Shashi Ruia: Tribute

 

Goodbye Skipper!

By Shivanand Kanavi

(https://www.rediff.com/business/special/shashi-ruia-goodbye-skipper/20241129.htm? )

'He asserted in his usual jovial style that he was not an MBA like his audience at IIM-Ahmedabad but perhaps had an even better business degree: MBB'.
'He went on to explain to his perplexed, blue chip B-School audience that MBB stood for "Marwadi by birth"!'

Shivanand Kanavi salutes Shashi Ruia, co-founder of the Essar group who passed into the ages on November 25, 2024 in Mumbai.

I met Shashi Ruia for the first time 25 years ago when I was working on a report on the Essar Group for Business India magazine.

Before meeting him, I did my homework -- going through company balance sheets, meeting various financial and industry analysts, bankers and Essar's senior executives as well as business rivals.

Prior to this assignment, I knew very little about the group. I had visited the DRI based steel plant in Hazira and written a piece on their excellence and innovation in a new section in Business India called 'Manufacturing' created to highlight good manufacturing stories.

My background was in physics and hence I had largely been doing stories on high tech and related businesses and not delved into steel, oil and gas, petroleum refining, telecom, infrastructure or shipping.

Essar was a complex conglomerate, which had investments in all these sectors and more.

When I met him, the anxiety must have shown on my face because the main thing he did at our first meeting was put me at ease, enquire about my family and, of course, regale me with stories from his days at the Madras docks in a refreshingly informal fashion.

I had a tight schedule and I had soaked in as much as I could from all sources; from within the company and outside; from admirers as well as critics.

As the story progressed, I met the Ruias: Shashi Ruia, Ravi Ruia, Prashant Ruia and Anshuman Ruia formally.

They faced more than 42 tough questions that I had gathered by talking to critics and analysts, openly and confidently.

They opened the books of even privately held businesses to counter some of the allegations against them.

In fact, they even asked me to collect more "negative perceptions" in the market if any and come back to them for clarifications.

There was absolutely no attempt to hide or obfuscate anything that I asked for.

What I learned through this process of due diligence made me focus on the future of the group rather than the short-term troubles they had at that time.

At the end of the exercise, I felt I had done a good job and so did my boss, Ashok Advani, an Oxford educated lawyer, and a media pioneer, who is no mean business analyst himself.

Shashi Ruia (referred to as SNR by most friends) was a journalist's delight and any corporate communication person's nightmare!

Once you gained his confidence the insights you gained about how Indian big business works, no doubt generously sprinkled with strictly "off the record" candid anecdotes, were delightful grist to the mill of a business journalist like me.

SNR's quick financial analysis, done on the back of the envelope, without any recourse to elaborate spread sheets, were remarkably accurate in summarising facts and coming up with projections.

In an apocryphal story, he asserted in his usual jovial style that he was not an MBA like his audience at IIM-Ahmedabad but perhaps had an even better business degree: MBB.

He went on to explain to his perplexed, blue chip B-School audience that MBB stood for "Marwadi by birth"!

The late '90s were perhaps the most difficult times the group has faced so far.

But I was impressed by SNR's calm, by his optimism and child-like enthusiasm for new ventures.

I came to know that his great pleasure in childhood was to accompany his father to the family's Shekhawati Gaddhi in Zaveri Bazaar, south Mumbai, to see his elders do business.

His curiosity; readiness to start at the bottom of the ladder and learn the ropes of banking, commodity trading, even international trade and coastal shipping at the ripe old age of 10 showed him as a child prodigy of sorts.

It also explained his child-like enthusiasm in new ventures in later years.

Around the same time he also learnt the ropes of the chemical and pharma business at the family owned factory in Vile Parle, north west Mumbai.

But he was versatile enough to assemble perhaps India's first batch of air conditioners from a German engineer employed by his family.

I remember that there were many who advised him to sell out his telecom business in the dire straits of 1997-1998 but he held on doggedly.

When Vodafone valued Essar's portion in Hutch-Essar at over $5 billion a few years later prior to acquiring it, he stood vindicated.

He was a man who paid attention to detail and loved to be at project sites.

As every employee in Essar pretty soon found out the best place to meet the Chairman was not in the swanky group HQ at Mahalaxmi, south central Mumbai, but on the dusty sites; be they highway and pipeline projects or steel mills and factory townships.

He visited them regularly and enjoyed engaging all his staff in his walkabout style of management.

At the Hazira steel plant where he used to often spend his Sundays, I am told the staffers called their Sunday "Shashiwar"!

Back in the late 1950s, the family had migrated to Madras from Bombay to attempt a fresh start in business.

Suddenly his father passed away and SNR gave up an engineering education and started his first independent business venture.

He started with an engineering fabrication unit. He was very proud when he got India's perhaps first car AC unit and fitted it in a car in Madras.

When the Madras Port Trust started giving out tenders for dredging and for constructing breakwaters, SNR quickly saw a business opportunity and ventured into construction, dredging etc.

It then suddenly led to a foray into shipping when an opportunity presented itself in far away Goa.

He was a great people person. His easy going conversations with his staff, remembering every detail of their families, their travails and triumphs, made him a much loved patriarch.

In fact it is not uncommon to see many employees being long serving staffers and in several cases the second generation of his early associates.

His exchange of pleasantries with one and all, be they drivers, personal assistants, executives or top notch secretaries to the Government of India; often breaking into fluent dockyard Tamil if they were from Tamil Nadu, disarmed everyone.

My Business India cover story 25 years ago ended with a reference to the Skipper of the Ship Essar -- Shashi Ruia: 'He could retire, handing the business over to the younger ones, and take to golf at the Willingdon Club next door and improve his present handicap.

'But he will have none of it -- his eyes are set on the choppy Arabian Sea and, like a true skipper, he assures you that the rough seas will pass.'

Goodbye Skipper!

------------------------------------------

Shivanand Kanavi, a frequent contributor to Rediff.com, is a theoretical physicist, business journalist and former VP at TCS.
He has authored the award winning book Sand to Silicon: The Amazing Story Of Digital Technology (Tata McGraw Hill, 2004, Rupa Books 2007) and edited Research by Design: Innovation and TCS (Rupa Books 2007).

Shivanand Kanavi, a frequent contributor to Rediff.com, is a theoretical physicist, business journalist and former VP at TCS.
He has authored the award winning book Sand to Silicon: The Amazing Story Of Digital Rechnology (Tata McGraw Hill, 2004, Rupa Books 2007) and edited Research by Design: Innovation and TCS (Rupa Books 2007).

Interview Dr Anil Kakodkar Part 2

 

'Nuclear Has To Get Into Achche Din'

By SHIVANAND KANAVI

May 20, 2024 09:58 IST

(appeared in : https://www.rediff.com/news/interview/dr-anil-kakodkar-nuclear-has-to-get-into-achche-din/20240520.htm )

'Chinese are going bang, bang, bang building 30-35 reactors.'

'We should announce a programme of 50 new reactors and show that we mean business on the ground and not just announcements.'

Dr Anil Kakodkar, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, played a key role in India concluding a civilian nuclear agreement with the United States.

"India is a large enough country and nuclear power makes business sense. If you invest in nuclear, it will pay back," Dr Kakodkar tells Shivanand Kanavi in the concluding part of an exclusive interview.

( Part 1 of the Interview: https://reflections-shivanand.blogspot.com/2024/05/interview-dr-anil-kakodkar-part-1.html )

Shivanand Kanavi: What is a high-temperature nuclear reactor?

Anil Kakodkar : Well, it can go easily beyond 1,000 degrees Celsius. You can get super-heated steam.

You can get high-temperature helium and run a gas power conversion cycle.

You can have a system where the molten sodium or potassium salt as the heat transfer medium. There are many variations of that. The Chinese HTR is a helium-cooled system.

What is the reason for over a decade-long delay in our Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam? Are we rethinking design?

No, they are not rethinking design, but they are testing all systems carefully since we are using liquid metallic sodium for heat transfer.

When they were commissioning the equipment they found a lot of issues that had to be fixed in components and subsystems. Fixing that took nearly a decade. But now it's all checked out and should go operational in a few months and that will be a landmark in our nuclear programme!

Who else has been successful in developing Fast Breeder Reactor technology?

The Russians are running a 600 MW and an 800 MW reactor. Fast Breeder Reactors are Gen4, but the French and Japanese have stopped working on it. The British and Americans are also not pursuing it. But the Chinese are certainly interested in Fast Breeder Reactors.

Are the Russians sharing experience and data or anything like that with us?

There is an international working group on Fast Breeder Reactors and India is a member there.

To some extent they are sharing information and that exchange is valuable. They don't tell everything, but it is useful.

The Chinese are also building a lot of reactors.

Yes. They are going bang, bang, bang. Building 30-35.

It's good that we have now 10 under construction in the fleet mode and all that. But our government should pick up an additional 50 reactors for construction.

Create more companies in nuclear manufacturing, construction, operation, etc. If India wants to be a developed country. In the sense that the quality of life of Indians should become comparable to a developed country's human development index etc, then our per capita energy has to rise steeply before becoming flat.

Now we are way below the global average in energy consumption. Moreover, now you have to grow with clean energy. Among the clean energy sources, nuclear is the only one which can supply base load 24X7.

Renewable doesn't provide 24x7 base load.

I would say if you build nuclear in hundreds of gigawatts scale, even then you will have to depend on fossil fuel to some extent.

So we need to add carbon capture sequestration to that fossil part. Otherwise, how do you satisfy net zero? And that is going to be very expensive so I am convinced this country has no alternative.

So one should never follow a single track. It doesn't work. You must have a diverse basket.

Whether one likes it or not, nuclear has to get into achche din. I don't see any escape from it.

What is stopping us?

Finance is certainly one of the problems, but I think the bigger problem is programme delivery.

The point is you can't be sitting and saying DAE you do this, you are not doing anything.

See, for example, how much of policy support is there for renewable energy? Where is that policy support for nuclear? These are all important things. There is a long gestation period. Interest on capital matters.

We need not wait for climate funds etc to do something within our country.

India is a large enough country and nuclear power makes business sense. If you invest in nuclear, it will pay back.

First of all, Indian politicians have not understood the criticality of nuclear. Secondly, they are completely in the dark as to what should be done.

For example, to construct a nuclear plant it takes a minimum 5 years. Sometimes it takes longer.

Now, with the kind of interest rates that are prevalent. If you start with a 100 crore project, there is an S curve for spending.

So, let us say a 100 crore project takes 5 years, let's say it gets delayed for another 5 years or 10 years. Then the 100 crores plus interest will ultimately reflect in electricity tariff.

Why it gets delayed is the first problem to attack, but secondly, you should have finance, which is a soft loan over long period.

For our bullet trains, the Japanese give zero-interest loans. You need such instruments. No external agency will fund nuclear.

Is the nuclear industry capacity OK?

Industry capacity is not a problem. Of course, you would need more vendors for an ambitious programme, but if they see a market then they can build up capacity with a time lag of one-and-a-half years to 2 years.

Industry needs to be sure that these orders are coming. I don't think there is a problem.

We should announce a programme of 50 new reactors and show that we mean business on the ground and not just announcements.

It's do-able. But whether it will happen or not, I don't know.

We have built two nuclear-powered submarines, so why not a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier?

Compared to nuclear submarines, building a reactor powering an aircraft carrier is not a big deal. But I'm sure there must be a debate whether we need more aircraft carriers.

For example, if you had asked this question 20 years ago, the answer was very emphatic, yes. Now the answer may be ambiguous.

The point is whether India has regional ambitions or global ambitions.

If you want to control only the sea around the Indian coast, then you will get one answer.

If you say I should have a presence in the South China Sea and I should have a presence in the Atlantic and things like that, then you need floating platforms of large size.

So it all depends on the overall strategic goal. You having an aircraft carrier 200 kilometres outside Mumbai doesn't make sense, you can already do everything from Mumbai.

What do you think about the future of transportation and mobility?

According to me you would start seeing heavy vehicles running on hydrogen, they will compete with diesel.

It may be a matter of just a couple of years or so.

You will start seeing that because battery-electric vehicles for cross-country traffic and heavy vehicles is not viable.

Of course, there is also talk about IC engines running on hydrogen. And that's also quite promising.

Did you see Oppenheimer?

No.

Why?

Just like that. Read a lot about it. But didn't go to watch it.

( Shivanand Kanavi is a former VP at Tata Consultancy Services and the former executive editor of Business India. The award-winning author of Sand To Silicon: The Amazing Story Of Digital Technology, he is also adjunct faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru and frequently contributes to Rediff.com )

Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff.com

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com

Interview Dr Anil Kakodkar Part 1

 'US Can't Take Indians As Guinea Pigs'

By SHIVANAND KANAVI 

Last updated on: May 20, 2024 00:11 IST

'Why should we disclose classified information. to satisfy those who doubt our Hydrogen Bomb capability?'

(appeared in rediff : https://m.rediff.com/news/interview/dr-anil-kakodkar-us-cant-take-indians-as-guinea-pigs/20240506.htm )

Dr Anil Kakodkar was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission from 2000 to 2009, during which India signed the civilian nuclear agreement with the United States. Before that, from 1996 to 2000, he was director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, a period during which India conducted two nuclear tests in May 1998. 

"In my view, doubts about the success of our thermonuclear test in 1998 are raised to seek more and more information from us. No country has shared as much technical information as India. But their 'dil mange more', I sensed that game even at that time. So I concluded that getting into this 'tu tu, mein mein' is futile," Dr Kakodkar, 80, tells Shivanand Kanavi in the first of a two-part exclusive interview.

Shivanand Kanavi : Ashley Tellis, the American strategic analyst of Indian origin, suggested recently that China and America may conduct nuclear tests again and that may give a window of opportunity for India to test and modernise its nuclear arsenal and particularly its thermonuclear designs which according to him 'fizzled out' in 1998, despite Indian claims to the contrary.

What is your view about the doubts raised about thermonuclear tests in 1998 as well as a possible window for testing again?

Anil Kakodkar: In my view such doubts about the success of our thermonuclear test in 1998 are raised to seek more and more information from us.

Although in terms of publicly sharing information about nuclear tests, no country has shared as much technical information as India. But their 'dil mange more', I sensed that game even at that time. So I concluded that getting into this 'tu tu, mein mein' is futile.

I asked my colleagues, after these doubts to develop a 3-D model, to look at the rock movement consequently shock, arising out of a nuclear blast.

These movements are different from a normal blast because the strain rates are high, hence the equations to be used are not the same.

Mind you at that time, nobody had developed such a model, including in the US.

Outsiders cite the profile of a test site from satellite pictures after the test and the teleseismic data from some earthquake monitoring stations like they have in Uppasala, Sweden, etc to talk with so much confidence and create doubts about our claims.

So to call that bluff, I said. We not only developed a 3D model but also qualified by using data from Baneberry test in the US which unfortunately had vented -- leaked radiation.

Because it had vented there was an enquiry and hence a lot of data came out in the public domain.

So we used the Baneberry data and our predictions and sent a paper to a well-known US journal.

The journal referees would keep asking questions 'Ye kidhar se mila vo kidhar se mila?' It was taking time.

Then suddenly a paper appeared from the Lawrence Livermore laboratory (the main lab in the US which has been involved in nuclear weapons R&D for many decades) about a model and their calculation.

So it was clear that the referees of the journal we had sent our paper to had some connection with Lawrence Livermore.

Basically, they did not want Indians to get the credit for developing such a model first.

So we wrote to the editor, 'You are free to review for as long as you wish. Take as much time as you wish. But you have to write both the dates. The date it was communicated and the date of publication.' They were honest enough, so even though it took two years for them to accept it they did publish the date we had sent the paper for publication correctly.

I'm just telling you the politics and the mindset, technical people are not without these afflictions (laughs).

That was to establish that we have that kind of modeling and computational capability.

Then we said that now use that code which we can claim is qualified and do a lot of numerical experiments.

I detonate something in a loose soil, in a cavity etc and what kind of teleseismic signal will I get? But they sit in Uppasala or somewhere and say it was 5 kilo ton and not 15 kilo ton etc arbitrarily and confidently.

We published to shut their mouth. Then the question was the profile of the crater on the ground at Pokharan.

So let us calculate that again, but we cannot publish a paper because we can't say the depth of placement and other classified data.

So we just calculated the contour, for both the fission and the fusion thing. And showed that it matches with what is there on the ground!

But why this curiosity? They think we have innovated something and want more disclosure?

Well, that could be one reason, but also many people are making a living out of this.

That's okay, nothing wrong with that. So I refuse to get into that debate.

As for a window to test again, let's see when it appears, the country can decide.

I have nothing to do with it anymore. So that question of India testing again according to me is a non question.

Does our nuclear liability law need a change? There were some complaints when it was passed at that time. But in a private conversation with me recently you said 'it's sui generis and let others use it as a model'! So what is the issue?

The nuclear liability framework evolved in the US. Its objective was to protect its nuclear industry.

So the so-called standard template is with that in mind.

Now we also knew that. Now that we were talking about civil nuclear cooperation.

We had to develop a nuclear liability framework, so we have got some people to study these issues, including at the National Law School in Bengaluru, etc.

Then around that time, the Bhopal Union Carbide court decision came.

Mr Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide, was nowhere to be seen and the mood in our Parliament was 'These Americans cannot be trusted. How do you protect our people?' So that is the genesis of our nuclear liability framework.

So we tightened the suppliers' liability part.

The point is, if you are in the process of making some law, you want to make it tighter.

I did say at that time some of the changes we were doing are not consistent with the international framework.

But that's past. Now our Parliament has passed it.

So I started telling the Americans, 'look bhaiya, for you American laws are supreme, for me Indian laws are supreme.'

Everything can be discussed till the law is passed, but once it's passed we have to follow that. That's all.

Moreover, why should we follow the American pattern? Because whether it is liability connected with any airplane crash etc, an American life is always valued at a much higher level compared to others. Just because the fellow has more money, his life is more precious! Somebody who has no earnings you will say he can die like a dog. This is not correct.

So now I maintain that perhaps in terms of protecting the public, our law is superior. Perhaps that should become the common template for international law.

Anyway, that is only for an academic discussion. Some people are unnecessarily making it the issue.

If it is established that any mishap was because of a suppliers' fault, then they should compensate, and moreover, there is a due process of establishing fault or refuting.

We also have an insurance mechanism now.

Opening up international nuclear cooperation was an important thing. And we have complied with every requirement of that.

Their lawyers can always find a solution if they want. I don't give too much importance to that. It's their problem. They will sort it out. They can't take Indians as guinea pigs.

Has our nuclear liability law become, an obstacle in negotiating nuclear reactors with either Areva (France) other Western companies or Rosatom (Russia)?

If you ask them, they will say yes. But the real obstacle is Westerners' costs are too high.

Once the price part is sorted out, the deals will go through.

We sorted it out with the Russians! Western companies are hiding the fact that their costs are high and they still want Indians to buy their reactors. Indians say, 'First you bring your cost down, then we buy'. We don't want another Enron to happen!

The Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor representing the second stage of the Indian nuclear programme has been delayed by about 10 years. In one of your public lectures, you talked about the number of papers published on Fast Breeder Reactors, Thorium R&D, etc, and had claimed that we are at the cutting edge in all these things. Is that still true R&D-wise?

Yes. R&D is going on. We need to get into a project mode as far as our new design of Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) in 2005 (external link) SMR (Small Modular Reactor) has become a buzzword today, but our 300 MW AHWR could do all that and maybe 20 years earlier.

We didn't properly project AHWR's safety aspects etc. that's a different story. After all, the purpose of SMR is to be able to locate anywhere safely.

Recently there was an announcement about a 4th generation nuclear reactor from China. Can you please explain what is this 3rd generation and 4th generation in safety terms?

These are terminologies that came essentially around the first decade of the 21st century.

Many countries started realising that nuclear power has stagnated, so what are the barriers to growth and how to overcome them? They said, 'Let us create systems that are safe, guarantee sustainability, do not create waste management issues etc.'

That was much before the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011. Japan was also talking about all new systems and their nuclear industry had a large number of variants of different designs.

The Germans and French were also involved at that time, though the Germans withdrew later.

So they created what is known as the Generation 4 International Forum (GIF). They offered us also, that India could also be a part of this.

I was sceptical about it because there are IPR issues and several countries cannot develop new technology together smoothly. Now GIF is practically extinct.

I was quite sure that we could do it ourselves. So we went ahead with our AHWR design and R&D.

Today our AHWR would qualify for generation 4. Way back we had asked the Russians to upgrade the Kudankulam reactors and you can now call them Generation 3 Plus.

Our own 700-megawatt units at Kakrapar (near Surat) and others under construction are also generation 3 Plus.

The Chinese generation 4 is of a much earlier origin. They have been working on high-temperature reactors which can be one of the generation 4 systems.

A lot of money has been spent, but others are only talking. The Chinese have been pursuing that system much before GIF came into existence.

The Chinese are not a part of GIF. But today, that is the only generation 4 system.

Part II of the Interview: 'Nuclear Has To Get Into Achche Din'

(https://www.rediff.com/news/interview/dr-anil-kakodkar-nuclear-has-to-get-into-achche-din/20240520.htm )

( Shivanand Kanavi is a former VP at Tata Consultancy Services and former executive editor of Business India. The award-winning author of Sand To Silicon: The Amazing Story Of Digital Technology is also adjunct faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru and frequently contributes to Rediff. )

Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff.com

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com