By Shyamal Majumdar,
The man who stepped out of Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail only for a few hours last week was wearing a vacant expression that told a thousand words. Clad in a white kurta and pyjama, with rubber chappals and untrimmed beard, Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal, who was allowed by the court to visit his ailing wife (also a co-accused), cut a sorry figure.
But few would shed tears for the man who was once flying high—literally—but lost everything due to just one reason: greed.
Also Read What next for India’s fintech revolution? Upskilling: Why finance guys need to study fintech Setting course for the IMEC: Gaza war has delayed plans for the corridor, but can’t derail them Fifth column by Tavleen Singh: Renaissance, not revenge The intense and selfish desire for more wealth and power—by hook or by crook—has consumed and finally destroyed many like Goyal, but surely, he wouldn’t be the last one. Corporate history from around the world is replete with examples of self-destructing individuals who had everything that is possible materially, yet created bubbles around them in their desperate yearning for more and more.
How could Enron’s Ken Lay, for example, sell thousands of shares of his company’s once highflying stock just before it crashed, leaving employees with nothing? How could Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski use company funds to throw his wife a million-dollar birthday bash on an Italian island? They were both insanely successful in their careers and considered trailblazers for making their companies world-famous names—till the cookie crumbled.
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Closer home, why did Ramalinga Raju, the man who was once heavily garlanded with good governance awards, had to publicly admit to having cheated in full view of the company’s auditors, banks and stock market authorities? Raju, it seems, was driven on by a desperate quest to keep up with the Joneses. Or, why did the uber-rich Wadhawan brothers—Kapil and Dheeraj, who were former Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) promoters, defraud 17 banks in a multi-crore scam? The list goes on and on: Rana Kapoor, the Singh brothers, Subhiksha’s R Subramanian, Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi, etc.
Haridas Mundhra, India’s first scamster, had enough money to live a comfortable life. Yet, in 1957, he manipulated LIC into investing `1.25 crore in six bankrupt companies owned by him. Banks had found that the shares he pledged were fake. In November 1957, when two banks reported having two sets of shares bearing the same serial numbers, neither of which were authentic, his cover was blown.
For some inexplicable reason, LIC bailed him out, though that wasn’t enough to keep him out of jail. The Mundhra scandal marked the beginning of the manipulation of nationalised institutions by politicians.
Ironically, during their heydays, they were all supposed to be the best and the brightest that India showcased. They were also shining examples of what perseverance and innovation can achieve. But by idealising money, they shielded themselves from the guilt and shame connected with its deeper and darker associations.
Goyal himself was one of them. Now 75, Goyal founded and built Jet Airways into a world-class airline, and then oversaw its fall from the skies. And it wasn’t just this airline that he shaped.
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For better or for worse, Goyal’s fingerprints were all over the direction India’s aviation sector took for more than two decades, thanks in part to his clout among politicians cutting across party lines and governments. A sharp networker, he worked his way through India’s bureaucracy to build the airline. In all his dealings, Goyal’s charm offensive was evident as he notably flew top and middle-ranking mandarins free of charge and distributed favours across the political spectrum to get policies framed to his benefit.
A series of bad business decisions, however, did him in. Instead of admitting his mistakes and giving up control of Jet (there were many suitors till it was too late), Goyal allowed his ego to take control of him. Result: he was arrested for allegedly misappropriating public funds obtained as business loans for various purposes, including commission to sales agents, personal and family expenses, loans to subsidiary companies with no business or income, and professional and consultancy charges paid to his wife, daughter, and son.
In many ways, Goyal and others like him were all suffering from the “Kane syndrome.” In the 1941 film Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane—based on the colourful publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst—was a fraud with a huge ego who never believed in anything except himself. Yet he desperately craved outside approval: In the process of building a newspaper empire and running for office, Kane ceaselessly searched for money, material possessions, admiration and applause. Yet despite all his wealth, he died a broken man.
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A Harvard Business Review article titled “I Was Greedy, Too” by Diane Coutu gave useful insights into greed in the works of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud argued that greed was natural, that man was born greedy. For him, the unconscious was a cauldron of murderous wishes and drives—sex and aggression—that had to be socialised.
Whether greed emerges from our psyches, our environment, or our genes remains an open question. What is known is while some are able to control greed, others allow greed to control them and believe they deserve even what they did not work for. Goyal and company clearly belonged to this category, and were aided by some politicians during their time who needed businessmen to provide the funds that allowed them to supply patronage to the poor and fight elections.
The corrupt businessman needed the crooked politician to get public resources and contracts cheaply. Every constituency was (may be still is) linked to the other in what former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan called “a cycle of dependency”. As he spends his time in jail, Naresh Goyal would perhaps wish he could have extricated himself from this “cycle of dependency” before it was too late.
By Shyamal Majumdar,
The man who stepped out of Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail only for a few hours last week was wearing a vacant expression that told a thousand words. Clad in a white kurta and pyjama, with rubber chappals and untrimmed beard, Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal, who was allowed by the court to visit his ailing wife (also a co-accused), cut a sorry figure.
But few would shed tears for the man who was once flying high—literally—but lost everything due to just one reason: greed.
The intense and selfish desire for more wealth and power—by hook or by crook—has consumed and finally destroyed many like Goyal, but surely, he wouldn’t be the last one. Corporate history from around the world is replete with examples of self-destructing individuals who had everything that is possible materially, yet created bubbles around them in their desperate yearning for more and more.
How could Enron’s Ken Lay, for example, sell thousands of shares of his company’s once highflying stock just before it crashed, leaving employees with nothing? How could Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski use company funds to throw his wife a million-dollar birthday bash on an Italian island? They were both insanely successful in their careers and considered trailblazers for making their companies world-famous names—till the cookie crumbled.
Closer home, why did Ramalinga Raju, the man who was once heavily garlanded with good governance awards, had to publicly admit to having cheated in full view of the company’s auditors, banks and stock market authorities? Raju, it seems, was driven on by a desperate quest to keep up with the Joneses. Or, why did the uber-rich Wadhawan brothers—Kapil and Dheeraj, who were former Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) promoters, defraud 17 banks in a multi-crore scam? The list goes on and on: Rana Kapoor, the Singh brothers, Subhiksha’s R Subramanian, Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi, etc.
Haridas Mundhra, India’s first scamster, had enough money to live a comfortable life. Yet, in 1957, he manipulated LIC into investing `1.25 crore in six bankrupt companies owned by him. Banks had found that the shares he pledged were fake. In November 1957, when two banks reported having two sets of shares bearing the same serial numbers, neither of which were authentic, his cover was blown.
For some inexplicable reason, LIC bailed him out, though that wasn’t enough to keep him out of jail. The Mundhra scandal marked the beginning of the manipulation of nationalised institutions by politicians.
Ironically, during their heydays, they were all supposed to be the best and the brightest that India showcased. They were also shining examples of what perseverance and innovation can achieve. But by idealising money, they shielded themselves from the guilt and shame connected with its deeper and darker associations.
Goyal himself was one of them. Now 75, Goyal founded and built Jet Airways into a world-class airline, and then oversaw its fall from the skies. And it wasn’t just this airline that he shaped.
For better or for worse, Goyal’s fingerprints were all over the direction India’s aviation sector took for more than two decades, thanks in part to his clout among politicians cutting across party lines and governments. A sharp networker, he worked his way through India’s bureaucracy to build the airline. In all his dealings, Goyal’s charm offensive was evident as he notably flew top and middle-ranking mandarins free of charge and distributed favours across the political spectrum to get policies framed to his benefit.
A series of bad business decisions, however, did him in. Instead of admitting his mistakes and giving up control of Jet (there were many suitors till it was too late), Goyal allowed his ego to take control of him. Result: he was arrested for allegedly misappropriating public funds obtained as business loans for various purposes, including commission to sales agents, personal and family expenses, loans to subsidiary companies with no business or income, and professional and consultancy charges paid to his wife, daughter, and son.
In many ways, Goyal and others like him were all suffering from the “Kane syndrome.” In the 1941 film Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane—based on the colourful publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst—was a fraud with a huge ego who never believed in anything except himself. Yet he desperately craved outside approval: In the process of building a newspaper empire and running for office, Kane ceaselessly searched for money, material possessions, admiration and applause. Yet despite all his wealth, he died a broken man.
A Harvard Business Review article titled “I Was Greedy, Too” by Diane Coutu gave useful insights into greed in the works of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud argued that greed was natural, that man was born greedy. For him, the unconscious was a cauldron of murderous wishes and drives—sex and aggression—that had to be socialised.
Whether greed emerges from our psyches, our environment, or our genes remains an open question. What is known is while some are able to control greed, others allow greed to control them and believe they deserve even what they did not work for. Goyal and company clearly belonged to this category, and were aided by some politicians during their time who needed businessmen to provide the funds that allowed them to supply patronage to the poor and fight elections.
The corrupt businessman needed the crooked politician to get public resources and contracts cheaply. Every constituency was (may be still is) linked to the other in what former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan called “a cycle of dependency”. As he spends his time in jail, Naresh Goyal would perhaps wish he could have extricated himself from this “cycle of dependency” before it was too late.
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