Using the Alanis Morrisette definition of the word, it's a little bit ironic that Vijay Mallya's current legal difficulties in India -- all linked to loans used to shore up ailing businesses -- are preventing the former 'King of Good Times' from participating in the active running of one of his more successful ventures: the Formula One team.
Cheering on underdogs never gets old, and the thrill of watching a young (or not so young...) driver for a mid-field team claim their first podium finish is hard to beat. I remember watching Giancarlo Fisichella narrowly miss out on Force India's first potential race win at the 2009 Belgian Grand Prix, where but for the want of a KERS button victory was as good as assured.
While Force India took a few years to hit their stride, since that first podium finish at Spa the Silverstone-based racers have been the little engines that could of Formula One, the team with limited resources but seemingly infinite ingenuity that can take on the big guns from time to time.
There have been negative stories swirling around Force India's future since it was announced in October 2011 that Subrata Roy Sahara's Sahara India Pariwar would be taking a 42.5 percent equity stake in the team for a $100 million investment, but the past five years have shown that negativity to have been somewhat premature. Since Sahara became co-owner, Force India have been on an upwards trajectory in the annual constructors' championship, finishing in seventh, sixth, and fifth places.
But while things have been getting progressively better for the team on track, in the media things have gone from bad to worse, with both Mallya and Subrata Roy Sahara finding themselves subject to consistent negative press coverage following their (separate) involvement in high-profile financial scandals.
Sahara was jailed in 2014 for his part in an investor fraud case surrounding Sahara India Pariwar, and remains in jail to this day. Vijay Mallya's troubles began with the 2012 collapse of Kingfisher Airlines, and what the banks are claiming as $1.4 billion in resulting unpaid loans, some of which they accuse Mallya of having diverted to other business and used to purchase property.
"As professional bankers, they would like to settle and move on but, because of my image as portrayed, they are reluctant to be seen as giving me any discount," Mallya told the Financial Times in an interview published last week. "It will attract huge media criticism and inquiries by vigilance agencies in India."
While it's hard to argue that Mallya has been living the monastic life demanded of him by the Indian public in the wake of the scandal breaking, the former liquor baron is not alone in his opinion that he is being turned into the poster child for a wider problem.
According to CNN Money, more than five percent of India's outstanding bank loans have been classed as non-performing, but that percentage nearly trebles when written-off and restructured loans are taken into account.
"The [bad loans] of Indian banks have risen to alarming levels, as reforms have stalled, projects are moving at a snail's pace, external demand has contracted sharply and domestic demand remains anemic," CNN quoted analysts at Societe Generale as saying earlier this year.
The bad loan crisis has hit the banks hard, and two of India's biggest banks have lost one-third and 45 percent of their value as a consequence. In such an environment, it was inevitable that the government would have to crack down on loan defaulters, auditing the state-owned banks and using high-profile prosecutions to demonstrate the seriousness of the issue.
For Mallya -- who continued to live a public and jet-set lifestyle during the collapse of Kingfisher Airlines, and who was photographed at yacht parties while staff of his failing airline went unpaid for months on end -- winding up in the crosshairs was inevitable.
Mallya's decision to keep the good times rolling has cost him dearly in the court of Indian public opinion, and the businessman is all too aware of that fact. The F1 team owner told the FT that he had offered a settlement of £442 million against the £512 million initially borrowed, adding that his offer was "way, way in excess of the World Bank average for settlement of bad debts".
"We have always been in dialogue with banks saying: 'We wish to settle'," he added. "But we wish to settle at a reasonable number that we can afford and banks can justify on the basis of settlements done before."
The offer was rejected, and an Indian foreign affairs spokesman told the media last week that British authorities had been contacted "requesting the deportation of Vijay Mallya so that his presence can be secured for investigations", although a formal extradition request has not yet been made.
Whatever happens with Mallya's battles with the banks -- he remains in the UK, having had his diplomatic passport revoked and his resignation from Parliament rejected -- it would be a shame if Force India were to be affected.
Mallya has so far managed to insulate Force India from his problems, but rumours of sales and rebranding have been part of the paddock radio chatter for years, most recently with Aston Martin. So far all the chatter has come to naught, but if settlement offers continue to be rejected and the deportation request is successful, Mallya may yet be forced by the banks to offload his ever-improving asset.