India has never seen and perhaps is never likely to see in the future a more colourful industrialist such as Subrata Roy, head of the Sahara network of companies, who passed away this week at the age of 75.
His extraordinary ability to make friends with and influence politicians, bureaucrats, film stars, sports champions, and the media along with his penchant to throw the rulebook out of the window and plunge into controversy made Roy a unique and unprecedented figure over the past three decades.
The impetuous business magnate’s driving ambition to poke his finger in as many pies as possible ultimately led to his financial ruin and also made him a remarkable phenomenon who, never far from the headlines, will be missed by the newspapers.
His Unusual Approach to His Vast but Troubled Business Empire
While many exploits of the buccaneer businessman have been publicised by the print media, television shows, websites, and even a Netflix serial called “Badboy Billionaires”, one thing about him not in the public domain but known to me underlines his unusual approach to his vast but troubled business empire.
In 2007, one of the world’s largest financial risk and advisory firms usually hired by companies to examine risk factors and red flags concerning other companies and their leadership which they were about to acquire or invest in, got a strange request. It was from Subrata Roy, who wanted the financial risk and advisory firm to do a due diligence on himself and his assets.
Roy’s motive apparently behind this unusual decision to pay a hefty sum to the global investigator to hold a magnifying mirror to himself was to know what ammunition was available for his foes and rivals to use against him. Interestingly when the investigation opened an entire pandora’s box both of personal misdemeanours and business malpractices, the industrialist was impressed with the report and congratulated the investigating firm for doing such a thorough job.
It just goes to show that Roy, despite his high-risk business template flouting regulatory practices and an obsessive need to flaunt his personal wealth, was nobody’s fool. He had managed to get out of trouble despite breaking the law again and again from the very outset of his entrepreneurial career in the early 1980s when he took over Sahara from his Mumbai-based boss after the latter’s mysterious death during a visit to Gorakhpur.
His amazing network of contacts within and outside the corridors of power that he built from scratch over the decades had enabled him to acquire an aura of invincibility. But in 2007 the master wheeler-dealer with the proverbial nine lives was shrewd enough to realise that he was heading for very rough weather.
Roy and the Big Netas of UP
What may well have motivated Roy to hire a top international agency to find out how much muck there was to dig out by his foes was the astounding rise of two arch-enemies in Indian politics. Both were ladies, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and BSP supremo Mayawati who in 2007 had swept to power in Uttar Pradesh with a clear majority. One controlled the central government and the other was in power in Uttar Pradesh, the headquarters of Sahara.
It was the misfortune of Roy, usually so adept at manipulating the rich, powerful, and glamorous, that he miserably failed to charm either Sonia or Mayawati.
With the Congress matriarch, the Saharashri had made the cardinal error of ganging up with Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh, supporting the latter in scuttling Congress from forming a government at the centre in 1999. Later the businessman compounded his mistake in actually writing a letter to the Indian president, urging that a person of foreign origin should not be made the prime minister of the country.
As for Mayawati, she saw Roy as the third member (along with traditional foes Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh) of a triad that was her main enemy. Much as he tried to ingratiate himself with Behenji after she became chief minister, the businessman hit a stone wall with her office, his conciliatory offers being being repeatedly spurned.
In fact, the BSP supreme made her hostility to the Sahara group clear by getting the Lucknow Development Authority to bulldoze sections of the Sahara Sahar in the Uttar Pradesh capital for encroachment on government land which had earlier been conveniently overlooked by the authorities.
Sahara's Fall and Roy's Unforgettable Saga
The pandora’s box revealed by the investigation ordered by Roy in 2007 steadily engulfed him and his network of companies, finally leading to his arrest in 2014 ordered by the Supreme Court.
With his earlier clout with compliant politicians and bureaucrats blunted in New Delhi during Congress rule till 2014 as well as in Lucknow where Mayawati reigned till 2012, the vast Sahara empire crumbled with the SEBI getting into the act after a complaint from a small group of 'investors' and another from a certain “Roshan Lal” against the business magnate for regulatory malpractices.
Subrata Roy did manage to get out on parole in 2016, went back to jail after some time, and then out on parole again. But there would be no comeback for either himself personally, with his health failing in recent years or his business empire. Nor is there any trail from the thousands of crores that are said to have poured into the Sahara kitty from top politicians across parties, film stars, and sports personalities along with millions of poor people across India’s most populous state.
Regardless of Roy and his empire being trampled under the wheels of justice, his saga is an unforgettable one.
Bengalis are not known for their business acumen or appetite for risk. Roy, however, rose from a chit fund collector to an aggressive tycoon who in his heyday owned financial services, and real estate including a hillside township, aviation, along with marquee hotels in London and New York, an IPL cricket team and a Formula One racing team. He also acquired sponsorships for the country's cricket and hockey teams, which was, frankly, quite amazing. His is indeed a fairy tale but with a twist at the end.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist and the author of ‘Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati’. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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