‘Developers are only interested in the luxury end. We’ve just forgotten affordable housing’

• If the Americans have had their Alan Greenspan, we’ve one better. We’ve an Alan Greenspan purely in the private sector, Deepak Parekh. Deepak, does this description suit you?

No, I think you have given me more credit than I deserve.

• It’s amazing, even if I may say it to you, that in a country where the financial management has been so conservative, with the government’s financial controls so strong, the most prominent voice in the world of finance is the private sector. And now the voices . . .

Well, we’ve been in this sector 30 years. We’re a financial conglomerate: we’re in every sector of finance; we’ve life insurance; non-life (insurance); we’ve asset management; we’ve a bank, a mortgage company, a property fund, a brokerage house. So we cover the entire gamut of the financial sector. So somewhere or the other you find HDFC’s name in one of the companies’ names being mentioned.

• I know you have to speak for HDFC, but Deepak Parekh’s a brand too.

Well, that’s what I’m told. But I would really say that people are dispensable. People come and go, and a company goes on forever. And while you’re in the company, you may be a brand, but we’ve competent management, and there’s never been a doubt in my mind that the day I step down, the company will probably do better than what it has done so far.

• Nobody even asks you that question, the question people ask Ratan Tata all the time.

No, I’m going to step down.

• And when will that be?

Shortly. You would like to do something else in the last five-ten years of your life. I’ve done this for so many years.

• What is shortly? You are young.

Even then, you must give chance to other people.

• So what is shortly?

And the very fact that you said that I’m a brand and I’m synonymous with HDFC . . . that’s a wrong thing to happen. And it’s dangerous. So it’s better to step down and give others a chance.

• I didn’t say you are synonymous with HDFC. I said you are a brand that represents India’s financial sector. Because when Deepak Parekh says rates may go. . .

But you know, you journalists have only one point of view on rates of interest. Wherever I go, whenever I meet a journalist of any hue, the only thing they want to know is interest rates. Is it going down? Everybody actually thinks that rates may go down.

... contd.

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