India, Aug. 25 -- Swraj to me, Lord Swraj Paul of Marylebone to others, passed away a few days ago. I first met Swraj in 1967, when he and his elder brother, Jit Paul, were introduced to my father, then Finance Secretary, by the late LN Mishra. That was the beginning of a relationship which stood the test of time. Through its successes and disappointments that inevitably mark our lives. I often ask myself whether Swraj would redeem the promise embedded in his name; freeing India from the shackles of draconian laws and regulations inherited from colonial times. Indeed, when he had first met my father, he was grappling with the rigours of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act and the pursuit of the Enforcement Directorate. It took 32 more years to abolish FERA and replace it with FEMA, decriminalising to make such offences civil. It was the beginning of his long quest for reforms. Reforms necessary for India to achieve true economic independence: Swaraj. Swraj had an extraordinary journey, in some ways a spectacular life. His family, at the time of his birth, ran a small foundry making steel buckets, living in cramped accommodations with his brothers Satya, Jit, Surender and two sisters in Jalandhar. He had a flair for engineering and mathematics, which explains why, though educated locally, he went on to pursue mechanical engineering at MIT in the United States. In 1966, while seeking cancer treatment in London for his daughter Ambika, who tragically passed away, he decided to stay on and pursue business opportunities. The Caparo Group was born out of grief which he subsequently built into a multinational steel and engineering enterprise. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1983 and became a member of the House of Lords in 1996, initially Labour-affiliated and later a crossbencher, serving as Deputy Speaker and being appointed to the Privy Council in 2019. Looking back, five dominant traits defined his life. First, he was a quintessential industrialist. Unlike many of his contemporaries who sought easy fortune in trading, he believed India's future lay in manufacturing. This would replace the colonial pattern of exporting raw materials and importing finished goods at high prices. Beginning with steel buckets, he launched Natural Gas Tubes in the UK and went on to build a formidable presence in steel manufacturing across the UK, the US, and India through Caparo. His enterprises became critical to the steel inputs for automobiles, airplanes, and railways. He often said, philosophically: "We will do what we know best, which is steel." And true to that conviction, he made multiple acquisitions in the steel sector in the UK, the US, and Europe, expanding into five European steel plants. He remained a firm believer in the power of manufacturing, with its assured employment and long-term value. Second, he had audacity. He was undeterred by the prevailing ethos. Through Caparo Investment, he mounted India's first hostile takeover bid to gain control of Escorts Ltd. and Delhi Cloth Mills (DCM), acquiring 7.5% of Escorts and 13% of DCM, more than the promoters' holdings, though thwarted by a multiplicity of complex rules and the SEBI Takeover Code. He sought to establish clearer principles of management control. Corporates with negligible equity could not indefinitely control large public companies. It was a question of natural justice. Though the attempt failed and later found expression in the SEBI Takeover Code, which shook entrenched complacency and nudged India towards more transparent, investment-driven ethos of corporate governance. The voice of the shareholders was relevant. Third, in a lighter vein, he was the quintessential NRI, Non-Resident Indian, as the term was then ubiquitously used. Diaspora was not yet in vogue. He embodied the essence of the NRI industrialist, so much so that the media presence which was irresistible to him, and this was reciprocated when they dubbed him "Mr NRI." To many, the phrase also carried another meaning in his case: a Non-Regulated Indian, seeking from the draconian overregulated economy, the prevalent ethos. He sought to run counter to suspicions around private capital. In that sense, he was a forerunner of the global Indian identity which would flower much later. His success enhanced India's footprint and identity abroad, considering the reach and diversity of the Indian community worldwide. Fourth, notwithstanding the closed nature of our economy at the time, when proximity to industrialists was frowned upon and the participation of corporate leaders in ministerial delegations was considered unthinkable, he helped reverse this perception. On the strength of his rapport with Mrs Indira Gandhi, he persuaded successive Commerce Ministers, LN Mishra and DP Chattopadhyay, to include leading businessmen in official delegations. This promoted Indian trade, investment, joint ventures and ushered fresh thinking. In this role, I met him in multiple parts of the world; Tokyo, Lima, Santiago, New York, and Berlin, then still divided by the Great Wall. He became an early example of how business and diplomacy could converge to national advantage. Fifth, having been educated in the US, he imbibed the value of giving back to society. He ensured that equally his children Ambika and Angad, notwithstanding their early tragic deaths, Ambar, Akash, and Anjli received the same quality of innovation and have all done and do him proud. His philanthropy far extended the concept of religious trusts and dharamshalas, he did so via supporting leading academic institutions. He endowed the Swraj Paul MIT Scholarship Fund, created the Lord Swraj Paul PC '52 and Angad Paul '92 Theater at MIT's Kresge Auditorium in honour of his late son, and established the Ambika Paul Mezzanine and Study Space. In memory of Ambika, he set up the Ambika Paul Foundation and the Ambika Paul Children's Zoo. He remained an abiding friend until the very end. My last long meeting with him on June 27 was one in which we spoke at length about the past. His health had suffered, but not his spirit. He invited my wife and I to lunch at the House of Lords on 18 July 2025. We gladly accepted the invitation. We waited there only to receive a call from him half an hour later apologising that, through a lapse of memory, he had instead gone to the Ambika Zoo. This was a place dear to him both for its animals and the memories of how it was founded. The lunch, alas, could not and cannot now take place. He once remarked that he had made "metal-bashing fashionable". He also bashed many settled contours of rules, regulations, and procedures, against which he struggled relentlessly. In the final analysis, in this sense, he redeemed the pledge embedded in his name, Swraj. He said so himself: "I am satisfied with my life."...