The story of Singur may be a bad chapter for the Tata Group but for Chairman Ratan Tata, the loss of an international airline in 1990s was equally disturbing.
He said the group’s plans to set up an international airline in collaboration with Singapore Airlines was thwarted by an individual and it remained so, since he’d never liked the idea of paying a bribe to start the airline. The group, he recalled, had pioneered Indian aviation.
“After approaching three governments and three prime ministers, the plans for the airline were thwarted by an individual,” said Tata in an interactive session, coinciding with a lecture on the 10th Foundation Day annual function of Uttarakhand. He said a fellow industrialist on an airline flight asked him to pay just Rs 15 crore to a minister to start the airline. “You people are stupid. The minister wanted Rs 15 crore, why didn’t you pay to start the airline?” the industrialist told Tata. “I just want to go to bed at night knowing that I haven’t got the airline by paying for it,” the latter recalled. Tata said he had not changed his plans for retirement. “There is no such thing called indispensable individual. The day I succeeded JRD, I stepped into very large shoes. But I knew that I cannot be another JRD Tata. I have to be a person of my own.”
He said his successor should have a commitment for ethics and values. “I think my successor should be a person of his own but do things the way we have been doing or much better,” he said. “I ferociously want to ensure that my successor has total commitment for the ethics and values we have fought for years now.”
Commenting on Tata’s statement, former minister for civil aviation C M Ibrahim told reporters: “When Tatas approached us for permission to start an airline, I told him to start an airlines company on his own and to not bring any foreign company into the domestic airlines sector, because, no foreign country has allowed an MNC in their domestic airlines sector. So, we took a decision collectively along with our coalition partners like Jyoti Basu and Harkishen Singh Surjeet. It was a coalition government headed by H D Deve Gowda and we made this policy and by the grace of God it is still in place,” Ibrahim said.
Ibrahim was the civil aviation minister in 1996-97.
When asked why Tata was disclosing this matter after so many years, he said, “I don’t know, but already one case about the airport is in the Karnataka High Court. Tatas wanted to build the Bangalore airport on the build, own and operate model. But we told him to build, operate and transfer to the government after 30 years lease,” he told reporters.