The Maruti Story

Title: The Maruti Story – How A Public Sector Company Put India On Wheels

Author: R C Bhargava

Publisher: Collins Business 2010 (First)

ISBN: 978-81-7223-780-6

Pages: 362

Maruti is a household name in India, irrespective of rural or urban settings. The ubiquitous small car, the 800, dominates the roads even now, 28 years after its uncertain introduction in 1983. Different brands and capacities abound the market now, but the 800 has an iconic feel, in that it defined the concept of a car for an entire generation. The author served in the IAS for 26 years, before moving to Maruti and became the managing director for two consecutive terms, first as the representative of the Indian government and then of Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC). He retired in 1997, but rejoined the board as director in 2003 when the government fully divested its stake and Suzuki became the largest share holder, with 54% shares. Bhargava witnessed a private company owned by Sanjay Gandhi being taken over by the government as a public-sector unit (PSU) and later, being privatized again by changing economic conditions around the world.

Independent India opted for a planned economy, cars never obtaining attention because it was a luxury article. There were only three manufacturers, the Hindustan Motors (making Ambassador brand), Premier Automobiles (Premier Padmini) and Standard Motors (Herald) serving the whole of India. A company had only one brand, introduced decades ago. There were no modifications or upgradations. The supply of vehicles far outstripped demand and waiting periods of several years were common. They all had poor quality too, being unable to carry the riders over long distances without the helpful intervention of mechanics in between. Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was much of a playboy, cars and planes being his favourite passions in addition to dabblings in politics. He was apprenticed in Rolls Royce and was given a license to manufacture small cars. In the license-quota-permit raj existed then, having the right connections was the sole criterion of obtaining favours from the government. Maruti Motors Ltd was incorporated in 1971 with noted industrialists like Raunaq Singh of Apollo Tyres and M.A.Chidambaram of SPIC on the director board. A prototype was haphazardly produced, which was a big flop. Even though the company could manufacture no cars, it diversified into heavy vehicles and bus body building. Soon, Indira and Sanjay lost faith in democracy and declared a state of emergency, suspending even the basic rights of people. As long as emergency lasted, Sanjay’s company bagged orders, and after that it courted investigations of various kinds. Sanjay was killed in June 1980 in a plane crash, during a daring exercise soon after Indira Gandhi was returned to power. She nationalized the company, christening it Maruti Udyog Ltd (MUL) in April 1981 and its assets were taken over by the new company.

Indira set a target date of Dec 1983 for rolling out cars from the company. Its directors, Bhargava among them, made frantic searches for foreign partners who could share technology. Renault and Volkswagen were considered in the initial stages, with the R18 almost finalised. In the end, none of the European and bigger Japanese firms had had trust in Indian management of a PSU and the lot fell on a lesser known brand, Suzuki. It was the mortal incarnation of the low-cost concept, having done away with even airconditioning in their offices in Japan! A suitable model, SS80 was selected and introduced in India as the iconic 800.

Maruti had to face all kinds of problems during the startup stage. It built power plants and diverted natural gas lines to serve fuel to the plants. The clout of the directors and the political godfathers served the company in good stead as it steadfastly bypassed any rule or law which hindered the smooth functioning of the company. A case in point is described by Bhargava. When MUL began to supply power to its joint-venture companies producing parts for them, the Haryana electricity authorities objected to it, citing the then existing electricity rules which forbade a company to distribute electricity. MUL overcame this with the clever move of making the power plants under a subsidiary company, whose shares are jointly owned by MUL and its JV partners! They now became the owners of the power plant, and hence could use it, without violating the letter of the law.

The first car rolled out as planned on 14 Dec 1983. There were several rub-offs with Suzuki too, who didn’t want to invest more money in the plant’s automation. He advised for manual pushcarts instead of conveyors, which the Indian management stoutly rejected. Suzuki favoured manual welding jobs, while Indian management lobbied and obtained automated welding procedures. The 800 got a rousing reception everywhere and bookings surpassed supply potential. The advance deposit paid by the customers helped the company financially. New models soon followed, the Omni, Gypsy and 1000 among them. As part of liberalization, the government reduced its shares to 50% from 60 in 1992, becoming equal partners with SMC, thereby ceasing to be a PSU. Bhargava continued as the managing director as Suzuki’s nominee.

Relations with the government and Suzuki soured in the 1990s. The tussle came when K. Karunakaran was the Industries minister and he wanted to have a say in the internal management of the company. He also desired to set up Maruti’s second plant in his home state of Kerala, whereas Maruti was planning to install it at Manesar, nearby the existing plant at Gurgaon. Murasoli Maran, who replaced Karunakaran continued with the interventionist game in the next government. Quarrel with SMC breached all outward appearances and SMC filed a complaint at the International Court of Arbitration at Paris. Government unilaterally chose R.S.S.L.N. Bhaskarudu as the new managing director when Bhargava retired in 1997, who was not favoured by SMC. Things turned positive when the BJP government assumed office, who was sympathetic to the company. Y. Saito was nominated the Chairman, while Jagdish Khattar became the M.D. Labour unrest reared its ugly head in 2000 and the company posted its first ever loss of Rs. 269.4 crores in 2000-01. The company suffered reverses at every corner, with competition from international brands decimating the booking deposits. The dealers were denied the pleasure of advance payment and had to find ways of raising working capital. MUL moved to finance and insurance sectors as avenues of profitable employment. Even with all these efforts, the market share nosedived to 55% from the peak 82%. The company still maintains the market share without much variation.

Meanwhile, the government was increasingly distancing itself from the company, under the logic that it is not a governmental function to do business in cars. In 1992, it renounced its option for a rights issue to SMC and its stake came down to 45.4%. In 2003, it offloaded a further tranche of 27.5% shares in a public issue. When the government saw that the share prices were very high, it sold more equity, to have a ratio of 18.3%. In 2006, it sold a further 8% and by 2007, the remaining 10.27% were sold out. Maruti Udyog Ltd officially became Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL).

Vendor development was a great achievement of Maruti. The Japanes traditionally believed in just-in-time inventories, with only two or three vendors for supplying each item in various categories. Quality was of utmost concern, though it was of not much concern for Indian companies prior to liberalization. MUL helped the vendors form joint-ventures with Japanese companies to ensure quality of material supplied to Maruti. Some of the companies were housed in the factory premises itself, at Gurgaon. Several vendors, like Amtek, Bharat Forge and Shakti Group had tremendous growth and became multibillion dollar companies themselves. MUL also helped the vendors obtain clearances and licenses from the government. It introduced a vendor rating system based on rejection levels, adherence to schedules and prices. The buying ratios were settled based on the ratings. Ever since Suzuki obtained management rights in Maruti, it began investing heavily in R&D facilities so that small cars can be engineered and built in India itself.

Maruti revolutionized the work culture on the shop floor. Punctuality was sacrosanct and attendance greater than 95% was incentivized. Suzuki wanted a production time of 7hr 45min in each shift of 8 hours. There were only two tea breaks of seven and a half minute duration, and a 30 minute lunch interval was outside the working time. Every employee, whether be a worker or a manager was expected to reach the factory at least 15 minutes in advance. Even directors had to punch in and out at the company. Casual leaves were encashable, attendance bonus schemes were in effect,  and teamspirit and oneness were exhibited through common uniforms, common canteen and common toilets. Offices were open, with no separate chambers for the managers. Maruti was obsessed with transparency and efficiency. The management promoted a single union, with which it interacted on a daily basis. The union was later politicized and became one of the bottlenecks for Maruti. The company also actively encouraged the concept of quality circles, which worked extremely well. In 2008, one such circle suggested and effected a saving of Rs. 479 crores.

The book is easy to read, and explains each aspect of successfully running a PSU with so many strings attached and procedural hurdles to cross. The author was an able and experienced administrator whose skills were effectively utilised in Maruti. Bhargava keeps implicit faith in readers and demonstrates in clever ways how he bypassed draconian laws which bound Indian industry in its stifling embrace. His optimism is contagious and the readers feel the thrill when reading about Maruti meeting deadlines put down by its shareholders. Bhargava also makes in depth and pointed analyses of the plight of PSUs and how they go under the weight of rules and procedures which are to be adhered to. Insightful comparisons to the private sector presented in the book need to be a guideline for future reformers of the existing PSU system. Maruti’s experiments with ensuring quality in shop floor and among vendors are illuminating examples, as was its vendor development programs, from which the whole nation benefitted. Knowledge of Bhargava’s ways of dealing with an intransigent labour union is a requisite for administrators and political leaders alike.

On the other hand, the style of writing is essentially bureaucratic. Though it is easy to read, and effectively structured, the propaganda motive juts out every now and then. The humour, wherever it is,  is artificial and forced. Readers get the impression that the author is not frank and forthcoming on several issues in which his personal honour is involved. Though he was absolved of any wrong doing, a much more detailed narration of the events leading up to it would have provided an honest attempt. Clerical and factual inconsistencies sometimes occur in the book. The year in which Maruti faced its first ever loss is mentioned as 2000-01 on page 181, whereas it is given as 1999-2000 on page 339. Self-glorification attempts abound in the book, which can be expected and indeed pardonable in the work of a retired managing director, but the following line exceed all such limits. “Perhaps the most important reason for the success of Maruti, despite being a PSU, was that both Krishnamurthy and I, even though from a PSU and government background, had the analytical capacity to understand the inherent weaknesses of the system and the intellectual integrity to act in a manner which could overcome them to the maximum extent possible.”  (p.361).

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Fermat's Last Theorem

Title: Fermat’s Last Theorem

Author: Simon Singh

Publisher: Fourth Estate 2002 (First published: 1997)

ISBN: 1-84115-791-0

Pages: 323

Simon Singh is a writer, television producer, and great popularizer of science. His family emigrated from Punjab, India in 1950 and settled in England where Singh was born. He has a Ph.D in particle physics and worked for the BBC. His staunch opposition to quackery such as chiropractice caused him to be sued for libel, which he won. This book was his first, but the mastery of words and ideas doesn’t betray the novice in him. In fact, this book is a good example of how a scientific book should be written. Pierre de Fermat was a French mathematician in the 17^th century, who made a proposition that xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ is not true for n>2. He also noted down that he had a marvellous proof, which doesn’t fit in the margin of his book. This comment tantalized the world’s mathematicians for 350 years in search of the elusive proof. The theorem, which in fact was nothing more than a conjecture due to lack of proof, was called the ‘last theorem’ because all the others had been proved in less than a century of Fermat’s death. The last theorem stood tall, mocking the scholars who tried hard in vain when at last the professionals abandoned the quest altogether, even though hefty prizes were in store for the man who proved it.

Pythagoras’ theorem is a fundamental mathematical equation that is known to everybody who had had basic schooling. It linked the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle to its sides by the equation x² + y² = z². Fermat formulated a variation to this equation, as shown above, and surmised that it won’t hold true for n>2. Proof of this theorem was not supplied and is assumed to be lost. Every mathematical concept need to be rigorously proved by logical arguments. In this respect, it differs from scientific proof. Every scientific theory is tested by experiments and its predictive power is verified by other set of experiments. If the volume of results supporting the theory is considerable, the theory is accepted, until it is proved wrong by another set of experiments. Even then, the original theory may still be used to explain a limited range of observations. Scientific proof is based on fallible human judgment in an experiment whereas mathematical proof is based on cold, infallible logic and is true till the end of time.

Pierre de Fermat (1601 - 1665) was an amateur mathematician,  being a civil servant and judge in an obscure province of France. He had a talented mind, and was a co-founder of the probability theory with Blaise Pascal, which grew from a collaboration between these two geniuses. Fermat was very secretive, reluctant to share results or proofs. The author claims that he was the inventor of calculus, though this is traditionally attributed to Newton. In 1934, Louis Trenchard Moore discovered a note from Newton saying that he developed his calculus based on Monsieur Fermat’s method of drawing tangents (p.47). Fermat got interested in number theory from the book ‘Arithmetica’, by the Greek mathematician, Diophantus, written about 14 centuries before. Fermat stated the theorem thus, Cubem autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere, which means “It is impossible for a cube to be written as a sum of two cubes or a fourth power to be written as the sum of two fourth powers or, in general, for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers” (p.66). In 1847, the French Academy of Sciences introduced a gold medal and a cash award of 3000 francs for the person who proves the theorem. Intense competition developed between Augustin Cauchy and Gabriel Lame, two famous French mathematicians, but both proofs were proved wrong by Ernst Kummer, a German mathematician who also proved by logic that a solution was not possible with the day’s mathematics. Work on it soon froze due to this, but was again kept warm by a curious incident. Paul Wolfskehl, a wealthy German industrialist gave a new life to it in 1908. Wolfskehl decided to commit suicide at a particular date and time due to a failed love affair. On that night, seeing that he had time, he spent some time in his personal library examining some books, Krummer’s treatise among them. Wolfskehl found an error in Krummer’s argument and was so engrossed in it that it dawned and he was invigorated with the joy of living. He decided to rewrite his will to offer 100,000 German marks (1 million pounds in today’s money) to be awarded to the person who proves the theorem before September 2007, 100 years hence!

Andrew Wiles was born in 1953 in England, but later emigrated to U.S. As a young boy of 10, he was fascinated by the Fermat’s theorem which he discovered in a book in his public library. He was intrigued and interested by the centuries-old search for a proof of it and made it his mission for life. To do that, he must be in a position to handle the language of mathematics like an expert and a conventional education was the prime requirement. Wiles went on to become Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, where Einstein spent his latter half of his career. His doctoral research was on a new branch of mathematics, called elliptic equations. This nascent branch was to find prime importance in the quest for proving Fermat right. In the 1950’s, two Japanese mathematicians, Yutaka Taniyama and Goro Shimura put forward a proposition, which was later called the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture. This stated that elliptic equations could be transformed into modular forms, which was another new branch developed in the twentieth century. Though the conjecture affirmed that the transformation was two-way, it couldn’t be proved. In 1984, Gerhard Frey proposed that Fermat’s last theorem, if proved false, lead to a peculiar elliptic equation which is so weird that it couldn’t be transformed to modular forms, thereby defying the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture. In other words, if the last theorem was false, Taniyama-Shimura was also false and vice versa, but the latter was bagging more and more adoption from mathematicians the world over. In 1986, Ken Ribet proved that Frey’s elliptic equation is indeed weird and can’t be transformed to modular form. It now remained to prove only the Taniyama-Shimura to confirm that Fermat was also true. Wiles continued his search for proof in isolation, lest anyone gets wind of it and steal the glory. He was really frightened when in 1988, Yoichi Miyaoka published a proof based on differential geometry, another new concept. However, to his utmost relief, the proof was later shown to be inconsistent. Wiles stepped up the tempo and succeeded in proving that every class of elliptic equations could be transformed to modular form with a new method developed by Kolyvagin and Flach.

Wiles announced his results in a seminar held at Cambridge in June 1993. The world lost no time in hailing him as the greatest mathematician of the century. The bouquets soon turned to brickbats when the judges appointed to referee his proof found some mistakes in it, which Wiles was unable to solve for 14 months. The mathematics community had almost relegated Wiles to another person who failed to come up with a convincing proof, than he supplemented his earlier work with a brilliant correction based on Iwasawa method, along with Richard Taylor. The proof finally appeared in the journal, Annals of Mathematics in May 1995, confirming Wiles stature for all eternity. With all this hindsight, we wonder whether Fermat really did have a proof as he claimed, as all of the concepts behind the proof was developed in the twentieth century.

The book is a pleasure to read and is an international best seller. Even people having only a fleeting experience with mathematics won’t find the book difficult to follow. Yes, you’d indeed find equations here, but those are analysed and made palatable to everybody’s taste and knowledge by the author’s masterful style. Singh’s sense of proportion in describing historical incidents which affected mathematics and determined its future flow is commendable. Every now and then he’d diverge from the main thread to illuminate a lateral point, but even those strays are delightful to read. A lot of interesting anecdotes are presented in the book, one of them concerning Pythagoras is noted here. The great Greek mathematician had a disciple, named Hippasus. The young talent soon discovered that irrational numbers (like square root of 2) existed, which contradicted with his master’s world view that all numbers are rational and defined the world. Instead of evaluating the new hypothesis to assess the truth in it, Pythagoras determined to stifle his opponent, at last ordering to drown his student! The concept of irrational numbers were kept a closely guarded secret for a few more years and came to light only after the death of the great thinker.

There are practically no drawbacks to counted against the book. A feeble, but politically significant one is that the author attaches too much importance to Greek learning and thought than they actually deserve. Mathematical development in Asia is proposed to be a continuation of Greek work when it sank into the dark ages. As he says, “While Europe abandoned the noble search for truth, India and Arabia were consolidating the knowledge which had been smuggled out of the embers of Alexandria and were reinterpreting it in a new and more eloquent language” (p.59). To claim that Asian knowledge was smuggled out of Egypt is simply outrageous, but we may pardon the author because he has given to us a very fine piece of work to be cherished by all serious readers.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

A History of Pi

Title: A History of Pi

Author: Petr Beckmann

Publisher: St.Martin’s Press 1971

ISBN: 978-0-312-38185-1

Pages: 189

Petr Beckmann was born in Czechoslovakia, in 1924 and worked there as a research scientist at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences till 1963. At that time, he traveled to the University of Colorado as a visiting professor, and decided to stay on to escape from the repressive communist government at home. In this remarkable, but not unique book on the history of pi (p) – mathematics’ most renowned number – Beckmann looks at the steady human progress made from prehistoric to post modern times in reconciling the curious scientific concept with the organisation of knowledge. Though an electrical engineer by profession, his interest and grasp of history is amazing and delightfully expressed in numerous asides which help to light up a point of doubtful clarity. In the survey which spans over four millennia, Beckmann offers bouquets and brickbats alternatively to one dynasty or nation to the other. He is all praise for the Greek, but mortally opposed to the Romans. He repudiates the Soviets under communism in the most harsh terms, which is expected from a person who had to save his own skin by emigrating to a foreign country from the bloodthirsty communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

The ratio between the circum ference and diameter of a circle was noted by the ancients. But, calculating the value was a herculean task, considering that they had no scales, decimal system or long division. Babylonian and Egyptian priest-mathematicians found the value of pi nearly correct to two decimal places. The value obtained was 3.125 in Babylonia and 3.16 in Egypt. This is far sophisticated than the value given in the Bible (the integer 3!). The eastern societies performed superbly, the value obtained for pi being 3.1416 in India (by Aryabhata and Bhaskara) and 3.1415926 in China. Archimedes developed an analytical method to find the value, but was killed by a Roman soldier. It is said that the only representative of the Romans who finds a place in the history of science is the soldier who killed Archimedes. The author goes into histrionics in condemning the Roman empire. Though conceptually appealing to the author’s arguments, calling the Romans pests and Julius Caesar a thug is a little off the mark.

Alexandria was the light house of knowledge in the ancient world for about 600 years spanning the birth of common era. The Alexandrian Library was destroyed many times in history – first, in 48 BCE by Julius Caesar, in 272 CE by emperor Aurelianus, in 295 CE by emperor Diocletian, in 391 CE by Bishop Theophilus (Rome had Christianized by then), and in 415 by Bishop Cyril who also ordered the hacking to death of the famous woman mathematician, Hypatia as a devotee of pagan learning. The end came in 646 when the Arab Muslim general Amr ibn-al-As completely wiped it off, which is traditionally marked as the beginning of the middle ages when knowledge was eclipsed and religion cast it wide wings of ignorance and superstition over much of Asia and Europe. The middle ages ended in the 15^th century, but the transition was not swift or marked. Even after a century thereafter, high crimes by priests and the Church continued unabated. Cardinal Torquemada condemned Spanish mathematician Valmes to be burnt at the stake in 1486 for finding the solution to the quartic equation. The cardinal held that it Valmes’ action was against the will of God that such a solution was inaccessible to human understanding. Giordano Bruno was burnt alive in 1600 for postulating that the earth moves round the sun. Galileo Galilee was arrested and punished in 1633 who later recanted. However the entire middle ages was not a period of unmitigated darkness. Sparks flew here and there, as Fibonacci (Leonardo of Pisa) learnt and practiced the Indian numeric system from Arab merchants ad calculated pi as 3.1418. Francois Viete invented an analytical method to calculate pi to any precision, as the sum of an infinite series.

By the end of the 16^th century, pi was known to 30 decimal places, by 18^th century, it rose to 140 decimal places, by the end of 19^th, it reached 707 and in 1967, computers found 500,000 decimal places for pi. The current record is 2.7 trillion places, established in 2010. Even though mathematicians delved deep into the numeric thick forest, no periodicity was found. Johann Lambert (1767) and Adrien-Marie Legendre (1794) proved that pi is an irrational number (which cannot be represented as the fraction of two integers). Legendre also proved that p² was also irrational, demolishing hopes that p might be the square root of a rational number. F Lindemann established in 1882 that it is also a transcendental number. Various mnemonic devices are available to memorise the digits of pi to many places. The number of letters in each word of the following sentence represents the successive digits of p, “How I Want A Drink, Alcoholic Of Course, After The Heavy Lectures Involving Quantum Mechanics” (3.14159265329). In French and German, there are poems that help to memorize up to 29 decimal places. The 32^nd digit of p is zero, limiting attempts beyond this point!

William Jones first used the letter ‘p', for pi in the current sense of the term in 1706. He intended it as a short form for ‘periphery’. However, Jones was not a prominent person in the mathematics of his era, and his notation was not copied by anyone. Things suddenly changed when Leonhard Euler, one of the great mathematicians of all time, used the symbol in 1737, replacing his earlier notations of ‘c’ or ‘p’, for the same quantity. Newton and Euler devised methods to easily calculate p to any significant number of decimal places. Laplace obtained a mechanical method, called Monte Carlo Method, to find p, taking into account the probability of a randomly thrown needle to intersect the ruled lines on a horizontal surface.

The book is eminently readable and quite compact to even finish it in one go. The language is simple, but clear and crisp. The reader is invited and led by hand to the concepts which the author illustrates in graphic detail. Being written by an engineer, it reflects the wisdom of the world and highly practical ways of lesser known concepts of mathematics. Instead of sticking solely to trace p, free transgressions from the thread are repeated many times over, but the reader finds each one to be quite amusing and informative. Every student of science and technology must read this little marvel of a book. The author is sarcastic and forceful on fanaticism of any kind, whether it be professed by the church or the communists. He says about the destruction of books in Mexico by the missionaries as, “In the 1560’s, Diego de Landa, Bishop of Yucatan, burned the literature of the Maya on the grounds that “they contained nothing in which there were not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil”. What remained was burnt by the natives who had been converted to the Bishop’s religion of love and tolerance” (p.35). We can also discern striking generalizations such as “Then there is Roman engineering: the Roman roads, aqueducts, the Colosseum. Warfare, alas, has always been beneficial to engineering. In a healthy society, engineering design gets smarter and smarter; in gangster states, it gets bigger and bigger” (p.56). The book also spells out what is a transcendental number, which is a term not understood properly even by students who had even undergone college mathematics. Transcendental numbers are not only irrational, but couldn’t even be roots of an algebraic equation.

On the down side, Beckmann’s cavalier approach to the eastern societies which contributed to the progress of science when Europe was besmirched with superstition is to be deplored. Touching on the point of accidental discovery of the Ahmes papyrus, he says, “Histories like these (accidental location of ancient papyrii) make one wonder how many such priceless documents have been used up by the Arabs as toilet papyrii” (p.23), as if the Arabs were good at nothing else! Also Beckmann attributes the discovery of zero to the Chinese, whereas the honour is conferred on India by general consensus, as shown by, “The Chinese discovered the equivalent of the digit zero. Like the Babylonians, they wrote numbers by digits multiplying powers of the base (10 in China), just like we do” (p.29). Frontal attacks on the Romans, also would seem to be disproportionate considering the times in which those emperors ruled. Politics often seeps out of the background information as accusations against the Russian communists and admonitions against the Egyptians, against whom Beckmann claims that Archimedean screw pumps were still in use in Egypt whose rulers think it more important to destroy Israel than to provide their people with modern irrigation (p.63). The book is also riddled with a little too many equations and inscrutable diagrams. Such things are not helped in any way by the author’s proclivity to provide mathematical proof of formulas or theorems.

Even with all these shortcomings, the book is a delight to read. The cover, designed frugally with a black background with a large p in the middle, is so appealing. The book was published in 1970, and the details on computer simulations of p need updating in the present context of superior computing power affordable even to amateurs. The book is also important because pi has been a special number for all the people. Every year, March 14, (3/14) is celebrated as the PI Day!

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Tycoons

Title: The Tycoons

Author: Charles R Morris

Publisher: Owl Books 2006 (First published: 2005)

ISBN: 978-0-8050-8134-3

Pages: 333

Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould and J.P. Morgan are names we usually associate with charitable foundations, trusts or enormous bankers in the 21^st century. Few people know who these persons were, how they achieved the fame now attributed to them as a matter of right and rather curiously, whether they really deserve the credit freely heaped on them by a society removed from the pioneers by about a century. Charles R Morris attempts to tell the story in its minute details, at the same time not trying to present the protagonists in a sheen of supernatural faculties. Morris’ men are mere mortals, subjects to the compulsions and temptations of easy money, sometimes going slow on ethics and putting their peers or subordinates in a tight dilemma or downright dumping them off the cart. Nothing destroys public memory like success, catapulting these four adventurous businessmen to their positions which were astronomically high in shaping America’s super economy in the late 19^th century. Once they reached their coveted seats, fame gave way to honour. None of them, except J.P. Morgan had any claim to a prosperous family background, but fought hard and fast to achieve success.

The book traces the careers of Andrew Carnegie (steel), John D Rockefeller (oil), Jay Gould (railroad) and J.P.Morgan (banking) whose names are intricately connected to the development of U.S. economy in the late 19^th century. The author portrays these tycoons as resorting to even unethical practices to gain an upper hand on the competitors. Several examples are cited, of these men taking advantage of the nascent business opportunities on a scenario not burdened with anti-monopoly regulations. In fact, several of the unethical practices of these tycoons prompted harsh anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws which govern business at present.

Industry in the U.S. boomed by the first half of 19^th century over Britain. Command over vast natural resources, land and unburdened manpower intent on changing their social status through hard work and resultant monetary advantage made America the fastest growing economy in the world. Automated production became the standard, unfettered by labour unrest such a proposition would have evoked in Britain or other European nations and because of availability of educated workers. The resultant increase in productivity and reduction in cost helped these products successfully compete with and eventually outperform European products. Britons traveled to the U.S. to study and emulate the success stories across the Atlantic, the Enfield rifle being one of them. Students of Indian history might note the impetus the Enfield rifle provided to the first war of independence of 1857! U.S. per capita income equalled that of Britain by 1860.

The civil war (1861-65) under the presidency of Abraham Lincoln was the single most consequential event in American history. The North and the South clashed over the right to own slaves, which ended in a decisive win for the egalitarian North. Industrial progress witnessed soon after the war towards the end of the century was so great that it was not repeated anywhere in the world for a century or so. The great industrial progress of China, currently we are witnessing, may be the one event which outpaced even the American one! Railroads, coal mining, oil and steel production spearheaded the bandwagon. Even without posing for customers, rail lines surged ahead and crisscrossed and coast to coast lines became operational in no time. New processes catalysed steel production to never-before levels. Even on the face of large scale immigration of poor people from Germany, Ireland and Eastern Europe, the average income of a worker grew, with equal opportunities for those classes to move into middle class, a distinct invention of the U.S. Department stores, mail order companies, entertainment and personal artefacts flourished. Thus, the country that had been trembling on the brink of modernity at Lincoln’s death discovered thirty years later that it had made the leap.

Cut throat price wars prompted the companies to amalgamate and become huge entities. During 1890-1910 such large scale mergers took place that even cases where up to 40 companies were merged were seen. Scale of production and mechanization kept down prices, also helped also by the protective tariffs imposed on European products, which had a crippling effect on the imports. It is curious also to note that American business interests, which are the driving force behind anti-tariff regulations of the World Trade Organisation were in fact nurtured by the protective tariffs during its infancy.

The book is noted for its pointed approach, never deviating much from the business descriptions adroitly followed by the author. The statistics is precise and illuminating (one would, of course, only glance over it!) and the view is enlightening that the author is reviewing 19^th century incidents with the moral spectacles of 20^th century business ethics. The book would appeal to the workers of that century too, as Morris implicates the tycoons rather harshly whenever mass-action programs were undertaken against them.

On the other hand, the book is difficult to read, the language rather terse. It is too businesslike and the flow is constrained and forced at some places. Quite simply, it is uninteresting to read. It is also tarnished with an unnecessary and out of place attack on scientific management of Francis W Taylor. Though the vituperative remarks are mixed with humour and rather interesting, it casts a backward look on progress which can’t be allowed to creep into industry.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star