Page 5 - sands of time

VOL. XVI, ISSUE 3, 2020 SANDS OF TIME 5

NANI A. PAlkhIvAlA - ThE MAN Of All sEAsONs...

President of the Forum of Free Enterprise,
the Chairman of the Leslie Sawhny
Programme of Training for Democracy, the
Chairman of the A.D. Shroff Memorial Trust,
and a Trustee of other charitable trusts.
Palkhivala also joined the boards of
the Reserve Bank of India and several
companies, both Indian and overseas,
including the Industrial Credit and
Investment Corporation of India Ltd. and Nani Palkhivala during one of his Budget Speech in 1974 at the
FROM THE
later became the Chairman of many of Cricket Club of India East Lawns. Also seen in the photograph,
them. He was Chairman of the Associated M.C. Chagla, Former Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court.
Cement Companies Ltd. for almost three
decades. At 37, Nani Palkhivala was one of the forum’s star
discoveries. His first speech in 1957 in Green’s Hotel
Oratory skills was so impressive that he soon took over the budget
COLLECTION
Nani’s oratorical skills were not limited to the court analysis from A.D. Shroff.
room or diplomatic arena. Palkhivala became the Palkhivala’s budget talks were the stuff of legend. He
country’s foremost public speaker on taxation and would dissect the Union Budget for the audience. He
fiscal policies of Government. It was the same powerful spoke without a scrap of note and reeled off facts and
oratory analysis of the Union Budget that held the figures from memory for over an hour keeping his
public spell bound every year. audience in rapt attention. It was not just businessmen,
OF
A.D. Shroff, a Director on Tata Sons Board who had an THE
industrialists, lawyers who flew to Bombay from other
The budget analysis was an annual tradition started by
parts of the country to listen to him but even the
enormous grasp of the economy and the stock market. common man too went to listen to his insightful and
pithy analysis of the budget.
The venue was the Green’s Hotel, which has now given
way to the new wing of the Taj Mahal Hotel. Shroff had Year after year the speeches became so popular
set up the Forum of Free Enterprise to protect private throughout India that several venues were changed
TATA CENTRAL ARCHIVES
enterprise against the onslaught of State Socialism to accommodate the crowds. In 1965, the venue
which had become the dominant public policy after was shifted to the larger Cowasji Jehangir Hall. The
1955. He wanted it to be a platform to introduce fresh overflowing crowds proved the inadequacy even of
ideas into public life. this hall and from the very next year, 1966, the meeting

Crowds thronged at the Brabourne Stadium to listen to Nani Palkhivala’s Budget Speech.

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