The resignation of N. Chandrasekhar now in his third five-year term as Chairman of Tata Sons Ltd, the closely-held holding company of the salt-automobiles-computer software Tata Group (annual sales revenue: Rs.16.24 lakh crore), has come not a day too soon. True during his three terms as chairman of Tata Sons, the revenue, profit and market capitalisation of the 31 companies in the Tata Group increased, but not spectacularly. Compared with other major business groups (Ambani, Adani and Birla) Tata Group’s growth and expansion is less than impressive. However in terms of remuneration awarded to himself, Chandra’s performance during his terms in office has been spectacular, rising from Rs.3 crore per annum in 2009 to Rs.158 crore in 2026.

Also in terms of ensuring the total erasure of F.C. Kohli (FCK), CEO and Vice Chairman of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) which FCK built from ground up into India’s largest computer software development and most profitable company of the Tata Group, Chandra has done a splendid hatchet job. In the decades before the new millennium, FCK/TCS contributed 85 percent of group profit and kept the Tatas afloat after some disastrous offshore acquisitions (Corus Steel, Jaguar-Land Rover) by the late Ratan Tata. But despite FCK having recruited and nurtured Chandra in TCS, after the latter was appointed CEO in 2009 and later promoted as CEO of Tata Sons, in true Soviet-style Chandra ensured the deletion of FCK from Tata history and collective memory.

Chandra’s back-stabbing petty mindedness was experienced first-hand by your editors. In 2004 under Kohli’s pressure, the TCS management agreed to sponsor the annual TCS-EducationWorld Teachers Awards with a modest corpus of Rs.10 lakh. Winners of a test and online interviews were invited all-expenses paid to a grand event and presented cash awards, publicly read citations and media coverage. But five years after the TCS-EW Awards had been established and Kohli stepped down, this Machiavelli cancelled the awards on the ground that the multi-billion TCS couldn’t “afford the expense”. Our suggestion that the event be renamed the EW-F.C. Kohli Teachers Awards didn’t merit a reply.

Since then like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, FCK who built TCS and saved the Tatas, haunts the corridors of Bombay House, headquarters of the Tata Group. Noel Tata, Chairman of the Tata Trusts which own a majority of the equity of Tata Sons, has done well to have seen through this self-serving Mir Jaffar and sent him packing.