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Inviting failure

Has it struck you how most things that succeed here eventually end up slap in the midst of a scam or a scandal? The route is predictable. Effort brings success. Success brings big money. Big money leads to scandals and scams. Whether it is the stock market or the gentleman's game of cricket or show business or dotcoms, whenever we succeed, we hurtle towards our own damnation. Like Sisyphus, we are condemned to roll the same huge boulder up the same steep hill only to watch it come rolling down after a while.

When the equity market was booming in the early nineties and everyone was investing in shares and becoming lakhpatis overnight, we suddenly saw the Pied Piper of the Stock Market, Harshad Mehta, the canny stockbroker who was right in the epicentre of the boom, morphing from this great middle class hero into a villain and a scamster.

The suddenness of this metamorphosis caught millions of Indians offguard and they lost huge sums of money in the market. But not many complained because they suspected that Mehta and his accomplices had done something seriously wrong. Of course, what this wrong was no one quite figured out.

In fact, the ordinary middle class guy in Dombivli who saw his hard earned money in the ACC stock vanish into thin air still has no clue as to whether Harshad was actually a prophet or a rogue or, simply, a man ahead of his times. All he remembers is that he bribed Narasimha Rao with a crore of rupees and kept Sonia happy with an equally large donation to the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. These affirmed his intentions. But what hera pheri he actually did in the stock markets no one quite knows till now.

What was the outcome? The whole stock market boom went for a toss and thousands of people were beggared, countless reputations were shredded. Not to forget the companies who lost thousands of crores in market cap due to no fault of their management or promoters. There were many rumours of underworld syndicates and hawala operators being involved in the scam. So were stories of political intrigues and suitcases full of cash changing hands.

A more recent example was the cricket scam. Just when cricket was becoming bigger and bigger and millions of people were getting hooked on the game and its live telecasts were fetching channels millions of dollars in sponsorships and advertising revenue, the betting scandal broke and we discovered that some of our finest cricket icons were actually being bought out by illegal betting syndicates and forced to tilt the odds.

Manoj Prabhakar, the first man to blow the whistle eventually found himself trapped in the very scam that he tried to expose while Kapil Dev, his victim, escaped the CBI dragnet only to find himself caught by the income tax guys for underdeclaring his income and assets.

Mohammed Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja, two of our most popular cricketers, morphed exactly like Harshad did during the securities scam into much despised blackguards. Were they guilty of any crime? The CBI says yes but no one really knows.

Last week, show business came under similar scrutiny. For years, there were rumours of the mob investing heavily in the film industry. Of pretty starlets who got roles because of gun-toting sugar daddies. Of overseas rights acquired under duress and stars who flew across the Arabian Sea to perform in sleazy parties thrown by mobsters and their hitmen.

Extortion threats and frequent shootouts on the streets of Mumbai finally led to the arrest of a film producer and the interrogation of a brat star and a film financier renowned for his clout in the business.

Suddenly, from being this hugely successful, fast growing industry, showbiz (as a result of such undue attention from the law enforcers) has slumped into a frightened heap. This has beggared many distributors and exhibitors who had invested in new productions that have ground to a halt as the cops have started quizzing the rich and the powerful men behind them.

Does this mean all stockbrokers are shady or all cricketers are crooks? Does this mean all movie stars are linked to the mob or all film financiers have criminal antecedents? Not at all. It only shows that we move in cyclical passion. We are ready to put all that we have into something new and exciting as long as it is hep. But the moment it is subjected to relentless scrutiny by those in government or the media, we are ready to pick up our bags and run.

See, how quickly the prophets of dotcom have vanished. In fact, some of them are now openly going around saying that this shakeout is the best thing that could have happened. Maybe there is a grain of truth in it. But it is not the entire truth. The fact of the matter is that we are like sheep. We are driven by what the media says, what the market says, what the government in power says, what the CBI says. We are not ready to make our own call. We are not ready to stick by what we believe in.

So the moment a crisis occurs, we run as fast as our two feet can take us. This brings the stock market tumbling down. This shrinks our cricketing audiences. This hurts our distributors and theatre guys. This destroys the self confidence of our dotcom entrepreneurs.

And who gains in the process? Only punters. Because they are the guys who believe that what goes up must eventually come down and their job is to make money anticipating this trajectory. As a result, we are unable to establish anything durable. Instead, we end up as fodder to the very industry we hate so much. The betting industry.

Pritish Nandy

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