As an Armani-clad Lalit Modi swaggers across a television screen and responds, seemingly unfazed, to a succession of top anchors quizzing him in scenic Montenegro about allegations of financial wrongdoings back home, the first adjective that springs to mind is “audacious”.
Is Mr. Modi a “bhagoda”, a fugitive from justice, or an aspirational figure of our times?
In his own mind, he is clearly the latter.
“I created aspirations for billions #notafugitive”, his twitter header photo screams, even as his bio claims that he is “busy cleaning political mafia”. Intriguingly, it is this very mafia’s patronage that transformed the spoilt and erratic scion of a powerful industrialist family into the architect of the glamorous, multimillion-dollar-spinning, franchise-based empire, the Indian Premier League.
Born in 1963, the grandson of pioneering industrialist Rai Bahadur Gujarmal Modi, Mr. Modi was anything but conventional: there was the early brush with the law as a student in the U.S. for alleged possession of cocaine; and there was the marriage to a friend of his mother, a divorced woman and mother of one, nine years his senior.
His own family may have never broken its ties with him, and as the eldest of Krishan Kumar Modi’s three children, he has his share of the family wealth, but as an industrialist-politician says, he was never actually allowed to dabble in the business. And now, Mr. Modi’s name does not figure even as a director of any of the family-owned enterprises. “KK,” says the industrialist-politician, “is a cautious man.”
This is not something that can be said about his eldest son.
Mr. Modi began his career as an adversary of the Indian Cricket Board in the early 1990s when he was trying to build a business out of distributing sports pay channels. Even then, he sensed that the Indian TV consumer would pay for live sports. He realised that to get a foot in the door, he would have to join the system, but it was not until 2005, when he became the youngest vice-president of the BCCI, that he came into the limelight, driving the board’s commercial activities and pushing its revenues over the U.S.$1 billion mark.
So, where and how did he get his foot in the door?
It was on the cricket fields of Rajasthan, with the help of family friend and Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, that he found the perfect launching pad for his ambitions. In 2005, he gained control over the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA), ending the three-decade-long rule of the Rungta family.
How did he do it? By the simple expedient of “persuading” the State government to introduce the Sports Act that changed the voting pattern in the RCA — the 33 districts replaced the individual members of the association as the electorate.
Mr. Modi won, and that became a stepping stone for entering the BCCI and creating the IPL.
Mr. Modi, whose fondness for the good life is matched only by his overweening ambition, didn’t just administer the RCA from Jaipur’s opulent Rambagh Palace Hotel. He reportedly ran Rajasthan, courtesy his proximity to Ms. Raje, earning himself the sobriquet of ‘Super Chief Minister’, his role becoming a key issue in the State Assembly elections in 2008.
He summoned key civil servants to his hotel suite to clear files. He facilitated the entry of big builders into the State, with every major land deal requiring his clearance. He influenced a change in the liquor policy that led to the proliferation of liquor outlets. He acquired havelis in Amer by bending the law. He rode roughshod over anyone who crossed his path, whether it was a constable or an IPS officer, with a slapping incident sparking a near-revolt in the Jaipur police. And he acquired a private jet to fly him around.
When I visited Rajasthan in early 2009, shortly after the Bharatiya Janata Party government had fallen, Jaipur was rife with stories about the previous regime. All powers during the BJP’s five years of rule were apparently centralised in the Chief Minister’s office — everything from transfers to change in land use to liquor licences and mining leases. Decisions on these issues had Mr. Modi’s imprint. “It was a case of single-window clearance,” a fellow industrialist, cricket aficionado and politician, told me.
Mr. Modi’s friendship with Ms. Raje dates back to at least 1990. A member of the then Chandra Shekhar government at the Centre recalls having seen her accompany Mr. Modi to a minister for seeking clearance to establish a factory near Gwalior.
Evidently, things have changed since then. For it was Mr. Modi who outed Ms. Raje, providing embarrassing evidence of her intervention with the U.K. government for his immigration application — shortly after the story of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s letter to the British authorities on a similar mission broke in the media.
No one knows precisely why Mr. Modi and Ms. Raje fell out. But whatever the reason, Mr. Modi’s golden four years in Rajasthan is an exemplary tale that tells you as much about the man as it does about contemporary India where money, power, clout and sleaze are inextricably linked.
The same industrialist-politician quoted earlier says, “Gujarmal Modi created Modinagar and wealth for the nation. Lalit could have used his proximity to Vasu to create a Modinagar in Rajasthan — and left something lasting.” But that is not Mr. Modi’s style. As he sits in his luxury home in London, shooting verbal missiles at the political class back home, we will have to wait to see who wins this battle of nerves.
