The Hindu Business Line : <I>A man of many parts indeed </I>

Social responsibility of the well-to-do towards the less fortunate is a popular notion that has now emerged as another measure of performance, as corporate social responsibility (CSR). It goes beyond the familiar acts of charity such as provision of free or heavily subsidised medical facilities, schooling, housing, and so on. Nonetheless, to an extent, such programmes leading to a wider development of the area around a factory, are sometimes seen as subtle but effective public relations and building goodwill that has a direct business benefit. In this respect, it might just fit in with Adam Smith's concept of enlightened self-interest.

Acts of concern

Yet, there are some leaders of industry who achieve so much more in their personal capacity. These ``little unremembered acts of kindness'' are deliberately kept out of the glare of the media. Such quiet acts of concern for fellow human beings are rewards in themselves to those who give their time and wealth to them.

One such person was K. M. Thiagarajan, former Chairman, Bank of Madura and founder of Micro Credit Foundation of India. Because of the very nature of his wide-ranging interests, no single individual could possibly encompass all of them in an article. His passing away last week, after a long battle with a series of illnesses will, thus, be mourned by an exceptionally wide cross-section of society, in particular the employees of the group of businesses that he initiated and inherited — but even more so by the thousands of families that benefited from his concern for the betterment of the poor in the villages.

A multi-faceted character

When he more or less retired from the hurly-burly of business and banking, he devoted his time almost exclusively to this new organisation, which has become a model for women's micro-finance institutions in the country.

The amazing part of his work in this area is the way he went about it — unobtrusively, with no fanfare, focussing on results, with little or no regard for building any media hype. Those who knew him for three decades and more would not be surprised by this because it was so much in keeping with the character of the man — multi-faceted, clear-sighted, soft-spoken, inherently idealistic and deeply committed to what he thought was worth doing yet (with the genes of generations of Chettiar family background) eminently pragmatic and practical in judgements as well.

In a casual conversation, he revealed the nature of his long-term goals for such voluntary action at village level. It was nothing short of an integrated rural development programme, without the paraphernalia of the government.

As one who knew him from the early 1970s, the number of turns in Thiagarajan's career interests never really surprised me. For a grandson of the famous Karumuttu Thigaraja Chettiar, arguably one of the three or four most influential thought-leaders in Tamil Nadu society at one time, the move towards running the textile mills would have been the naturally charted route.

However, he was obviously endowed also with the family traits of scholarship, for he went on to do his doctorate after obtaining an MBA in the United States. In those days, Indian students were far more known for delving into mathematics, economics and operations research. Raj (as he was known to friends) took a PhD in organisational behaviour and was briefly an assistant professor as well.

Interactive courses

On his return to India with his equally academically distinguished spouse Deborah, who became an active promoter of culture in her own right, Raj was deeply involved in running a unique series of executive training programmes in behavioural sciences. Even in this, Raj was different. He was seldom the dry-as-dust academic, full of abstractions and arcane theories. On the contrary, the courses were interactive and work-oriented, using simulation exercises that fed into a worldwide database on managerial behaviour compiled by his mentor Dr Bernard Bass.

When business pressures demanded it, he gave his time to the family enterprises but retained an interest in the arts, literature and sculpture. It is possible that among his very large circle of friends no single person could have known, let alone shared, all his interests. He surprised me one day with the draft of a short story he had written and again on another occasion with an invitation to a lecture by a friend on Sangam Tamil poetry. For those who knew of his father and grandfather, of course, the special passion for classical Tamil would be no surprise. And, yet, to hear him lecture in English no one could sense even a trace of a typically Tamil diction.

When he chose to concentrate on banking, moving away from textiles, he managed to bring a very traditional regional bank, Bank of Madura, into the national scene. Sensing the current ahead of others, Raj also saw the inevitability of consolidation in the banking sector and enabled the merger of BoM with the much larger and well-established ICICI Bank. Clearly, the decision could have been neither easy nor a very happy one, but as he explained, in the end, the long-term shareholder and employee interests had to prevail over any sentiment, however understandable it might have been. In mourning Raj's passing, I take heart from the thought that in an age of increasing specialisation, such many-sided, renaissance men still have their place in the sun.

S. Ramachander

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