The New Crorepathis

To many Indians, Marwari is a word used to suggest that someone is miserly or grasping. But among Indian businessmen, the word must be used with caution. Though widely disliked, India's Marwaris are a tough and able people who have spread all over India from their ancestral home in the Marwar region of Rajasthan State, becoming a powerful and growing force in commerce and finance. India's shrewdest small businessmen for many years, they have now moved inexorably into big business. Marwaris control 60% of Calcutta's commerce and industry, 45% of Bombay's. They hold half the capital in the Indian jute industry, and 90% of the capital of companies trading on the Calcutta stock exchange.

What's the Price? "A Marwari," the Marwaris like to say, "gets business acumen in his mother's womb." Actually, the Marwaris more probably learned it by scratching for a grim living in the Marwar region, a desert area of rugged hills and parched climate that is one of India's poorest areas. To escape this fate, Marwaris began emigrating to the city three generations back, becoming small shopkeepers in Calcutta or Bombay. They work longer and harder than anyone else, lend a helping hand to each other (there are no Marwari beggars), and single-mindedly devote themselves to pursuing profit. Their guiding philosophy is Kya Bhau?, or What's the price?

From shopkeeping, the Marwaris have expanded into speculation, finance and industry. They moved into jute milling by dispatching platoons of Marwari workers into British mills to learn the technical secrets the British had refused to share. Calcutta's Marwaris moved from the shop-crowded Burrabazar to the financial district's Clive Street, where they set up curb markets and soon moved onto the exchange. Marwaris are India's best bookmakers, so fond of betting that they will wager on the sex of an unborn child or the number of pips in a tangerine flake.

By one road or another, many Marwaris have joined India's tiny crorepathis, or millionaire class. On the way there, they earned the dislike of their countrymen for their rough and sometimes ruthless pursuit of money. Unlike India's Parsees, who have provided the country with soldiers, administrators and artists, most Marwaris care little for civic improvements or municipal hygiene--they see no profit in it. Their indifference contributes to the neglect obvious everywhere in Calcutta, one of the world's most depressing cities; the wealthier Marwaris live in more pleasant surroundings in huge mansions on the city's outskirts.

Least Typical. The most successful of the Marwaris is in many ways the least typical. G. D. (for Ghanshyam Das) Birla not only controls an empire of 350 concerns (textiles, automaking, chemicals, banking), but is one of Prime Minister Nehru's closest confidants and a member of and heavy contributor to Nehru's Congress Party. A tall and ascetic man, Birla financed Gandhi, gives enormous amounts to charity, and has opened many schools and hospitals. Many Marwaris, respected only for their business shrewdness, now long for the social standing that Birla has earned for himself, are sending their sons abroad to educate them. But in most Marwari households, a son who expresses a desire to follow a nonbusiness career is still asked bluntly: "How much will you make out of it?" That is usually the end of the matter.

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