Recently in mid-April following a nationwide survey, the Economic Times crowned Mumbai-based business tycoon Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, India’s most powerful CEO for the second year running and Indian business leader of the decade. Earlier last September, London-based The Economist declared him the most innovative business leader of the year. These are just a few of the blushing honours that Chairman Ratan wears thick upon him for re-jigging and deftly steering the country’s largest and most respected private sector business house (steel, automobiles, IT consultancy and services, tea et al) which was experiencing rough weather before he was somewhat unexpectedly anointed by the late J.R.D. Tata (1904-93) as his successor and chairman of the Tata Group in 1991.
Yet while with the benefit of hindsight Ratan seems the natural successor of the legendary and dashing JRD, at the time Ratan was an outside bet in the race to succeed JRD as chairman in Bombay House, the imposing headquarters of the Tata business empire in the central business district of Bombay, aka Mumbai. The chances of several powerful chieftans of the group, notably legal legend Nani Palkhivala (chairman ACC); Russi Mody (Tata Steel); Darbari Seth (Tata Tea, Tata Chemicals) and Sumant Moolgaonkar (Telco) were rated higher in the succession derby. Hardly surprising because at the time, Ratan was the struggling chief executive of Nelco, an ailing consumer electronics company which he had failed to turn around despite several years on the job.
However while he was languishing in Nelco, of his own volition, Ratan wrote up a seven year perspective plan for the management and development of the Tata Group, in which he advocated his now famous thesis that the Tatas should exit from non-core businesses (edible oil, soap, electronics) and focus on developing their blue-chip companies (Telco, Tisco, TCS, Tata Tea etc). In the mid-1980s, Ratan’s perspective plan was ignored, if not rubbished. Except by your correspondent who was then editor of Businessworld which publicly endorsed and lauded Ratan’s perspective plan and won him the approval of JRD Tata, who transferred him to Bombay House, and shortly thereafter declared him heir-apparent. Yet when JRD passed on in 1993, Ratan’s troubles were not over. From his fortress in Jameshedpur, Bihar, the Harrow and Oxford alum and Tata Steel chairman, Russi Mody unfurled a banner of revolt and rubbished Ratan’s qualifications and capabilities as chairman of the Tata Group.
At that time your correspondent was a columnist of the Independent and Sunday (alas, both extinct). Invoking the OPA (Old Pal’s Act) Ratan set out his defence and detailed the sins of Mody to your correspondent, and with a suspiciously glistening eye, requested me to put his case to the public. Purely on merit and because (my then good friend) Russi was attempting to foist his protégé Aditya Kashyap as chairman of Tata Steel, I sided with Ratan in my next two columns in Sunday. Perhaps coincidently, the crisis blew over and Ratan consolidated his position in Bombay House and implemented his perspective plan which has transformed him into Captain Marvel and Superman combined, according to fawning pink papers and biz mags.
Cut to the new millennium since the start of which your correspondent in a new avatar as editor of this publication has been struggling to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the No.1 item on the national agenda”. Given that Indian industry plagued by low productivity, is the largest user of educated and trained citizens, I naturally assumed that EducationWorld would have the full support of Chairman Ratan. Yet despite receiving complimentary copies of this sui generis publication accompanied with conscience-arousing pleas for Bombay House support, Chairman Ratan has been unmoved. And the most unkindest cut of all was inflicted when in response to an advertising plea for the tenth anniversary issue of EW, he responded with a full page memo pleading poverty and business downturn afflicting the Tata empire (annual sales revenue: Rs.386,000 crore).
It’s a sign of the times when India’s most powerful business leader is also a typical genus homo indicus who solicits every help to squeeze into an unreserved second class Indian Railways compartment, but is quick to bolt the door after him.
Neta-Babu Airlines freeloaders
Although ideological confusion and muddle-headedness is a prime cause of post-independence India’s low ranking on the UNDP’s Human Development Index, where reportedly shining India ranks a lowly 134, an equally damning cause is the endless capacity of the public to suffer the abuse of power and corruption by the country’s self-serving neta-babu (politician-bureaucrat) conspiracy.
A case in point is the demand made — and promptly conceded in end April — following which all 24 retired civil aviation secretaries en famille will be automatically upgraded to first class service whenever they travel with the public sector Air India/ Indian Airlines aka NACIL (National Aviation Company of India Ltd). Conceding such demands comes easily to the management of these airlines which were nationalised over half a century ago for the greater glory and comfort of politicians and bureaucrats and christened Neta-Babu Airlines by your editor in another avatar three decades ago. Air India and Indian Airlines — now merged into NACIL — have several very convenient rules and regulations under which a whole army of politicians and bureaucrats are entitled to a bewildering array of free passages, concessions and privileges. One of the regulations is that any individual who has been chairman of either airline for two years is entitled to a lifetime of free first class travel.
And although a long lineage of chairmen have piloted these airlines into rack and ruin — Air India has chalked up losses of over Rs.5,000 crore in 2008-09 and 2009-10 — dozens of these disaster-masters including former Tata Steel chairman Russi Mody, motor-scooter tycoon Rahul Bajaj and incumbent ITC chairman Yogi Deveshwar are merrily flying international routes whenever their fancy takes them, entirely at public expense. Indeed, during his incumbency as chairman of Indian Airlines, despite severe criticism, Russi Mody stuck limpet-like to the chairman’s throne for the minimum two-year period to qualify for this perk and put in his papers immediately afterward. With so many privileges written into the charters of these airlines, it’s hardly surprising that all calls for privatisation or closure of these bleeding behemoths are ignored by the country’s flourishing me-first neta-babu class.