1700, the narration of how 'The Company' first grabbed power, playing the sneaky interventionist in the subcontinent's political schisms and gaining the allegiance of local merchants by protecting their profits, is rivetting stuff. Some readers (particularly, coastal bankers), though, may wonder why the banking sub-story is so fixated on the goings-on of the interior Maratha State, while others may ask if this fissured phase deserves to represent Mughal India in a narrative of such gravity. Anyhow, ''By 1750, India once again had become mainly a geographical expression''-even as Britain steamed and spun ahead as the world's big textile power.

The Oxford History Of Indian Business By DwijendraTripathi OUP Price: Rs 1,-500 PP: 371

India's own 'industrial' story begins with the influence of Adam Smith's laissez faire ideals, after the British Crown divested The Company of India's governance (in 1857), and bestowed the colony with a ''business-friendly environment''... the institutional framework of the judicial system, Macaulayist education, Crown rupee, limited-liability firms, share trading, and above all, exposure to British industry. Historically, Tripathi likens all this to pre-Meiji Japan, though he's careful not to end up playing the apologist; he bemoans the lack of Indian innovation-the ''colonial syndrome'' expressed in the local industrialists' awe of all things British.

Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata is an exception, and that too, for looking further-to America-for industrial technology. This textile man's rise to eminence is traced to Bombay's first ever share crash (in 1865) after the restoration of America's cotton exports, and vision is exemplified by his quest for a steel plant. The vision took form as TISCO, a 20th century company that gained plenty from the post-War Industrial Policy of patriarchal state protection (based on arbitrary tariffs and other market-distorting patronage mechanisms).

It was also in that troubled period, between the World Wars, that multinationals such as Unilever entered India, with operations much smaller than Tata's. The Indian industrialist of the time who shaped India's destiny most conclusively, however, was Ghanshyam Das Birla, who formulated the strategy of secretly aiding Gandhi's Congress while publicly shrugging at 'Quit India'-to evict the British, erect a bulwark against Marxist fury and win support for a mere 'temporary eclipse' of Free Enterprise (via the 1944 Bombay Plan) after independence. Birla also supported Partition, to the anguish of FICCI-as voiced by Lala Shri Ram.

The rest is familiar: Jawaharlal Nehru's Mixed Economy pragmatism (often misread by either-or binaryists), Indira Gandhi's power centralisation (uh-oh, bad news), Rajiv Gandhi's attack on the control apparatus (as reforms initiator), and so on. The book pitches Free Enterprise without resorting to economic jargon, though it refrains from examining whether profit is really becoming a function of market strategy instead of cronyist manipulation. While Tripathi speaks of a ''revolutionary change'' in marketing since the late 1980s, he doesn't explore whether Hindustan Lever's forced stake-dilution of the 1970s had anything to do with it.

But then, it's a matter of perspective. Tripathi's other major aim is to escape what he terms a ''single factor analytical framework'', and thus challenge the school of 'cultural determinism' that blames India's poverty on the collective conditioning of fatalism, occupational immobility and indifference to material reward. None of this, in his view, survives scrutiny.

So, should Indian B-schools make the Oxford History their definitive text?

Look at that cover again. What they would miss, in this age of information and spin, is the amazing story of ideas. Of their transmission. Of their stimulant value. They would also miss the story of intellectual freedom that-given the European context of this book-began on Oxford's own campus in the mid-17th century, and was linked intimately with India.

Yet, all it takes is some thought-nay, imagination-to guess what influence steamy café debates on the so-exalted 'divine right' could've exercised on the mind of innovators occupied by the whistle of kettles, cloudy sources of power, man's use of materials, and the weft-n-warp of fabric success.

"History Is A Backward Integration Of The Present"

Dwijendra Tripathi, with a 26-year career as an IIM-Ahmedabad Professor, has established himself as the foremost business historian in India today. In his post-retirement book, he traces India's transition from trade-based mercantile capitalism to production-based industrial capitalism. Excerpts from an interview: What market gap does this book address? I had three segments in view. One, teachers, students and researchers of both management and history, who would appreciate that the only way to study the development of business is to put it into a total historical perspective. Two, people in business who need to be better informed. And three, lay people who want to understand the origin of Indian business. It was a challenge. Business history in India has been completely undeveloped, and I had very little to depend on as sources. Mainly English sources? No. I used vernacular sources to the extent possible. Marathi, Gujarati and Hindi texts, for example. What explains 1700 AD as the narrative's starting point? I have tried to explain that in the 'Introduction'. My hypothesis is that Indian business developed as a result of the interaction between Indians and Europeans, and this became visible in the 1700s. This is about the time the Mughal Empire went into decline. Would your book hold post-industrial relevance? There are a couple of paragraphs on Azim Premji and Narayana Murthy. There is an attempt to link the changes taking place in India with what happened before. History is a backward integration of the present. But is it comprehensive enough to justify the title? Well, that's for you to decide. I put whatever I could in the book, and submitted it to the publisher. In the process of discussing the title, they referred it to the 'delegates' of OUP, and later emailed me that they had decided to give their brand name to the title.