Book: Mahabharata in Polyester – The Making of the World's Richest Brothers and Their Feud
Author: Hamish McDonald
Pages: 402
Price: Rs 1706 on Flipkart
Australian journalist Hamish McDonald's
reworked version of his earlier book, The Polyester Prince, re-charts
the growth of Dhirubhai Ambani and Reliance and takes the reader
through the events that led to the feud between his billionaire sons,
Mukesh and Anil. The Mahabharata in the title is misleading, for
McDonald does not segregate the Ambani siblings into Kauravas or
Pandavas, though Anil did call Anand Jain, (Dhirubhai's 'third son'
and Mukesh's trusted lieutenant) a modern-day Shakuni. Unlike the
Mahabharata, where you unwittingly take sides with the good Pandavas
in their triumph over the evil Kauravas, here you have difficulty choosing between characters coloured in grey. Even the Indian government simply warned the brothers to end their dispute among themselves in the interest of the nation. A rags-to-riches
story of one of the largest family-run corporations in the world, of
a man who maneuvered the government and the law of the land to fill his
own pockets and those of his shareholders, with a cast comprising the
Ambanis, the Gandhis, the Bachchans, the Wadias, Ramnath Goenka,
Pranab Mukherjee, VP Singh, Narasimha Rao, Manmohan Singh, Murli
Deora, Atal Behari Vajpayee, Arun Shourie, Ram Jethmalani, Amar
Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav and many other top politicians,
bureaucrats, journalists and commentators, Mahabharata in Polyester
is a window to India's economic growth pre- and post-liberalisation.
A tale of business, politics, relations, intrigue, crime and
competition, this book is a must-read.
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