Triumph of the free market: When vegetarian tycoons sell meat

“Veggie Mukesh in chicken eatery biz,” declared the Times of India headline of a front page story on the Ambani-owned Reliance Industries plan to run a chicken restaurant chain in India.

“Given that Ambani is a strict vegetarian, it is a clear sign that business decisions can be separated from an individual’s dietary and lifestyle choices,” mused TOI, noting the incongruity of a well-known vegetarian buying a 45 percent stake in a UK company which supplies poultry, red meat and fish.

[caption id=“attachment_119143” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption]

Ambani is not, of course, the first business tycoon to profit from what he personally shuns – and forbids at his parties. As this 2011 Forbes story on famous teetotalling moguls points out, “It should be noted that avoidance of liquor, for many of these magnates, doesn’t extend to business. Billionaire Warren Buffett, whose drink of choice is a strawberry milkshake, has invested in alcohol distributors like Empire Distributors.”

The other famous teetotaler, Donald Trump, tells Forbes, “It’s very easy for me not to drink, and I don’t understand people that drink, because if you don’t start-I assume it’s a major addiction-but if you don’t start, it’s real easy. So I tell my kids, ‘Don’t start.’” But if you do, he is only too glad to sell you his very own line of Trump Vodka.

For Trump, abstention is a matter of personal choice not moral objection. As it may well be for Ambani whose vegetarianism is often included as a telling detail in his media coverage. “Like Mr. Gandhi, Mr. Ambani belongs to a merchant caste known as the modh banias, is a vegetarian and a teetotaler and is a revolutionary thinker with bold ideas for what India ought to become,” writes Anand Giridhardas in a New York Times profile which also underlines his aversion to Western gourmet cuisine.

“I just have not developed those tastes,” offers Ambani in explanation. He may not have learned to enjoy the taste of meat, either. Many of us outgrow our culinary upbringing, while others do not. Mere aversion to a product ought not to stop someone from making money selling it – not unless the objection is moral.

While Ambani has never publicly condemned eating meat, Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar famously takes a pious stance on alcohol and tobacco. “I am the father of an impressionable young boy who watches TV. I can understand if parents get upset on seeing a celebrity promoting harmful products like alcohol or tobacco,” he told a newspaper. And yet he consented to endorse a liquor brand on the pretext of goodwill. “Akshay will give out 50 per cent of his remuneration in charity. He does a lot of charity work. But never likes to talk about them,” said a ‘unnamed’ Akki camp source in an attempt to spin the unlikely deal. No word on whether parents are entitled to be unhappy about the other 50 percent which ended up in Kumar’s pockets.

Then there’s Rajasthan’s teetotaling Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot, who ran in 2008 on a promise to crack down on liquor culture. “We don’t want to promote the ’liquor culture’. The decisions we take will ensure that the culture of boys and girls going hand-in-hand to pubs and malls for drinking is stopped,” Gehlot declared. That’s until he rediscovered the lucrative potential of the excise tax in 2012, as India Today reports :

Increase liquor sales or face the music: this is the message of the Ashok Gehlot-led government in Rajasthan to the liquor vendors. According to the new excise policy of the state government, liquor shops which have not registered a 20 per cent sales growth than the previous year will be penalised…

A liquor contractor from Jaipur said they could not force people to consume more liquor. “The government’s decision is preposterous,” he complained.

Better a capitalist who prioritises profit over personal principle than a politician who profits from the very sins he loudly condemns. The former at the very least serves as an antidote to cultural chauvinism.

“I am tired of this attitude in Gujarat that because I only eat vegetarian food I am better than you, or that I am less of a proud Gujarati because I eat meat,” sandwich shop owner Himanshu Desai told India Ink . Ambani then ought to serve as a sobering precedent to these ‘proud’ folks. Now that the most successful Gujju businessman is in the business of selling chicken nuggets, it might be time to stop harassing humbler non-vegetarian restaurant owners in Ahmedabad. All Gujarati entrepreneurs ought to have the right to sell meat, not just the richest of them all.

Disclosure: The Reliance Group has funded the promoter of Network18, which publishes Firstpost