Latest news with #Matthai
Hans India
20 hours ago
- Automotive
- Hans India
Philippos Matthai tops INAC round 2 with four wins
New Delhi's Philippos Matthai brought into play all his vast experience and undoubted driving skills to win outright in four categories in the Vamcy Merla Chennai Gravel Fest which doubled up as the second round of FMSCI Indian National Autocross Championship (INAC) 2025 at the Madras International Circuit, here on Sunday. Matthai, driving his INRC 2 Polo car, blitzed quality fields in the premier INAC 1 and INAC 2 categories in both of which he won the Open and 2000 classes to stamp his authority on the event as he also put in the fastest time of one minute, 38.880 seconds over the 1.8 kms track which was a mix of dirt, gravel and tarmac. The Delhi ace was in a league of his own as he held off his arch-rivals which included top guns Syed Salman (Mysuru), Arnav Pratap Singh (Gurugram), former National Rally champion Chetan Shivram (Bengaluru) and Vaibhav Marathe (Ponda) all of whom finished on podium in the four classes. Reflecting on his performance, Matthai said: 'I am very happy to have won in four classes. We achieved what we had set out to do. The track was a bit tricky in the early part with water puddles in some of the corners after overnight rains. However, the track dried up and became a bit rough in the latter half of the day. I didn't participate in the first round in Chikmagaluru last month. So, it was a good result here. I now look forward to the next round in Coimbatore.' Meanwhile, Syed Salman also enjoyed a fruitful outing as he topped the INAC 2 up to 1650cc and up to 1450cc classes for a fine double. Davangere's Shivani Pruthvi won in the Ladies class ahead of Chennai's Nivetha Jessica and Anusha NS from Bengaluru while Gowtham CP (Chikkamagaluru) topped the INAC 3 Open category. Hyderabad's Sundeep K, who finished eighth in the INAC 1 Unrestricted Open category, was adjudged 'Best Novice' driver.
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Business
- Indian Express
A new biography of John Matthai discusses his policy contributions in the early years of independent India
John Matthai played a significant role in shaping government economic policies at the dawn of Independence but it has taken more than 60 years since his death for a definitive biography on the respected Syrian Christian economist, academician and technocrat. Matthai would have been pleased at the choice of his biographer, Bakhtiar Dadabhoy, who brings a thoughtful, research-oriented and measured approach, reflective of his subject. Matthai was a man for all seasons: India's first railways minister, the second finance minister, first chairperson of the State Bank of India, chairperson of the Taxation Inquiry Commission, vice chancellor of Bombay University and Kerala University, and a member of the Tariff Board pre-Independence, besides other significant positions. Matthai is probably best remembered today as the main author of the Bombay Plan of 1944, an action plan for economic development in independent India, underwritten by a few industrialists. He worked on it at the behest of JRD Tata, as Matthai had had a long and successful stint with the Tata group. He fitted in comfortably at the business house controlled almost exclusively in those days by the clannish Parsis. He even became the first non-Parsi chairperson of the powerful Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and was Tata chairperson JRD Tata's blue-eyed boy. His colleague, the witty Sir Homi Modi, joked about Matthai's characteristic solemnity — that even when he said, 'Good morning'' it sounded like a papal benediction. Matthai's years at Tata were his happiest, his several stints in government less serendipitous. The prickly, principled Matthai did not last very long in any post because of his intransigence and independence. His most famous fall-out was with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru over the Planning Commission. Nehru, impressed by Matthai's wealth of experience in business, administration and academics, invited him to join the first cabinet as a representative of the Christian community. Matthai became railway minister. It was the worst possible time, World War II having weakened the economy and Partition having wreaked havoc. Matthai was given the thankless job of partitioning the railways between the two new countries in less than eight weeks. The railway minister was often at loggerheads with home minister Sardar Patel, who wanted to run more trains, while Matthai felt that the overriding priority for evacuation trains was for the Army and police to protect the trains carrying fleeing migrants. When India's first finance minister Shanmukham Chetty, Patel's choice, resigned, Matthai was appointed in his place. It was not a propitious start. Matthai's first budget was generally panned as being pro-rich and inequitable, with high postal hikes and levy on coarse cloth. He was also caught off-guard by the devaluation of the pound, taking at face value the British government's official assurance that the pound, to which the rupee was pegged, would not be demonetised. But it was Matthai's differences with Nehru which brought matters to a head. Nehru, inspired by Fabian Socialism and the Russian example, wanted direct control over the planning process. Though a student of the Fabian socialist Sydney Webb, Matthai, who had first-hand experience in the business world, was more concerned about conserving the economy, especially in view of the stringency of resources, rather than redesigning it. He apprehended that the Planning Commission would emerge as a parallel Cabinet with its deputy chairman exercising more power than the finance minister. While submitting his resignation, Matthai was stiff and unbending. Nehru felt hurt by what he considered Matthai's discourteous behaviour when he was trying to placate him. In hindsight Matthai's apprehensions proved to be well-founded and there were repeated economic crises in the country over the next decades. Erosion of control was an issue which exercised Matthai greatly. Years later when he was appointed vice chancellor of Bombay University, he objected to governors of states being ex-officio chancellors of universities. He was rather aggressive with the gentlemanly governor of Bombay state, Sri Prakasa, who had newly arrived. The principle he was fighting for to protect academic freedom from political interference was very valid. Historians and economists will gather much insight from Dadabhoy's accounts of Matthai's finance and railway budgets and the report of the Taxation Inquiry Commission, but the subjects could be heavy going for an average reader. The Matthai family is full of achievers. His son Ravi was the first director of the IIM Ahmedabad, his nephew Verghese Kurien became the father of the milk revolution, having landed up in Anand quite by coincidence. One would have preferred more insight into the personal life of Honest John, a nickname given incidentally by Nehru. Unfortunately, Matthai seems to have destroyed most of his private and official papers. The author is contributing editor, The Indian Express
Mint
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Mint
How John Matthai became a leading light of economic policy in independent India
The biographer is a bit like the cat burglar, stealthily climbing up the scaffolding of a person's life, breaking in, surveying the assortment of riches and then leaving with only a few select, precious elements. This sounds easier on paper than in practice. The biographer starts his or her undertaking with an inherent handicap, given the limited access to a subject's life (especially if the subject is long deceased), and is forced to temper vaulting ambition with discretion. It is in the choice of things the author focuses on—the life lived and the circumstances surrounding that life—that determines what makes for a good biography. What finally makes a biography truly stand out is the craft of storytelling, transforming the tedium of chronology into a compelling narrative. Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy's biography of John Matthai, Honest John, is an object study of how an author has to perform an intricate balancing act between the different elements of a subject's life: unspooling the various milestones, his professional progression, the contexts (economic, social and political) defining his professional choices and, finally, how the interplay between the subject's personal events, or emotional growth, determine some life choices or professional achievements. John Matthai is, admittedly, an interesting choice—independent India's first railways minister and its second finance minister—though charting his life holds myriad challenges and Dadabhoy's courageous enterprise manages to score on some counts but comes up empty on many others. Also reads: My mother, the family's memory-keeper Matthai's life became manifestly fascinating by first moving from the private sector to the government, and then becoming a core member of the policy circle that watched over the transition of India from a colony to an independent republic. Matthai had till then shifted from academia to policymaking before settling down at the Tata Group. As a professor of economics at Madras Presidency College, he was nominated to the Madras legislative council in November 1922, affording him first-hand experience in bridging the distance between theory and practice. This brought him to the notice of the Tata Group which pursued him and convinced him to join. Matthai's work on the Bombay Plan—drafted under the imprimatur of J.R.D. Tata and G.D. Birla, among others—had caught the attention of both Congress party leaders as well as the colonial administration. Matthai's graduation into national-level policymaking happened when he was invited to join the interim government in August 1946. It is here that Matthai bumped up against national politics, preparing him for long debates, contentious arguments and partisan broadsides against his policy choices. Initially approached for the finance portfolio, the political exigency of having to accommodate Muslim League's Liaquat Ali Khan forced Matthai to console himself with the industries and supply portfolio. From here to railway minister during independence, which literally had to transport the horrors of Partition across borders, and finance minister thereafter, Dadabhoy's biography is like a luxury train, affording readers a fleeting view of modern India's economic history as it passes by. Dadabhoy diligently excavates official memoranda, policy briefs, letters, Parliament records and debates to provide a glimpse of how a newly-formed republic, recovering from decades of surplus extraction while grappling with widespread poverty and the after-effects of a devastating communal carnage, was trying to craft a sustainable and equitable policy architecture. Statements from leaders with contesting views provide an interesting dynamic, showcasing some of the moral and ethical dilemmas in constructing a democratic, empathetic and secular republic from scratch. Matthai's biography as a vehicle provides an excellent vantage view. But herein lies the nub. There is a lot going on outside that is covered meticulously and, yet, the tumult and turmoil occurring inside the vehicle goes completely undocumented. This is a large, noticeable gap; Dadabhoy has fastidiously mounted flesh and bones to a skeletal framework but forgotten to add a soul to the end-product. It is this conspicuous omission that robs the biography of meaning. Writing about the art of writing biographies, specifically Lytton Strachey's biography of Queen Victoria, author Virginia Woolf had commented: 'Could not biography produce something of the intensity of poetry, something of the excitement of drama, and yet keep the peculiar virtue that belongs to fact—its suggestive reality, its own proper creativeness?" This 'suggestive reality" is perhaps the secret sauce that could have helped Honest John become a compelling narrative, instead of just an interesting read. For example, close to 100 pages are dedicated to tracing the debates, question-and-answers, budgetary allocations after Matthai joins the interim government and later assumes office as railways minister. It is an informative interlude, providing readers a view of India's modern economic history in the making. But, then, readers come away not any wiser about the dramatis personae, specifically John Matthai, scripting this important chapter in India's history. In the preface to American Prometheus, a biography of scientist Robert Oppenheimer, authors Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin confess that, 'It is a deeply personal biography researched and written in the belief that a person's public behaviour and his policy decisions (and in Oppenheimer's case perhaps even his science) are guided by the private experiences of a lifetime." There are multiple instances in Honest John which cry out for some understanding of Matthai's 'private experiences". The first, and most obvious, missing link in the book is the influence of Achamma Matthai. Apart from a perfunctory mention in the book as John Matthai's wife, Achamma deserved some more exposure. She was one of the early female graduates in India, having graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from St John's Diocesan College, Kolkata, in 1920. The relationship between Achamma and John needed to be explored in more granular detail and not the boilerplate statement, 'It proved to be a happy marriage". Achamma's influence on John Matthai's career trajectory, his professional choices and his moral journey looms over the book like some nebulous spirit, palpable yet undefined. This becomes evident in March 1944, when both John and Achamma are distraught after their daughter Valsa dies under mysterious circumstances in the US. This is soon after the Bombay Plan is announced and two years before Matthai resigns from the Tatas to join the interim government. The interim period is intensely important but Dadabhoy provides little for us to understand Matthai's state of mind, how he manages to tackle the demons or how the tragedy shaped his personality thereafter. In the foreword to the book, Matthai's daughter-in-law Syloo (married to Ravi Matthai) describes the man: 'Daddy was seen as being a formidable person, a man with a serious demeanour and an eminence which many thought precluded intimacy or even small liberties. But, at home, he was an entirely different person." In other words, Matthai, like everybody else, was human with the usual flaws and frailties. Dadabhoy provides a brief glimpse of the man's faultlines by recounting the episode where Matthai seeks Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's intervention after Matthai's son reportedly runs over and kills a pedestrian in Allahabad. This is the only instance when readers catch sight of the great man's feet of clay; Dadabhoy's hands may have been forced here by an earlier book which first recounted the incident. But barring this single incident, there is scarce little to sketch out the man's personality. This shortcoming is perhaps born out of necessity. While Parliamentary records and inter-ministerial archives have become much more accessible, we do not know if Dadabhoy had similar luck with John Matthai's personal documents and letters. Also, to be fair to Dadabhoy, many of the people who knew Matthai personally have all passed on, adding another layer of insurmountable constraints. This biography, therefore, apart from being a valuable document for understanding how some of India's policy contours unfolded in the first decade after independence, adds little to the mystique of John Matthai as one of India's leading post-independent policy architects. The author is a senior journalist and author of Slip, Stitch and Stumble: The Untold Story of India's Financial Sector Reforms. He posts @rajrishisinghal 'Honest John: A Life of John Matthai': By Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy, Penguin Random House India, 396 pages, ₹999 Also reads: India's growth and urban planning: On different planets
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Business Standard
26-05-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
John Matthai: The values of service revisited in fresh perspective
In Epilogue, however, Mr Dadabhoy chooses to dwell on Matthai's children and their achievements. In a biography of John Matthai, Epilogue should have been on his larger legacy in public policymaking Premium A K Bhattacharya Listen to This Article HONEST JOHN: A Life of John Matthai by Bakhtiar K Dadabhoy Published by Penguin XXIV+396 pages ₹999 John Matthai had many unique distinctions. He was India's only post-independence finance minister who had also held that responsibility in the interim government, formed before the country gained freedom. As finance member in Viceroy Wavell's Executive Council, Matthai took some important decisions such as abolishing the notorious salt tax, levying an export duty on cotton and removing price controls on jute and jute goods. But in less than two months, he had to make way for Liaquat Ali Khan of the Muslim League, which belatedly
Scroll.in
13-05-2025
- Business
- Scroll.in
Biography: How John Matthai, India's second finance minister, handled the devaluation of the rupee
John Matthai told the House that he had informed Ceylon and Pakistan about the devaluation of the Indian rupee but had received no response from the latter. Matthai released an announcement in the press on 19 September, a Monday, about the devaluation and the concurrence was received from the IMF by the finance ministry on the same day. However, since Monday to Wednesday were all bank holidays, the new rate became effective only on 22 September 1949. Matthai said that while he appreciated the difficulties faced by the British government, he found it strange that there was no mention of devaluation at the commonwealth ministers conference which was convened for discussing the dollar situation. 'I cannot help thinking that in a matter which so vitally affects the whole economy of every country in the sterling area, steps should have been taken to arrange for a secret meeting of the Finance Ministers of the Commonwealth countries before this decision was sprung upon them …' Matthai told the House that there existed a case based on economic facts for the devaluation of both the pound and the rupee, but he would have liked to have more time for deliberation on the subject. It was a decision not born out of logic but thrust upon him by the compulsion of events. He said that there was no other option open to India but to devalue since 75 per cent of exports was with the soft currency areas and in case they did not devalue, Indian exports would have been hard hit. Since the sterling balance was not an infinite source, the only way India could maintain a healthy trade balance was by promoting exports. 'That then is the main reason. May I put it like this? We took this decision in the main as a defensive measure.' He then went on to explain that India was a member of what was called the sterling area, and as long as India was part of the sterling area, it had to honour the objective of that area, which as he understood it, was to 'achieve a balance of trade at the highest possible level, partly by expanding exports and partly as a temporary measure – if that was necessary in order to restore equilibrium – by reducing imports also'. The essence of the sterling area was that all the hard currency resources earned by the members of the sterling area were pooled and all the members of the sterling area had the right to draw upon the central reserves for meeting their deficits in respect of dollar resources. It was in India's interest to remain in the sterling area, since unlike in the past when it was a net contributor to the pool, it was in the present day, a net beneficiary. After the UK, it was India who made the biggest demand upon the central reserves. Hence, it was in India's interest to remain in the sterling area. Matthai warned that it was quite possible that India would not have access to the resources represented by the central reserves of the sterling area. He said it was time that the country 'marshalled its resources and put its whole pattern of trade on a basis which would enable it to go without this adventitious aid'. If the need for devaluation was accepted, then there was an equal ground for suggesting that there should be devaluation in equal measure. As it is, he said, the level of prices was higher in India, and if added to that there was an appreciation of the rupee, it would seriously handicap India's exports. India devalued to the extent Britain did, but curiously Pakistan did not. The price of their exports was inelastic, and devaluation would have reduced their incomes. Matthai told the House that he thought that Pakistan's decision lacked economic justification. Pakistan's economic condition was not fundamentally different from that of other countries in the sterling area to justify what was in effect an appreciation of their currency. Pakistan's favourable balance of payments was due largely to two factors: first, the export of raw cotton and jute to India and, second, its low capital imports given the fact that its industrialisation programme had yet to take off. Given the appreciation, Indian manufacturers would be compelled as a matter of self-preservation to refuse to buy raw jute and cotton from Pakistan. According to BK Nehru, Pakistan's failure to devalue started a trade war (with India being the aggressor), which lasted well over a year. He narrates how when a year after the devaluation he met Sir George Bolton again and in the course of the conversation, asked him if he had not given the Pakistanis the same information he had given the Indians. Bolton responded with a categorical 'no' saying that he could not think of any Pakistani who would not have made money if he was privy to such information. BK Nehru observes, 'This I thought was a most unfair remark. There was no difference then in the standards of integrity between civil servants of India and Pakistan.' Analysing what he thought would be the future trend in Pakistan's balance of payments, given the fall in the export in cotton and jute and the impending industrialisation which would involve the import of capital goods, Matthai argued that Pakistan's decision not to devalue was the result of not economic, but other, considerations. Matthai approvingly quoted The Economist of London in this regard. The magazine had called it a 'temporary aberration' attributing it to psychological causes that included a sense of injured pride. Also, the temptation to demonstrate the superiority of their currency over the Indian currency had been too strong to resist. Matthai also said that economic forces would make it increasingly difficult for Pakistan to maintain the new ratio. Matthai told the House that since the question of the exchange rate was linked with certain issues arising out of the payments agreement between the two countries, there was no decision to announce a new rate or to alter in any way the Indian decision on the devaluation. Referring to the effects of the devaluation on the Indian economy, Matthai said that the position was still obscure. 'There are far too many uncertain factors and I hesitate to lay down any dogmatic or categorical proposition.' However, he did venture to state a few broad conclusions which were necessarily of a tentative character. Analysing the balance of payments with the US, Matthai said that India's exports mainly comprised jute and tea, both commodities being demand and supply inelastic. Thus, devaluation was unlikely to lead to any quantitative increase. On the import side, he wanted to stop the import of food grains as early as possible, reduce the imports of motor vehicles, and to divert the purchase of machinery and other industrial products as far as possible to soft currency areas. As far as the balance of payments position with the UK was concerned, he said that the goods exported to India by the UK using US material would necessarily show some increase. With the increasing demand, which was going to be placed upon the soft currency areas because of the higher dollar prices of these goods, there was 'likely to be an increased pressure of demand upon soft currency areas which could raise to some extent the prices of goods imported from soft currency areas'. Matthai also discussed the effect of the devaluation on the convertible portion of India's sterling balance. While he admitted that there would be some loss, the loss was not likely to be as large as a straightforward application of arithmetical percentages would suggest. The loss would depend on the extent to which India could divert purchases to the sterling area, on the difference in prices, and on the money value that they set upon the difference in quality and periods of delivery. He observed, 'The real test in these matters is not currency, but the things currency buys.' There had been fears about an attempt to scale down the sterling balances, something which was stoutly resisted by Purshotamdas Thakurdas and others. Matthai, during the course of his speech, adverted to Sir Winston Churchill's speech to the British Parliament regarding the scaling down of the sterling balances. He said that the demand for scaling down the balances was based on the plea that India owed a good deal more than it had contributed so far towards the war expenses of the allied countries. Matthai said that India's share of the war expenditure was a matter of definite and deliberate agreement between the two countries made at a time when Churchill was the prime minister. 'Every penny due from us under the present agreement has been paid … I maintain therefore in fairness, there is no justification for the demand which is being repeatedly made by certain sections of public opinion in the United Kingdom.' The sterling balances, Matthai said, were a result of an improper use of the provisions of the RBI Act, which linked the rupee with the sterling, sterling securities being used to that extent as reserves for Indian currency. It was the sterling balances that were at the root of the inflation in India. He said that if there had been an Indian government at the time of the war, then the cost of goods supplied by India to the UK would have been met by goods supplied to India, especially capital goods, by rupee loans raised in India or by gold. If these did not meet the cost of supplies required, the supplies would have had to be restricted to that extent. This, he said, would have spared India the terrific inflation it inherited. India was not a party to the declaration of the war, whatever its merits, and it was unfair to now saddle a national government with additional expenses. After briefly touching upon the price level, he told the House about the various steps taken, and proposed to be taken, after devaluation. He ended with a word of warning: He said that devaluation should be viewed as a timely warning about the fact that India had been living beyond its means, both internally and externally. KT Shah, in the course of the debate, spoke of the betrayal by the British and how Matthai had been led into a trap by Sir Stafford, who till the very end said there would be no devaluation and then suddenly did what he had been denying all along. He accused Matthai of underestimating the injury that had occurred and said that nothing in the finance minister's statement had shown that the import of either food grains or capital goods could be curtailed. Speaking about the link with sterling, he said that even though technically there was no connection with sterling since the relevant RBI Act had been amended, the psychological link still remained, and this was affecting the behaviour of those in authority. He said that the decision to devalue would benefit only the British in their standard of living or in their industry. Using strong language he observed, 'It has no concern with us … if anybody lives in the hope … the belief that we are going to benefit from it. I should regard him a candidate for an asylum and not for an Assembly.' He added that devaluation was of little use if there were competitive devaluations. Referring to Britain's difficult position he observed, 'Here is a country which must necessarily depend upon trade and depend upon Empire. While the Empire was there it was able to levy an unseen invisible tribute from that Empire in one way or the other.' Referring to the sterling balances, he bemoaned the reduction in the purchasing power of the balances and wanted a third-party guarantee for conversion into gold or dollar equivalent, and wanted no more contact with the British. Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava from East Punjab believed that devaluation was the only option open to the government. He believed that Matthai had done the only thing possible at the time and that devaluation was done not to placate Britain but as a sovereign act by the government in the interest of the country. 'Our government, in self-interest alone agreed to this course. There was no other course open to government, and I want that this assembly should approve of this action of the government.' Prof NG Ranga from Madras wanted to know what steps Matthai had taken to reduce imports and increase exports if, as he said he had had had an inkling of the devaluation. He wanted to know about the probability of converting the sterling balances into dollar exchange. T Prakasam, also from Madras, said that even though India was free, it was still 'tied down in the currency business to Great Britain.' He asked why India had devalued to the same extent as Britain and wanted the extent of devaluation to be reduced. Pandit Nehru said that the country could not continue living beyond its means and that to that extent the devaluation had been a wake-up call. He wanted the country to concentrate on capital goods and the machine-making industry which would facilitate industrialisation. He wanted the members of the House to confer with the finance minister so that ideas could be shared by both parties. 'Now the members in this house are important not only as being members of Parliament, but as links with the people in the country, and it is quite essential that the house should cooperate fully in all the steps that we may take.'
