43 years & counting! Meet the longest serving executive in a leadership role in India | Business News

Among the most respected captains of India Inc, he has driven India’s top auto major to earn global recognition. Author of a perfect make in India story, Maruti Chairman says he can’t see any other country that has a better future than India.

He topped the 1956 IAS batch.
He climbed the official ladder making a mark.
He resigned from the Cabinet Secretariat in 1982 after 25 years of service.
He joined Maruti in 1981 (after the government didn’t extend his deputation with the company beyond a year).
He runs India’s undisputed auto leader that drives parent Suzuki profitability.
He is the top boss at a company that has a cash chest of 50K crore.
At 89, he continues to be the Chairman, Maruti Suzuki.

Meet R C Bhargava, India’s longest serving executive in top leadership role (43 years & counting). That might be a global record as well.

The living legend joined News9 Global Summit as a business keynote speaker. Theme: India – Sustaining the moment and the momentum.

I met Bhargava for the first time in 1991 as a pink daily reporter and have had an opportunity to speak to him through the decades.

He is an eternal optimist.

A keen votary of reforms, he has always invested tremendous faith in the India growth stories often taking on naysayers.

The TV9 What India Thinks Today Summit exchange helped amplify his message. “I can’t see any country in the world today which has better prospects for the future than India has.”

Bhargava isn’t known to mouth mother hoods. He speaks his mind.

His averment on the India growth story is well founded as is his aversion to the ownership debate. Maruti, a Japanese owned company, is an out and out made in India success story.

The Maruti chairman noted that the western countries have reached a certain level where growth is now a dicey matter.

His faith in the India story has a cultural context.

Unlike the west where, according to him, people want good things to come without working, in India individuals aspire not only to enhance their future but also to uplift the prospects of their families and children.

Truth be told this is the on ground sentiment in India where the collective will of 1.4 billion people to dream a better tomorrow and make it happen is paramount.

At the TV9 Summit, Bhargava didn’t hesitate from identifying the challenges that have the potential to play the spoilsport.

As if endorsing the decadal momentum that everyone is so vocal about, the Maruti boss prescribed: “The imperative for India is to shed the accumulated baggage of the past 60 years, hindering its economic trajectory. This entails not only a re-evaluation of laws and regulations but a fundamental shift in how the bureaucracy operates.”

Bhargava has been a passionate spokesperson for the wealth creator community in India. He has often voiced concern over the taxation skew against the passenger vehicle industry.

He has said on record that the thinking that cars are luxury goods, taxing them so that they don’t grow is actually counterproductive for the object of improving the lives of poor people.

“If I sell more cars, I will generate more employment in the economy, more people will get jobs, and more people will have access to various kinds of consumption products.”

His core message to the thought process that sees capital with suspicion is that you can’t create wealth in the country without the creators of wealth becoming wealthy.

At TV9 What India Thinks Today Summit, he had some important lessons for India Inc as well.

Citing the Maruti model, he said, “We will double this (production capacity) to four million again without raising money from anybody. We don’t go to banks, we don’t go to the stock market. We don’t go anywhere for money. And with all that we’ve done till now, we have ₹50,000 crore of cash reserves.”

Remember corporate India is under fire for its inability yet to proportionately share the capex burden with the government doing the heavy lifting in the post Covid economic recovery and resurgence.

It is important that the private sector investment cycle leads the agenda given the limitations of the state capability. Also, an overstretch means an undue fiscal hang.

Any takers for the legend’s stern message?