In late February this year, it had become clear to Suzuki that it could ignore the Bharatiya Janata Party only at its own peril. With days to go before the country went to the polls, Suzuki's top hatchet men, Y Saito and J Sugimori arrived in India. Their mission: establish a friendly rapport with the BJP. The problem was that their man, former managing director RC Bhargava had many friends in the Congress but was unsure of making inroads into the BJP.

At this point Bhargava introduced the two Japanese directors to an old friend of his. This man had a long association with the BJP and had impeccable credentials as a deal-maker.

The deal-maker soon swung into action, he introduced the Japanese to top BJP leaders. The Japanese were careful not to discuss any details of the Maruti imbroglio lest umpleasantnesssets in.

At this stage the Japanese narrowed down their choice of leaders to make good friends with a handful of BJP leaders. Among them was a film actor who had joined the party some time back. Suzuki's liaison man in Delhi, one Japanese national by the name of Kawahara, was assigned the job of befriending the film actor over a period of time. No effort was spared.

The film actor was flown to Hammamatsu, which is Suzuki's headquarters in Japan, for Suzuki's celebration of India's 50 years of independence. The film actor was requested to give further introductions and gradually Suzuki had a large circle of friends in the BJP.

Assisting Kawahara in the friendship mission was the head of a Delhi-based advertising agency with whose help Suzuki had released full-page advertisements in newspapers.

Both Kawahara and the adman worked in close coordination with Bhargava. At stage two of this operation, the three some began talks with the BJP.

Bargaining began, Suzuki charged right ahead, wanted everything:managing director RSSLN Bhaskarudu's immediate ouster and their own man in. In return it offered a smooth flow of technology.

Negotiations at this stage had reached the prime minister's office. The PMO appeared to mull. The BJP government did not want to sully its swadeshi garb.Soon everything changed with India and Pakistan going ahead with nuclear tests. This came as a boon to Suzuki. Nuclear tests are anathema to Japanese governments as Japan is the only country to have suffered an atom bomb. The Japanese government took a tough stance on sanctions to India.

This more or less clinched the deal for Suzuki. By patching up with Suzuki, the government had a chance of recovering lost ground with the Japanese. So out went swadeshi and in came Suzuki holding out the promise of effecting a patch-up with the Japanese government.