On a cold January day in 2008, all roads led to Pragati Maidan, in the heart of New Delhi. The Ninth Auto Expo was on. Now, this is a fair that anyway draws humungous crowds. But this day was special. Ratan Tata was going to unveil the world’s cheapest car, which had been talked about for years — ever since Tata said in an interview to the Financial Times that the ideal car for India would cost about Rs 1 lakh. Instantaneously, the entire idea — at that time, it was no more — was christened the Rs 1 lakh car.
That day, Tata was not taking any chances. Various accounts say that he visited Pragati Maidan at 2.30 in the morning for a last-minute check and was back at the venue at daybreak, making changes in the programme for the launch.
Tata is generally a man of impeccable manners. One can see him at numerous public events and press conferences fielding unnecessary questions with equanimity and answering them with a seriousness they do not deserve. He would seldom be seen hyping anything up. But this was a big day.
Most of Tata’s presentation that day bore his signature style. He spoke in his usual authoritative manner and even slipped in a bit of biting humour. He said the group had toyed with the idea of naming the car Mamata, or, he said with a wink that could hardly be seen, Despite Mamata. Given that most of the people in the gathering were far removed from the land-losing farmers of Singur, Tata found an instant connect with the audience. Towards the end, though, the moment seemed to have got to him somewhat. It was with uncharacteristic pomp that he thundered, “A promise is a promise.”
This book begins with good-natured self-deprecation. The opening pages recall that the idea of Nano first began as a doodle that Tata drew at one of the many insipid business meetings that he attends every day. “It started by my spending a lot of time doodling at boring board meetings,” he would tell his group’s executives years later. “In other words, you have to be at boring meetings where you sit for long periods of time and can think of how you can make a difference to the world we live in.”
Quickly, though, the book switches its tone to — if you pardon the exaggeration — something resembling Odyssey. Sample this: “At the core of the immense human endeavour to craft the Nano is Tata Motors, an automobile company whose employees believe they do more than just a job when they report for work.”
We also make cars, eh?
More From This Section
This tenor of writing was only to be expected. This book seems to have been written for the company and with the blessings of the company, with foreword by Ravi Kant, who was the managing director when the Nano development project was executed. The authors, all members of the Tata Corporate Communications team, were apparently inspired to write the book at the Delhi Auto Expo.
To be fair, the development of Nano is a fascinating story, a landmark in Indian manufacturing, one that has been talked about for years and added much to the Tata Group’s stature in the global arena. It would have been enlightening to know how things eventually fell in place. As in any story, the most interesting bits would be in the human interactions through the stages, their disappointments, triumphs and heartache. But we do not get much of the human element here and it is clear why.
Chairman Tata, whose mention in the book at times is preceded by a nice adjective (“a person of steely resolve” is one) is clearly the demigod, if not more. Then there are the minor gods: Ravi Kant and Girish Wagh, the head of the Nano development programme. Wagh, for instance, is described as a “soft-spoken, hard-driven workaholic with extensive expertise in all things motoring and an outstanding people manager”. There are cute anecdotes about his interactions with Tata, how he came to head the project, and the chairman shaking his head to thank him for agreeing to the job. Prakash Telang, the current managing director for India operations, and C Ramakrishnan, the chief financial officer, also occupy important pedestals.
You cannot expect gods to generate stories that are too human. There is interaction between them, but largely nice. And then there are squirm-inducing passages like this one: “The Nano has become such a mega event that people less familiar with the Indian automotive industry and with Tata Motors might think this trailblazing motor car is an isolated development, a one-off in an otherwise mundane story. Nothing could be further from the truth! The Nano is a culmination of decades of effort to build engineering excellence across an extended organisation and to offer products that customers want.”
At a time like the current one, one can be forgiven for wondering if some of this is misplaced. Of late, most of the reports about Nano have been about its falling sales, which touched an abysmal low in November.
SMALL WONDER
The Making of the Nano
Philip Chacko, Christabelle Noronha and Sujata Agrawal
Westland
149 pages; Rs 295