The Hindu Business Line : <I>The Tata wheel comes full circle </I>

The picture of Jim Leng, group Chairman of Corus Steel, garlanding the statue of Jumsetji Nusserwanjee Tata on the founder's day at Jamshedpur, brought to mind an irony that has escaped comment from most. For, the acquisition means that the wheel has come full circle, after a long and tortuous journey round the world. The origins of the company that has just acquired Corus, Tata Steel, lie in the vision of the first Mr Tata that India must respond in kind to the challenge thrown by the industrialisation of the British, and in doing so not turn down the benefits of industrialisation but use it to the advantage of the underprivileged. In this, his contribution to the nation-building in the last two centuries is no less than that of M. K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and many others.

The first link in the chain

Not many might know that J. N. Tata was the forerunner of India's textile industry too, against the odds imposed by the regime which was obviously more interested in helping the Manchester textile industry, drawing on the power of the huge Indian population for its market and exploiting the country's cotton fields as a rich raw material source. The Empire Mills of Nagpur was the first link in a long chain of initiatives which eventually led to the diversified Tata group of today through four generations of Chairmen and managers. Almost all the enterprises, in steel, coal, cement, trucks, airlines, and even soaps and toiletries, were path-breaking, independent national businesses which did not hesitate to challenge the might of what are now known as multinationals.

Taking lessons from THE West

In some cases, as with Daimler-Benz, the pioneering Indian manufacturing plants took the lessons and models from the Western partners. It might be a surprise to many younger managers currently working in the high-technology industries alongside foreigners that the Indian owners of Tata Steel had employed many European and American senior managers and technical experts in the early stages, who then reported to the Indian top management. This was due to no sense of inferiority but simply to enable Indians to learn what they did not know, and learn it from the best in the business, and then take over the reins themselves.

At the Tata Archives in Pune, the story of the group's 178-year journey is laid out in an exhibit of understated elegance amidst the gardens of the Tata Management Training Centre. The story is told simply as facts speak for the richness and daring of Jamshedji, and his dream of a great modern industrial base for India, which found an echo in the Bombay Plan drawn up by his worthy descendant JRD Tata. It also displays the correspondence with the Independent India's first Prime Minister on the urgency of government-supported family planning programmes.

Resonating in harmony

Also, in the archives is a letter from J. N. Tata to Swami Vivekananda whom he met on a voyage from Japan to Chicago in 1898. He says "I very much recall at this moment your views on the ascetic spirit in India and the duty, not of destroying, but of diverting it into useful channels... Perhaps, you had better begin with a fiery pamphlet rousing our people in this matter? I should cheerfully defray all the expense of publication". Jamshedji Tata, ever the man of action, wanted to marry the dynamism and intelligence of the modern mind with powers of an ascetic. Thus, did the minds of a Parsee industrial magnate and a Hindu sage resonate in harmony, over a century ago, in the dreams for an independent and resurgent nation that they themselves were not destined to see.

S. Ramachander

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