In the exciting heyday of India-Singapore relations, I asked why Singapore Airlines had chosen Tata, with no recent aviation experience, to partner it in launching a domestic airline in this country. The sturdy answer was that Tata was the only “clean” company in India, and Ratan Tata a “gentleman”.
With Tata now competing with Uttar Pradesh’s Yadavs to wash its dirty linen in public, I am reminded not only of that accolade but of my own one encounter with the late J R D Tata. The Observer in London wanted me to write an article on the Tata empire, and the chairman was graciousness itself over sumptuous tea trays in Bombay House. But the meeting got off to an uncomfortable start. There had been trouble in Jamshedpur between TISCO and Jagannath Mishra, Bihar’s chief minister, and my article in The Statesman was supportive of the Tata position. JRD was displeased. “Who asked you to write it,” he barked angrily. “You shouldn’t have! It’s going to complicate things!” Responding to the first question, I said mildly no one told me what to write. I chose my own subjects. The views expressed were my own.
Apparently, TISCO and Mishra were about to patch things up, and JRD didn’t want to risk the settlement. I wouldn’t have bothered even if I had known. It wasn’t my concern. The British-owned-and-edited The Statesman I had joined in London had no time for the durbari culture that now transforms obliging journalists into parliamentarians, diplomats, ministers and corporate executives. Tata’s reputation was different, which was why the former British owners had wanted it to buy The Statesman. It wouldn’t, agreeing only to be one of a consortium.
After that encounter, I wondered if Tatas’ shining reputation was a bit like that of Vishwanath Pratap Singh. While fashionable society lionised “Mister Clean” who had “exposed” his boss over Bofors, someone asked how Singh had ever won an election if he was so clean. The questioner probably recalled Atal Bihari Vajpayee lamenting that every politician starts his legislative career with the lie of the false election return he submits.
Politics and business are akin in several respects. Neither insists on entry qualifications. Neither offers success to the scrupulous. If people see businessmen as the darker of the two, it’s as much because of history and hypocrisy as because politicians, who are in a controlling position, set the tone. Childhood memories of the 1943 Bengal Famine, Bollywood and popular lore sustain the stereotype identifying businessmen with profiteers and black marketers even after the 1991 reforms made business respectable.
The innocuous word dalal, trader, is an abusive term, as the spat between Akhilesh Yadav and Amar Singh confirms. But even West Bengal’s Marxists seem to have seen the $103-billion Tata group as the one bright spot in commercial murkiness. They would not otherwise — so runs the argument — have compulsorily acquired agricultural land for the Nano car plant in Singur in 2008.
Of course there are flaws in the argument. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had long been suspected of being hand in glove with local real estate developers whose towering blocks of flats all round Kolkata help to create the illusion that West Bengal’s capital is still a city of dynamic growth. Similarly, Jawaharlal Nehru’s biographer tells us he refused a donation from Tata on the principled grounds that since the company contributed handsomely to the Swatantra Party, it could not possibly believe in his socialist philosophy. Nehru didn’t want their money if Tata was contributing to the Congress as a matter of expediency, to keep in with the ruling party at the Centre.
So, perhaps, Tata is no more an exception to prevailing business ethics than the warring Yadavs are to prevailing political values. I will venture no opinion on the charges being traded except to say that I read them with a sad sense of déjà vu. The names of Darbari Seth, Ajit Kerkar and, above all, the flamboyant Russi Mody, who was idolised in Jamshedpur, come to mind. “I’ve lost my memory,” he said at our last meeting without any hint of self-pity. “I can’t remember anything.” The matter-of-fact tone suggested he might have lost a handkerchief. He had been sacked, the media reported a disgraceful controversy over some Hussain paintings, and the death of his much younger companion had left him a very lonely old man. Nevertheless, Russi retained great affection for Tata. He would have been very pained to see a hallowed name dragged through the mud.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
