Cynthia Rodrigues

The belief that the business of business is to create wealth for the
progress of the nation and the well being of the community is the
fundamental principle on which the Tata Group has been built. It is this
lodestar that has guided the Group’s social development activities in
the years before and since India gained independence

Love for one’s nation need not manifest itself merely in outbursts of emotion and the readiness to die for it. The story of the Tata Group is a chronicle of the dedication and commitment with which it has worked for the good of the nation and the honesty with which its every concern has reflected that.

Through its long history, the Group’s fortunes have been entwined with those of the nation and its people. Mammon alone has never been its driving force. The Group has gone beyond the pursuit of the top- and
bottom-line to embrace the nation and its needs.

Numerous Tata companies and trusts have offered enormous resources, both material and human, to enhance the quality of life of the community. No other corporate house in the history of independent India has been so conscientious in its concern for the nation. The Group’s contribution has encompassed every sphere of human interest, including science, education, art and culture, medicine and community development.

No wonder then that the name Tata is held in such high regard in India. Even the most cursory understanding of the path trodden by the Group could not fail to inspire respect and appreciation.

Building dreams
It was 60 years ago, at the stroke of midnight, that India awoke to liberty. Numerous freedom fighters gave up their lives so that their fellow Indians could see that dawn of freedom. And there were many others who contributed in different ways that were no less significant. One such person was Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, industrialist, humanist and an outstanding nationalist. He was a nation builder. He realised that if India is to hold her own in the world, she must have industrial prowess.

Jamsetji Tata had the courage of his convictions in the face of India’s struggle against British rule and the restrictions imposed upon her people. Above all, Jamsetji thought big. He worked hard to realise his
dreams of a self-sufficient India, striving for excellence in everything he attempted, whether hotels, textiles, steel or power.

Philanthropy — a way of life
The patriarch’s foresight went far beyond the corporate sphere. He chose to give in an era when such generosity was not rewarded with tax benefits. It was philanthropy for its own sake.

In his own words, “There is one kind of charity common enough among us… It is that patchwork philanthropy which clothes the ragged, feeds the poor, and heals the sick. I am far from decrying the noble spirit which seeks to help a poor or suffering fellow being… [However] what advances a nation or a community is not so much to prop up its weakest and most helpless members, but to lift up the best and the most gifted, so as to make them of the greatest service to the country.”

His spirit of selfless giving and his philosophy of constructive philanthropy became a tradition for the Group he founded. The Tata Group became known for giving of its wealth and possessions, its skills and its time.

Jamsetji Tata had the vision to realise that a technologically proficient generation would hasten India’s entry into the industrial age. He established the JN Tata Endowment Scheme for higher education in
1892 to enable Indian students, regardless of caste or creed, to pursue higher studies in England. Later known as the Tata scholarships, it flourished to the point that by 1924, two out of every five Indians coming into the elite Indian Civil Service (ICS) were Tata scholars.

The JN Tata Endowment has supported over 3,500 scholars and awarded nearly Rs70 million to promising students from various strata of society, helping to develop some of India’s best academics, scientists and administrators, including former president KR Narayanan, former director general of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research RA Mashelkar and former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Raja Ramanna.

Initially, the endowment amount was Rs10,000 which Jamsetji paid out of his own pocket. Later it was regularised with a corpus of Rs25 lakh. The Sir Dorabji Tata Trust’s (SDTT) sanction of Rs5 crore allowed the endowment to raise the loan amount to at least Rs1 lakh each to enable over 100 selected students to study abroad. In 1966, the SDTT instituted the Homi Bhabha fellowship to encourage young people in the fields of the arts, industry, agriculture, commerce and social organisation.

Another of Jamsetji’s dreams was that India should have an institution of advanced scientific education and research. In 1898 he pledged Rs30 lakh — half of his personal fortune — towards setting it up. It took over 12 years, and a donation of 372 acres of land from the maharaja of Mysore, before the British rulers allowed the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to start functioning in Bangalore in 1911, long after Jamsetji’s passing. The IISc has helped to create and nurture India’s atomic energy programme and space programme. It also enabled CV Raman to undertake research in light scattering, which eventually won him the Nobel Prize in 1930.

Carrying on the legacy
The Founder’s sons, Sir Dorabji Tata and Sir Ratan Tata, inherited his spirit of selflessness and nationalism and developed it even further. It is a tribute to that spirit that 65 per cent of the capital of the parent firm, Tata Sons, is held by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, a fact that remains unique in the history of India’s corporate world.

Both sons established trusts for the public good, using their own finances. Sir Dorabji left most of his personal wealth to the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, registered a few months before his death. This included substantial securities and shares in Tata Sons, Indian Hotels and other Tata companies, landed estates, money worth Rs23 lakh standing to his credit in Tata Sons and 21 pieces of jewellery, including his own pearl-studded tie-pin and his wife’s 245-carat Jubilee diamond, twice as large as the famed Kohinoor diamond. The value of this largesse was around Rs1 crore in 1932, the year the trust was set up.

Institutions of excellence
SDTT has set up six remarkable institutions of national importance: the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in 1936, the Tata Memorial Hospital for cancer research and treatment (TMH) in 1941, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in 1945, the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in 1966, Bangalore’s National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in 1988 and the Sir Dorabji Tata Centre for Research in Tropical Diseases in 1999.

SDTT set up TMH in 1941 with a capital grant of Rs31 lakh in memory of Sir Dorabji’s beloved wife, Meherbai, who died of leukaemia. The trust had donated Rs1 crore to the hospital by 1957, when it was gifted to the nation. It is currently financed by the Atomic Energy Commission.

India’s first and leading hospital for treatment and research into cancer, TMH has also helped to start the Meherbai Tata Memorial Hospital in Jamshedpur — the premier cancer research and treatment centre in eastern India — as well as the cancer hospital in Barsi, Solapur, India’s first rural cancer project, and the Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer at Navi Mumbai, which is one of the world’s first universities devoted to education, research and treatment of cancer. Sir Dorabji also endowed the Lady Tata Memorial Trust with a corpus of Rs25 lakh for research into leukaemia

Educational institutions like Bombay University, SNDT Women’s University, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, and the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, have received grants from the SDTT. So have literary and cultural organisations like the Asiatic Society, Bombay, the Tagore Society, Jamshedpur, and the Indian Council of World Affairs, Bombay branch. In 1934, Dr Rabindranath Tagore also received a modest grant for Shantiniketan.

The trust also contributed generously to the creation of the Family Planning Foundation in New Delhi, a cause close to JRD Tata’s heart and one in whose founding he was deeply involved. One of SDTT’s important contributions has been its relief and rescue efforts in times of natural disasters like earthquakes and floods. It has teamed with Tata companies to form the Tata Relief Committee, a permanent body to aid the distress-hit. In recent years, one of the trust’s priority areas has been sustainable development, which it supports through organisations working in the areas of promoting livelihood, management of natural resources, health and other areas impacting social development.

Much more than charity
The Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT), named after Jamsetji’s second son, was established in 1919. Sir Ratan Tata’s will had specified that his wealth must be used to fund basic and advanced education, primary and preventive health, rural livelihood and communities, art and culture and public initiatives. Today, the fund’s priority is projects based in rural India, especially those that promote the advancement of women and children.

Earlier, in 1912, Sir Ratan Tata initiated an annual grant at the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE) for research into the causes of poverty and the means of its alleviation. This grant was used to fund the LSE’s Department of Social Sciences.

Other trusts have been set up to support different issues. The Jamsetji Tata Trust bestows grants for innovative efforts. The JRD and Thelma J Tata Trust works to uplift women and children. The JRD Tata Trust supports learning by offering institutional donations, research grants and scholarships. Other trusts such as the RD Tata Trust, the Tata Social Welfare Trust and the Tata Education Trust also fund social development activities. The Lady Meherbai D Tata Education Trust helps women graduates to study social work abroad. Lady Meherbai campaigned for higher education for women and against the purdah system and untouchability. She also spoke in favour of more women entering the legislature.

Concern for the people
The Tatas were pioneers in labour welfare. In the 1880s Jamsetji introduced unheard of welfare facilities in his Empress Mills at Nagpur. These facilities included shorter working hours, well-ventilated workplaces, and provident fund and gratuity. Under Sir Dorabji’s chairmanship, the Tata Iron and Steel Company, Jamshedpur, worked an eight-hour day at a time when it was not legally enforced even in England.

The concern was not restricted to the workplace. Jamshedpur, the city envisioned by Jamsetji, is a model city, offering a standard of living to outclass that of other Indian cities. In a letter to his son Dorab in 1902, five years before the site for the city was selected, Jamsetji wrote, “Be sure to lay wide streets planted with shady trees, every other of a quick-growing variety. Be sure that there is plenty of space for lawns and gardens. Reserve large areas for football, hockey and parks. Earmark areas for Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques and Christian churches.” Today Tata Steel continues to maintain the city with the same high standards.

Nurturing talent
In consonance with Jamsetji Tata’s belief that it is nurturing the best and most gifted members that advances the whole nation, the Tata Group has consistently fostered outstanding talent. Two names that stand out: Dr Jamshed Bhabha and Dr Homi Bhabha.

Having spent five years at the IISc, Dr Homi Bhabha — the architect of nuclear science in modern India — realised the lasting benefits that India could reap from “creating a school of physics comparable to the best anywhere in the world”. He wrote to JRD Tata and his request for facilities to achieve this dream was granted. Generous grants from the SDTT and the governments of Bombay and India helped establish the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR) in 1945.

When Dr Jamshed Bhabha, a Tata director and SDTT trustee, proposed the idea of a National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), JRD backed the proposal saying that “We do not want to be merely a materialistic consumer society”. The SDTT gave Rs40 lakh, while the SRTT and other Tata companies took the Group contribution to Rs2 crore, and the NCPA came to life in 1966. Dr Bhabha wanted the NCPA to “maintain the continuity of the great teachers of Indian music, dance and drama and record and preserve the finest performances in these arts,” a role it has more than fulfilled.

The SDTT also sponsored the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, for research in humanities and social sciences, which was inaugurated in 1991. Later, it gave Dr M S Swaminathan a grant of
Rs1.85 crore to start the JRD Tata Ecotechnology Centre in Chennai. Other Tata trusts offered a further Rs1 crore to fund the cost of construction.

The idea for Bangalore’s Sir Dorabji Tata Centre for Tropical and Emerging Tropical Diseases was born in 1912, when Sir Dorabji proposed to the director of IISc a sum as large as the one his father had given to start the institute, to start a school for tropical diseases. Eventually, the SDTT sanctioned Rs5 crore for the school. In 1936 Sir Nowroji Saklatvala, the then chairman of Tata Sons, encouraged social worker Clifford Manshardt to start the Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work, renamed the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in 1944. The work of TISS came to the fore with the launch of the First Five Year Plan, which created a demand for social workers, especially in rural areas. It was also the fertile ground where the first institute for population studies in the developing world was born.

A good sport
The Group’s love for sports had early beginnings. In 1919, even before India had set up an Olympic Committee, Sir Dorabji Tata took the initiative to select and finance four athletes and two wrestlers for participation in the Antwerp Games in 1920. He was chosen as a member of the International Olympic Committee. As president of the Indian Olympic Council, he financed the Indian contingent to the Paris Olympiad of 1924. His dedication enabled India struggling under foreign rule to understand the importance of asserting a national identity through sports, even before the nation was born.

He scoured the country for sports talent and helped to found the Willingdon Sports Club and the Parsi Gymkhana in Bombay, the High Schools Athletic Association, and the Bombay Presidency Olympic Games Association. His earnest efforts led to India winning the gold medal for hockey in the 1928 Olympics at Amsterdam. Naval Tata also possessed the Tata zeal for sports. For 17 years, he served as the president of the Bombay Provincial Hockey Association and was president of the Indian Hockey Federation for 15 years.

Winning ways
Over the years, the Group has supported games like hockey, football, cycling, athletics, cricket, swimming, boxing and even chess, billiards and mountaineering. Its efforts have yielded 41 Arjuna awardees, 36 Asian Games winners, 33 Asian Championship winners, 11 Padma Shrees, 1 Padma Bhushan, three Dronacharya awardees, six World Championship winners, four Commonwealth Games winners, six Commonwealth Championship winners and five Olympic Games winners, out of the numerous participants it has supported.

Apart from liberal sports scholarships and grants, the Group has offered hundreds of sportsmen and sportswomen secure employment, with the freedom and opportunity to practice the sport.

It has also established numerous sports academies. The Tata Sports Club, set up in 1937, promotes a wide range of sports including athletics, cricket, badminton, carom and bridge. The Tata Football Academy, the Tata Archery Academy and the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation give students access to the best training facilities and the most experienced coaches.

Tata Steel has created the infrastructure for the training and promotion of a number of sports. The JRD Tata Sports Complex has a seating capacity of 40,000 and provides facilities for numerous sporting activities.

The sports department of Tata Steel has also organised sports for the physically challenged and set up the Tata Steel Sports Foundation. It sponsored the Indian contingent for the Special Olympics held in Dublin, Ireland, in 2003 where three participants from Jamshedpur
won medals.

Art for art’s sake
Culture was another area where the Tata Group left an enduring mark. Sir Dorabji endowed a Chair of Sanskrit at the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute. He also bequeathed his collection of paintings, statuary and other priceless art objects to the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai where it is displayed as the Sir Dorabji Tata collection. Sir Ratan too had earlier donated his art collection to the same museum.

In 1946, the Tata Group created Marg, an illustrated magazine, to showcase the classical and contemporary arts of Asia, with special emphasis on India. The Group also published wall calendars with modern art as a theme to give a boost to modern Indian art. Naval Tata, Dr Homi Bhabha and other Tata stalwarts patronised the talented artists of their time. TIFR and the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai built up great art collections, which are on display at their properties.

Titans of trusteeship
From the days of its founder, the Group has always acted as a custodian of its wealth, using it to enrich the people of the nation. Jayaprakash Narayan explained his concept of trusteeship: “Under it, all wealth is a social trust and every individual — the employer, the engineer or even the ordinary mistry — is a trustee, entitled to its proper utilisation for the common good. True to the ideals of its founder, the House of Tata has always promoted the concept.”

As India completes 60 years of independence, Jamsetji Tata would have been glad to note that the Group he founded has always held the interests of its land and its people close to its heart.

Uploaded in November, 2007