The Ratan Naval Tata we miss

Ratan Tata

It is not often that a nation misses a departed leader, unless it is compelled to call to memory, by circumstances, to think how better the person would have dealt with a present problem or if the individual were alive, ask if the inclement situation would have arisen in the first place.

The Air India crash in Ahmedabad in June of this year is one such instance where many drew comparison of the response of the group to this tragic accident and the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai that particularly targeted the Taj Hotel.

Two tragedies, two contrasting responses

Many missed Ratan who in his simple trouser and shirt, stood outside the hotel with K. Krishnakumar, the vice chairman of IHCL, for three days, giving leadership to the team tasked to give relief to those affected and later visiting all the injured in the hospitals.

The suited booted MD of Air India too met grieving relatives of the victims in Ahmedabad and sent out a video condolence message, after fortifying its poignancy, with liberal inclusions from the speech of a CEO of an American Airline.

Ratan was in no small measure, a man of extraordinary qualities that deserve rhapsodising. Never mind that two co-biographers, of another business leader, one of them a past employee of a leading business paper, published in quick succession (without revealing that they had co-authored the biography), in the same paper, two articles opining that Ratan does not deserve the accolades given to him in his authorised biography. They could not have been more wrong.

Societal good was Ratan’s focus

Ratan was a leader to the group, a lodestar to the nation and an icon to the world. What made him endearing to the common man and the world was his assignment of societal good as his focus, a prioritisation that drew praise from some of the world’s most recognised names like Henry Kissinger and Maurice Raymond ‘Hank’ Greenberg, the former chairman of the American International Group, Inc. (AIG), during my interviews with them.

It also made him the most sought-after Indian for inclusion in various bodies established by nations, world leaders and organisations to enhance businesses and uplift societies.

Evidently, for Ratan, business was not about only making money, but a vehicle to serve a social cause. The Nano car was perhaps the best example of this focus. What persuaded him to embark on the risky venture was his determination to fulfil a critical transportation need for the middle class. And his choice of West Bengal to establish the factory, was equally motivated by his concern to develop backward areas. As he had written to the Chief Minister of the state Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, he had chosen the state to establish the Nano factory, with “a leap of faith to initiate the industrialization of the eastern part of India.”

A renegade in a non-transparent system

Ratan, led the group with extraordinary empathy, compassion and humility, without compromising the principles of integrity and good governance, which he had imbibed from his adoptive paternal grandmother, Lady Tata. During the three decades of our association and as his authorised biographer, he would tell me that all his values could be attributed to her and that she was his guiding light.

Ratan chose sufferance to deliverance to uphold his and the group’s values in a sea ruled by waves of crony capitalism. He was goaded by many in the group and outside to shift his sails, which he did not. He was sworn to be a renegade in a non-transparent system. He had often said and told me that should the group shed its integrity, it would lose “the one differentiation that this group has against others in the country. We would have been just another venal business house.”

Institutionalising the ideal of integrity, he formulated the famous Tata Code of Conduct in the 1998, much before the concept even gained large acceptance in Europe. As he underlined, it mattered less to him that his group would have grown faster, had he chosen the easier route.

Weaving together a disparate collection of firms

It was not that he had the luxury of having inherited a strong and vibrant conglomerate. When he took over its reins in 1991, it was so disjointed that a leading English business journal described it as “uncoordinated”, “overmanned and undermanaged.” As Ratan would say many years later, he was seen as someone who would destroy the group as he did not have the competence or capability of JRD. But he would prove all of them wrong.

File: Ratan Tata (L) shakes hand with then Karnataka's CM SM Krishna (R), as then Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong (C) looks on during opening of an international Tech Park in Bengaluru in January 2000.

When he became chairman of the conglomerate, there were many vexatious issues, beginning with the lack of cohesion and unity in the group, legendary leaders who led individual companies like their fiefdoms, obsolete technology in enterprises, a bloated work force, poor customer orientation and employees lulled into complacency by years of producing for a non-competitive market in the era of License Raj, that stared him in his face. The most threatening was, however, the low holding of Tata Sons in its promoted companies, making them vulnerable to hostile takeovers. Most of the percentage of holdings were in single digits, and incredulously, in its flagship company, TISCO, now Tata Steel, the promoter held less shares than the Birla Group did.

He did not, however, let the challenges overwhelm him. He went hands-on in the companies that needed closer mentorship. Drawing from the important elements of his 1983 Strategic Plan—that made JRD take notice of the farsighted vision of Ratan and which was a major reason why he was chosen as the chairman of Tata Industries Limited—and those from his Strategic Plan 2.0 of early 1990s, and nearly a dozen interlocking strategies he formulated in the early years after taking over from JRD, he turned around the group to the surprise of most and the world.

Elephants, maharajahs and Tata

It persuaded even the usually critical Western press to see the group in a different perspective. The New York Times, for instance, commented in 2006 (after Corus was acquired) that: “Across much of the world, India is still thought of as a land of elephants and maharajahs. But one day, it might be known for Tata.”

By the time he had stepped down, he had grown the top line of the group by 1,742 percent, that of Tata Motors (from 1988, when he took over as its chairman, till 2016), more than an impossible to believe, 19,934 percent; sowed the seeds of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan or Self-reliant India,’ in January 1998, by launching India’s first fully indigenous passenger car, the Tata Indica, short for India’s car, had assumed the role of the nation’s field marshal, leading the charge to capture ‘the once-hallowed corporations of the West’ (Tetley Tea, Corus and Jaguar Land Rover, among others) in what he called was like “a bit of the empire striking back”; and grew the revenue of the group to 5.47% of the GDP in comparison to 1.88 percent in 1992 (Ratan had taken over as chairman in 1991).

A colossus who enjoyed life’s simple pleasures

But despite such huge achievements, he was a simple man, who enjoyed the simple things of life. He was a great mimic, a prankster who was caught trying to hide a water pistol aimed at the chair when Jamshed Bhava was supposed to be seated during a board meeting, and made his sisters, his eyes and ears, the target of his childish tricks.

Ratan, like us, enjoyed the small things in life. He loved his mangoes and especially the more than two dozen varieties that were sent to him from my farm in Gurugram, with UIDs, so that he could easily identify those that he liked the most. His humility was incredible; it was not rarely that he spoke to my farm caretaker in his broken Hindi and my caretaker in unintelligible English about the mangoes he liked most.

Being a Parsi, he also enjoyed the Kerala cutlets that were made by my buddy at home (a recipe that my Syrian Christian mother had taught him). I invariably took them with me when I went to meet him at Mumbai, which was many times a month. Most often, I joined him for lunch when we ate the cutlets (he most of them), along with the pizzas, French Fries and Coke bought from a non-descript eatery in Colaba.

We miss you, and will miss you, Sir.

(Thomas Mathew is a retired IAS officer. He is the author of the book Ratan Tata: A Life.)

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.

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Remembering Ratan Tata: A legacy of integrity, humanity, and compassion

Ratan Tata: A legacy of grace, grit, and goodness

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