I want India to be a happy country ... JRD Tata

JRD Tata (1904 - 1993)

JRD wished India to be a happy country before it becomes a great country and had conveyed his view to his friend and the country's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

JRD always believed that before one could excel in his chosen sphere, that person should be a good man. And a good man must have great credibility. He was always very sympathetic towards the needy, and there are umpteen anecdotes on how he helped families, particularly children. - JJ Irani

JRD's always aimed for excellence or even perfection. That drive was clearly reflected in his leadership of Air India. When JRD was its chairman, the carrier was recognized as one of the top three airlines in the world.

On the fire accident of March 3, 1989 that broke out during the Founder's Day programme inside Tata Steel plant, JRD was with Ratan Tata in Geneva but when he was informed about the unfortunate incident, he rushed back on March 5 (1989) and personally visited the victims undergoing medical treatment in TMH. JRD viewed the fire mishap as a personal loss and insisted on quality medical care to the victims regardless of the cost of the treatment.

On one occasion a senior executive of a Tata company tried to save on taxes. Before putting up that case, the chairman of the company took him to JRD. Mr. Vyas explained to JRD: "But sir, it is not illegal." JRD asked, softly: "Not illegal, yes. But is it right?" Mr. Vyas says that during his decades of professional work no one had ever asked him that question. Mr. Vyas later wrote in an article: "JRD would have been the most ardent supporter of the view expressed by Lord Denning: ``The avoidance of tax may be lawful, but it is not yet a virtue.'"

When JRD rang us in the office he would first ask: "Can you speak?" or "Do you have someone with you?" Except when he was agitated, he would never ask you: "Can you come up?" He was always polite.

Towards the end of his life he often said: "We don't smile enough." 

JRD said about his dealings with his colleagues: "With each man I have my own way. I am one who will make full allowance for a man's character and idiosyncrasies. You have to adapt yourself to their ways and deal accordingly and draw out the best in each man. At times it involves suppressing yourself. It is painful but necessary... To be a leader you have got to lead human beings with affection.''

In a speech in Madras in 1969 he called on the managements of industries located in rural or semi-urban areas to think of their less fortunate neighbours in the surrounding regions. "Let industry established in the countryside `adopt' the villages in its neighbourhood; let some of the time of its managers, its engineers, doctors and skilled specialists be spared to help and advise the people of the villages and to supervise new developments undertaken by cooperative effort between them and the company."

He never bent the system for his benefit. LK Jha recalled in 1986 that whenever JRD came to him when he was a Government Secretary, he came not on behalf of a company but the whole industry. He wanted no favours, only fairness.

He wrote in his Foreword in 1992: "I believe that the social responsibilities of our industrial enterprises should now extend, even beyond serving people, to the environment.''

When he was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1992, Tata employees arranged a function on the lawns of the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai. A gentle breeze was blowing from the Arabian Sea. When JRD rose to speak, he said: "An American economist has predicted that in the next century India will be an economic superpower. I don't want India to be an economic superpower. I want India to be a happy country.''

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If I were to attribute any single reason to such success as I have achieved, 

I would say that success would not have been possible without a 

sustained belief that what I did or attempted to do would serve the needs and interests 

of our country and our people and that I was a trustee of such interests ... JRD Tata

The economy, which is a network of material relations, can always be revived, but the society, which is a network of human relations based on trust, may not be repaired so easily once damaged. The events of the past year can leave us without the slightest doubt that the sections who feel most threatened in India today are our Muslim and Christian compatriots. Historically, there have been other groups that have long felt marginalised.

PSU Boards being filled with BJP workers

 

 

• The decision to nominate BJP workers as non-official directors makes a mockery of the party’s 1998 manifesto and the government’s own guidelines issued in 2015.
• In an interview, Modi repeated his favourite maxim, “minimum government, maximum governance.” He went on to state, “in a developing economy, state enterprises do have a role in some sectors. They have to be managed professionally and efficiently. We have given them operational freedom and brought in talent from the private sector as well to facilitate this.”
• Modi's decision that ONGC acquire 80% stake in debt trapped GSPC, by investing Rs.7,738 crore badly hurt its finances and its credibility. The decision is apparently imposed on the company by those whose primary objective was to bail out GSPC and obfuscate its shortcomings. A nominee director on the board of ONGC would have found it difficult to resist the extraneous pressure.
• A year after Modi’s interview with the WSJ, his government took the patently retrograde step of nominating BJP spokespersons and party workers as non-official directors of eleven odd CPSEs, many of which are ‘Maharatna’ and ‘Navaratna’ companies, which are expected to have a great deal of functional autonomy and be managed by professionals with experience.
• These include ONGC (Sambit Patra), Engineers India Ltd (Shazia Ilmi), Cotton Corporation of India Ltd (Rajika Kacheria), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (Asifa Khan), Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (Surama Padhy), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (Tamilisai Sounderarajan), State Trading Corporation (Bharatsinh Prabhatsinh Parmar), Export Credit Guarantee Corporation Ltd (S. Malathi Rani), Andrew Yule & Company Ltd (Sipra Goon), National Handloom Development Corporation Ltd (Shikha Roy) and National Aluminium Company Ltd (K.G. Sinha).
• The credentials of each one of these persons are prima facie unimpeachable. But the question is to what extent will they be able to add value to the management of the CPSEs?
• Companies Act Section 166 requires the government to nominate any person who fulfills the criteria. While it no doubt provides a great deal of discretion, such a discretion cannot evidently be arbitrary and injudicious. The discretion so provided in the Companies Act enables the government to nominate persons who have sufficient domain knowledge relevant to the operations of a given CPSE.
• In its 1998 manifesto, the BJP, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, committed itself to managing the public sector “professionally”, “with least interference by government”.
• The department of public enterprises (DPE) advised all ministries that “non-official directors are to be drawn from the public men (sic), technocrats, management experts and consultants, and professional managers in industry and trade with a high degree of proven ability.” Further guidelines stipulate that persons nominated as non-official directors of CPSEs should be “professionals of repute having more than 15 years of relevant domain experience in fields relevant to the company’s area of operation”, “persons of eminence with proven track record from industry, business or agriculture or management.”
• The decision taken now by Modi government to nominate BJP workers as non-official directors clearly makes a mockery of the BJP’s own manifesto of 1998 and the guidelines issued more recently by the NDA government itself.
• Lord Denning, the greatest English judge of modern times, said, “there is nothing wrong with a director being nominated by a shareholder to represent his interests, so long as the director is left free to exercise his best judgment in the interests of the company which he serves. But if he is put upon terms that he is bound to act in the affairs of the company in accordance with the directions of his patron, it is beyond doubt unlawful.”
• It was reported that the present government had tried to appoint a BJP worker as a member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and it would have gone ahead with that move but for a PIL filed before the apex court.
• If Modi is earnest about reforming the CPSEs, he should walk the talk by distancing the government and his party from them. CPSEs needs professional management, competition and public accountability to perform its crucial role to play in nation building for decades to come and this kind of tinkering with their management is bound to hurt the economy.

Slogans such as “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance” and “Reform, Perform and Transform” are laudable, easy to articulate but difficult to translate into tangible action. Intentions underlying such slogans are more important than the spoken words. Intentions will mean nothing, unless they get translated into genuine action. As the gap between words and deeds widens, the credibility of sloganeering will get eroded. It is very clear that BJP's hidden agenda is neither well being of the nation nor its people but saffronisation of India.