Satna lost for words over Priyamvada punch

Legend has it that in the 1950s Satna didn’t have shops even for underwear. M.P. Birla’s factories transformed this cluster of abo...

Legend has it that in the 1950s Satna didn’t have shops even for underwear. M.P. Birla’s factories transformed this cluster of about 16,000 people — then known for its linseeds — to a bustling town of five lakh people today.

Indeed, Satna is to the M.P. Birla Group what Jamshedpur is to the Tatas. It is here that M.P. Birla dug his roots in late 1950s. The lime-stone in the neighbourhood fuelled his cement factories. These helped create a modest, but multi-locational and somewhat diversified business group, an important side show being trusts, charities, schools and hospitals.

The last fortnight has been strange for Satna. Even people with no direct business interests in M.P. Birla companies say they cringe at the prospect of seeing the group without a Birla.

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The will of Birla’s wife and inheritor Priyamvada is a hot debating point, not just in the premises of Birla Corporation and Universal Cables Ltd (UCL) in Satna but also in Birla Ericsson Optical Ltd and Vindhya Telelinks in neighbouring Rewa. Everyone around has his or her spin.

There are some, of course, who have bigger stakes. Birla Corporation president P.S. Marwah won’t answer whether he had some recollections of Priyamvada to share. Refusing to be drawn in even for innocent chatter, Marwah politely said, ‘‘I’m sorry, I can’t reply to your query’’.

There were others who won’t stick their neck out until the matter of inheritance is settled, for or against Priyamvada’s auditor Rajendra Lodha. UCL chief mentor and manager D.R. Bansal was one of them.

Birla-watchers like Arun Singh, the first contractor in the M.P. Birla group and counted among a dozen politically well-connected people who would join Madhav Prasad and Priyamvada during their visits to Satna just about summed it: ‘‘We are stunned by this weird incident’’.

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Raju Babu, who runs a small cement plant, is uncharitable on Lodha. ‘‘In our entire business community, it has become difficult to digest the fact that such a vast empire can be handed over to an outsider for no reason. Birla always re-inforced the perception that she was carrying forward the M.P. Birla tradition of factory-building and wealth-sharing’’.

Manik Chand Murarka, an ex-munim at Birla House in Varanasi (1955-63) is witness to an event where all the Birlas descended to meet their patriarch Raja Baldev Das Birla, remembered Priyamvada’s tendency to be her own person. ‘‘Mrs Birla would eat chatpata Rajasthani food favoured by the house servants unlike other Birlas who ate plain food. Yet, she was extremely religious and she believed in the Birla tradition of donating to the poor and the needy’’.

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