The passing of Ratan Tata last month aroused bitter-sweet memories of this industry tycoon who I interviewed on several occasions in my previous avatars as editor of Business India and BusinessWorld. In the 1980s the Tata empire ruled by JRD Tata from Bombay House was run by powerful warlords such as Russi Modi (Tata Steel); S. Mulgaokar (Tata Motors); Darbari Seth (Tata Chemicals); Ajit Kerkar (Indian Hotels), A.H. Tobbacowala (Voltas) among others, who ran their companies with minimal supervision from JRD. In this league, Ratan Tata (JRD’s nephew) managing NELCO, a loss-making electronics company in the 1990s, was a cipher and it was by no means certain that Ratan was JRD’s natural successor.
In particular Russi Modi, front-runner to succeed JRD, was openly disparaging Ratan, despite the latter having drawn up an intelligent plan for the Tata Group to divest consumer good companies and focus on a few big ones. This plan was positively written up in BusinessWorld. Years later, when the war of words between Ratan and Russi intensified, Ratan requested me to put his case forward. Despite Russi Modi being a friend, on merits of the case, I wrote in my weekly column in The Independent (now defunct) that Ratan was the better choice as Chairman of Tata Sons. That essay ended my friendship (Ratan was a mere acquaintance) with Russi.
Many years later when EducationWorld was floundering, I wrote to Ratan — a professed champion of education who had recently endowed a library at Harvard — to provide some advertising support. Tata responded with a long letter explaining business was bad and the then Rs.80,000 crore Tata Group couldn’t afford the expense. An unredeemed IOU.
