We don’t have to constantly look critically at ourselves while wearing baseball caps the wrong side front. Corporate and commonplace life in India is layered and have a million shades of grey. leave it that way
In his latest article, published in The Indian Express on Friday, noted commentator Pratap Bhanu Mehta argues that Tata Sons’ ousted chairman Cyrus Mistry’s ‘leaked’ letter listing his grievances and the follies and foibles of patriarch Ratan Tata, blows another hole in the facade of Indian capital’s social legitimacy. The thrust of his argument is that Indian capital, hobbled as it is by a crisis of credibility, now stands denuded of all remaining vestiges of respectability. Not only has an icon ‘fallen’, Ratan Tata’s reputation lies in tatters. He writes, “The issue is not just the fate of the Tatas. The issue is that in the short run, a letter like this will only deepen credibility crisis of Indian capitalism.”
I have a few perception-driven points in response to Mr Mehta’s profound commentary. First, a necessary disclosure which could well have been made at the end, or not been mentioned at all, but that would be ethically incorrect. I grew up in Jamshedpur, the ‘steel city’ (it was really a small town in the 1970s) that owes its origin to Jamshedji Nusserwanji Tata, intrepid trader-turned-entrepreneur from Navsari.
A little known fact is that Tisco (now Tata Steel) came into being some three years after JN Tata’s death. Credit should have gone to his sons Dorabji and Ratanji, but those names are rarely heard, unless it’s in the context of the trusts they set up and which own 66 per cent stake in Tata Sons.
We were, like everybody before us was, what a classmate in our school Whatsapp group described as ‘Tiscodeewane’. The missionary school we attended was a beneficiary of the Tatas’ munificence; indeed, every institution and individual in Jamshedpur was a beneficiary in one form or the other.
The local Tata dispensary with a GP and a pharmacist who created white and pink concoctions with magical curative powers was a lifeline. My father suffered a heart attack quite early in life. That was our first exposure to Tata Main Hospital, popularly known as TMH, whose services we would not have been able to afford had it not been entirely paid for and subsidised by the Tatas.
My elder daughter was born in that hospital whose doctors saved my wife from a rare near-fatal prenatal infection. My maternal grandmother breathed her last in the cancer ward of TMH. My father was not even a Tata employee; he worked for a firm that supplied oxygen to fire Tisco’s furnaces.
This is just one example of how our lives were intricately linked to and touched by the munificent Tatas. Private capital with steadfast social commitment in the pre-CSR days was a rarity. Such examples abound and it is not my purpose to draw up a laundry list. The disclosure is essentially to admit that my perception could well be biased and not as detached as that of Mehta. It’s a worm’s eye view, not a lofty discourse.
Which brings me to where we began, that is, my response to Mehta’s commentary.
There are broadly three categories of stakeholders in Tata enterprises. The owners, Tata Sons. The workers and their families, or the communities where the Tatas operate. Shareholders and investors, including banks that have lent money. It is likely they have been shaken, if not rattled, by the litany of accusations and charges levelled by Cyrus Mistry. But the waves will settle and calm shall return. Decades of confidence and trust are not destroyed by a passing storm.
All private sector firms in India, listed or unlisted, operate in a manner unique to each of them. Given the legacy of India’s pseudo-socialism (quota-licence-permit raj still exists though in a more muted form), the continued intrusiveness of the state and the unrestrained hostility of tax collectors who operate on the principle of profit is evil (endorsed by political bosses irrespecive of their party symbol) certain opaqueness has always clouded the decision-making and execution processes of India’s capitalists.
It’s mighty unfair to expect Indian capital to be governed by transparency, morality and ethics when the governance of India and its state agencies, as well as public sector institutions in which I would include tax-funded universities, is clouded by dishonesty, favouritism, cronysm and remarkable mediocrity.
If the Indian state lacks credibility, Indian capital cannot be expected to be the epitome of credibility. We could also cite the abysmal governance of our political parties. For instance, technically and legally the Congress has no president heading the organisation, Sonia Gandhi’s term having expired some time ago. Bad begets bad.
By letting his confidential correspondence with the Tata Sons board leak into the public domain, Cyrus Mistry has reinforced the popular perception that only family can be trusted — in politics and industry. Cyrus Mistry was the second ‘non-Tata’ to become chairman of Tata Sons; the first was Nowroji Saklatwala.
Cyrus Mistry came in on the strength of his family’s 18.5 per cent shareholding, not necessarily for extraordinary merit. The five-odd years be was chairman, he was complicit in all the transgressions he now lists in his letter. Had he been truly repelled and felt offended, he could have walked out to manage his own family business. After all, as he claims, he had reluctantly agreed to become chairman of Tata Sons. In the least, he could have spoken out and insisted that he would play according to his rules; the board could take it or lump it.
He chose not to do so, much like bureaucrats who discover they have a mind and a spine of their own only after they retire with a tax-funded pension, or politicians who rat on their party and leaders after being denied the loaves and fishes of office.
Mehta mentions the admittedly damning ‘Radia Tapes’ episode. Two points merit mention. First, it’s a commentary on the nature of India’s political executive that India’s capitalists should feel compelled to use fixers and influencers.
Even otherwise, middle class morality apart, lobbying to promote the interests of entrepreneurs and their enterprises is not illegal in capitalist societies. That’s how the descendants of America’s and Europe’s robber barons have become respectable capitalists.
Second, if ‘Radia Tapes’ is meant to measure the integrity quotient of Ratan Tata, it should be used for a similar purpose to measure the appalling absence of integrity quotient among sanctimonious members of India’s fourth estate.
A lot more can be said about MSM harlotry but that would be pointless. I have been around long enough to see media waging war on behalf of Indian capital, most famously during the Nusli Wadia versus Dhirubhai Ambani spat of the 1980s. In more recent times we have seen media playing a partisan role when Dhirubhai’s sons fought a bitter succession battle. The then editor of the Indian Express had led the battle for Nusli Wadia; he later became a defender of Dhirubhai Ambani’s defiance and violation of existing rules and norms. I put such changes down to the simple fact of life that times change, people change.
I am blissfully clueless of corporate affairs and boardroom intrigue. And since I have no money to invest in stocks and shares, I feel no urge to track the performance of companies. So blame my ignorance if you will but I find Sam Swaminathan’s commentary facile and facetious.
An Indian company does not have to fashion itself after American corporates solely driven by profit motive, nor do Indian CEOs have to model themselves after American CEOs who are essentially carpetbaggers. The Tatas have survived and along with them millions of families have survived. We could say the same thing about Reliance and many others. Devil take the hindmost is the American way of life. Sarve bhavantu sukhina is the Indian way of life.
The Tata corporate culture of not being brash that Sam Swaminathan berates and scoffs at is essentially Indian culture: Satyam bruyat priyam bruyat na bruyat satyam apriyam / priyam ca nanrutam bruyat esha dharma sanatana. Point is we don’t have to constantly look critically at ourselves while wearing baseball caps the wrong side front. Corporate and commonplace life in India is layered and have a million shades of grey. leave it that way.
I could, of course, be horribly wrong. I would rather be that than a namak haram.
(The writer is commissioning editor and commentator at ABP News TV)
