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The New York Times has compared industrialist Mukesh Ambani to father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi, for being a revolutionary thinker with bold ideas for what India ought to become. The richest person of India told the Times in a rare interview that his goals are for India’s benefit as much as they are for his sprawling company.
The leading US paper however also noted the difference between the two great men. In the 4000 words profile on Mukesh Ambani on Sunday, the paper noted that in the last century, Gandhi was the most famous and powerful private citizen in India and today, Ambani is widely regarded as playing that role. The presenter of the story noted that while Gandhi was an ascetic, champion of the villages, a skeptic of modernity and a man focused on spiritual purity, Ambani, a fellow Gujrati from bania caste, too is a vegetarian and a teetotaler but is an oligarch, a champion of the city, a burier of the past and a man, who deftly and critics say ruthlessly, wields financial power.
According to many businessmen, Ambani has already established himself as the country’s great transformer, with a legacy matching those of 19th century American industrialists. Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-chairman notes that if one talks about people like Rockefeller and Carnegie, they really each changed one industry; but if one looks at what Mukesh Ambani is doing, he’s really changing three or four industries. The 51 year old business tycoon next in his mind has promoting and to channel small scale and fragmented manufacturing. Ambani noted that the next big thing is how you create manufacturing with decentralized employment. The industrialist is however unlike Gandhi not interested in joining politics and asserts that he can do much more in his current particular job.
