Of the many Tatas in Tata Sons over its 100-year-plus history, how would posterity rate Ratan Tata, now in his final year as helmsman of India’s largest private sector entity? That question crept across my mind last Thursday when I braved Delhi’s early morning chill to drive 25 km for a breakfast meeting with the Tata chieftain in the company of my distinguished tribesmen.

Is Ratan Tata the last of the Tata moghuls? More importantly, has Ratan Tata, in his 20 years as bossman of Bombay House, surpassed the accomplishments of his revered and much-loved predecessor, JRD, who lived on to run the empire through twice as long, though half as eventful, years

of corporate history, eventually emerging as the only Indian corporate citizen to be so far distinguished by the country’s highest civilian award Bharat Ratna?

Unlike the west, India has poor, if not non-existent, archival traditions documenting its leaders. This is, perhaps, largely because of the ingrained belief that our lifetimes are mere illusions of a wavering mind. Small wonder then, much of our assessments of history’s personalities are based on hearsay and folklore. And then there are occasional paid-for hagiographies commissioned by megalomaniacs of various dispositions. More recently, disproportionate hype and halo have been created around so-called cult personalities by unscrupulous corpcomm managers, an assortment of wheeler-dealers masquerading as PR pundits, and gullible media professionals in the trade of journalism. Why, even Ratan Tata patronised the now discarded Niira Radia for well over a decade to manipulate his interface with contemporary history. Radia is history’s sullied reputation. Ratan Tata remains its poster boy.

History written on hindsight often creates either demi-gods or demons out of mere mortals. So while it may be quite a while before Ratan Tata becomes subject of serious academic research, I am sticking my neck out on the bigger Tata of the two. Ratan or JRD? I will base much of my arguments on archival matter published in newspapers for over a century, and also rely on ringside exposure to 25 years of India’s corporate history-in-the-making, to sieve the sands of time.

It is important here to remember that JRD was inducted into business under a free market regime, but was later imprisoned by the licence-permit raj. Ratan, on the other ha­nd, was inducted as hostage to the licence-permit raj only to be set free by a free market regime. JRD was indoctrinated in business within the hallowed portals the Tata corporate office in Mumbai by a retired British civil servant, John Peterson, the director-in-charge of Tisco (now Tata Steel), Ratan spent the first two years dirtying his hands on the shop floor of Telco (now Tata Motors) in Jamshedpur. JRD became head honcho at a fairly young age of 34 and aged as a wise chieftain. Ratan became chieftain at a fairly old age, but transformed an ageing enterprise into the face of contemporary India. JRD represented first, colonial, then Nehru’s, and finally, Indira Gandhi’s India. Ratan’s destiny was inextricably linked to Rajiv Gandhi’s 21st century dream. And so, the two, between them, have defined India’s oldest and biggest corporate enterprise for close to three-quarters of a century.

Yet, while it may be essential to understand JRD to evaluate Ratan Tata, to understand Ratan, it is far more important to go back to the Tata group founder to draw the fine line between him and JRD. Rather than cast himself in JRD’s mould as a benevolent hands-free patriarch lording over loyal minions, who carved out larger-than-life images for themselves as powerful satraps, Ratan took to the hands-on pioneering spirit of the founder, of whom he said subsequently: “Jamshetji was looking at the new frontiers of Indian business when he launched the first ventures of his group. He set up the Empress Mills in Nagpur, the cotton-growing centre... He saw limestone and coal in the middle of what was then a jungle and set up a steel mill in Jamshedpur. Jamshetji Tata took a national view and so, inevitably, we were in basic industries and infrastructure.”

When he took over the reigns in 1991, Ratan saw an opportunity to carry forward that legacy of Jamshetji. But to do that he had to first destroy JRD’s kingdom only to rebuild a global empire from the shambles.

Do you read a hint in that?

As much as this column is meant to provoke a judgement, its purpose cannot be to list the milestones erected by the two corporate heavyweights over the course of such an expansive and meandering period of time. Suffice then, to add that soon after taking over as chairman of Tata Sons, Ratan Tata had remarked: “ My goal is to attain market leadership or at least be one of the top three players. Otherwise, we must seriously consider to getting out of a business.”

Today, Tata Tea is the world’s biggest tea company, Tata Salt, the country’s numero uno salt brand and among India’s most trusted brand names. Taj of Indian Hotels is the country’s best-known hospitality brand from the biggest hospitality chain. Tata Motors is the country’s biggest trucks and bus maker and the country’s third biggest passenger cars manufacturer. Tata Steel is the world’s seventh biggest and lowest cost steel maker, though no longer the country’s biggest private sector steel company; Tata Consultancy Services, is the country’s top software services exporter, with 1.3 times the turnover and net profit of its nearest competitor Infosys (with a market cap of Rs 2,29,383 crore against the latter’s Rs 1,63,087 crore). The Tata group’s 28 listed companies flaunt a market cap of Rs 4,09,117 crore with a turnover of Rs 3,55,272 crore and net profits of Rs 27,371 crore, against their nearest rivals with eight listed companies of the Ambanis controlled by brothers Mukesh and Anil, respectively, flaunting combined market valuation of Rs 2,80,868 core, with turnover of Rs 3,10,542 crore and net profits of Rs 22,328 crore.

At his height, JRD presided over a group with a combined turnover of Rs 4,000 crore and assets valued at Rs 2,500 crore, with interests spanning engineering and consumer durables, agricultural products, hi-tech computer systems, hotels and power generation, employing 250,000 workers, a bulk of them at a decrepit steel plant with its capacity unchanged at a million tonnes since inception in 1907; his entrepreneurial hunger initially restrained by the Industrial Regulations and Development Act of 1953, and subsequently chained by crony capitalism that emerged out of Indira Gandhi’s socialist empire.

Yet, JRD’s was the story of a man whose vision soared so high that he catapulted an impoverished and colonised country into the forefront of global civil aviation on the strength of his passion. JRD has been identified variously in the annals of India’s corporate history, towering above his peers and predecessors so high that very few could ever aspire to reach, leave alone catch up.

K V Kamath, chairman of ICICI and Infosys, wrote on JRD, way back on 3 August, 1986: “There are several JRDs. There is the JRD who dutifully joined the family business, cutting short his formal education, the JRD who learnt to fly at a young age and even engaged in flying competition, the nationalist JRD who once was torn between sticking to his job and courting imprisonment, the sports-loving JRD who has often had minor accidents in skiing, the fun-loving JRD who could make quiet contribution to people in need. JRD the husband, JRD the chairman of many Tata companies and even JRD the writer. That one man can contain so many men inside him should be the case for wonder.”

Yet, for his many contributions to industry, science, arts, philanthropy and good corporate governance, no one achievement subsumed his passion for flying as much that he would forever be remembered as the man who put India on the world civil aviation map with the founding of Air-India, which he subsequently lost with its takeover by the state. His only other significant contribution to the Tata group was to put into practice the structure of industrial relations in Jamshedpur in 1943, by creating the personnel department of Tata Steel that led to 50 years of uninterrupted industrial peace, unique not only in India’s industrial relations culture, but perhaps, the whole of Asia.

How would posterity remember Ratan Tata?

I would dare say he was a man who carried the entire universe of possibilities in his mind, riding an architect’s aptitude for precision and detail with a single-minded focus that he acquired with his education at Cornell. You can see that in his overhauling Tata Motors from an outdated truck maker to India’s biggest vehicles company that, under his command, has spanned the entire automotive range from diverse trucks and busses; to SUVs Estate, Sierra, Sumo and Safari; to passenger cars Indica, Indigo and their successor versions, to the cheapest car in the world Nano, and among the most expensive luxury marquees Jaguar and Land Rover. You can also see that in the merging of Tata Steel with British steel maker Corus, spanning an international footprint from East Asia to Europe across India and Africa. And above all, you can see that in his transforming the Tata group into a truly transcontinental giant worthy of global admiration, and in his being recognised as among the world’s most respected businessmen.

On Thursday, over breakfast, I asked Ratan Tata, what was that one thing he was passing on to his successor in his last year in office that JRD did not pass on to him in his last year at Bombay House. Ratan Tata paused for a moment, and said, “I really don’t have an answer to that…” and then, he went on to add that he was passing on “a business on the move” to Cyrus.

Who is the bigger Tata of the two?

History may well pass a fair verdict one day, but for now, you know my choice.

shubhrangshuroy@mydigitalfc.com