January 14th, 2024

 I met my boss after what seems to be a really long time. He always pokes a comment at me whenever he sees me, which to me - with my infinite perspicacity- translates roughly to " you really should see me more often, I feel ignored by you". From my standpoint, I tend to see the executive management very less. Partly because I am busy doing operational stuff. And partly because I actually only enjoy doing operations stuff. The political head-banging with my peers, which should be what I should bother myself with - and what is clearly what the boss wants from me, does not do much for me. Yes, I see a lot of the Executive Team are doing stuff not quite right. But when you peel the surface, you uncover all kinds of subliminal power structures that exist. People are connected in so many ways externally to the board and to the ministry. And you are trying to take them on as a peer. What for?  What would I ever gain? I would rather do operational things- things that are tactile and somewhat linearly controllable. They don't pay you well for this stuff- as a result the people doing this stuff seldom have the competence or the vision to do it right. This stuff also makes visible difference to your way of working. But no one seems to be interested. Everyone is chasing headlines. It was the same with my previous employer and I daresay it is the same here, except I have a bit more leeway here to do my own thing than I did before. 

We got down to talking shop and I gave him the lowdown on some of the things on my mind- the foremost being dealing with the shipping crisis in the Red Sea triggered by Houti rebels. Now this is a mystery to me. I mean why would Houti rebels attack commercial ships? How is it related to their cause? There is so much that I don't know enough about. My logistics manager believes that this is all orchestrated by the shipping lines- the evil mafia who want sea freight prices to recover fast and furiously following a couple of years of price depression. It seemed plausible but implied Maersk and Happy-Loyd somehow had access to Houti leadership. Whatever.

Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, I suggested to my boss that he should make an investment in India- an acquisition of a Cable manufacturer, at minimum. I had heard in corridor conversations that this had been on the cards for years but we missed the opportunity when the valuations were far more favorable than they were now. But the boss told me that the Indian markets were for Indians. A UAE company, or any foreign company could not make money there. You would have to have a local company and then it would bear no resemblance to the UAE parent in any manifest sense across multiple dimensions. So why even go there. This was quite a statement that seemed to suggest he had fallen out of favor with India quite summarily.Upon probing he related a story that brought this bias to light.

Prior to Ducab he was employed with Emirates Global Aluminium- one of the largest Primary Aluminium producers on the planet- similar in stature to Pittsburgh based Alcoa or Montreal based Alcan-Rio Tinto. EGA was interested in setting up the largest smelter and refining unit in India, near Ahmedabad in Gujarat. A high-level deal team was set up that used to fly in private jets to commence negotiations. At first there were negotiations with the Central Government. After greasing the required palms, they thought they had made progress. But then they had to go into discussion with the State government. After navigating past them, there was yet another two rounds of negotiations with the local panchayat level governments. And interestingly, the payout kept increasing as the deal team went down the hierarchy from the center to state to municipal to local governments. Basically, the lower one got, the closer the entity was to the seat of action.  Aside of the payoffs, the core deal also required re-settlement of 12 villages. This meant building homes, schools, hospitals, cinemas - the works. Villagers who were living three folks to a hut, were now owning a one-bedroom apartment each. Yet even after all this, the deal team was determined to make this happen. Soon after, the Central Government opened negotiations again. They wanted EGA to build a wharf in the port- purportedly to secure a dedicated berth for the movement of Aluminium in bulk vessels, but really they were looking to upgrade the port on EGA's dime. This too was agreed. The private jet traffic (which was unmarked by Indian authorities at the landing strips) began to subside and work commenced. After some months 4 villages were resettled. 8 to go - before the greenfield construction could start. At this point there was massive protest by villagers. Another private jet took off from Dubai for West Indian skies. Upon investigating the situation, it came to light that these protesting villagers were not even from the 12 villages being resettled. They were from neighboring villages who got wind of a gold mine that had rapidly improved the lot of the impacted villagers who now became town mice. It made them upset and felt they had lost out and were having none of it. Their demands ? Give them new housing too.

At this point, the deal team weighed in. And gave in. The Project was finally cancelled and EGA wrote-off 100 Million USD and came back to Dubai to carry on with life.

And so, said my boss, India is really for Indians. Only Indian companies can navigate the complex business environment and still claim to make money. For foreign companies to either make any money or move any money made to overseas locations was nigh impossible. So you could not easily convince him to partake as a foreign investor in manufacturing in the India story. 

This rang true somehow although my impression was that after 2014, the BJP government was more clean and agile. This project started prior to 2014 but here definitely was a phase during this short-lived project when the BJP had been in power- so they could not really blame this to Congress corruption.