3^rd March 2001. Jamshetji Tata would have been 163 today. On the birth anniversary of the founding father of India's first family in industry, a monument to his vision was unveiled - the 2,000-square-metre Tata Central archives on the sprawling campus of the Tata Management Training Centre in Pune, "Jamsetji was to the Indian industrial scene what Bapuji was to politics," says Tata Services managing director T.R. Doongaji.

A Tata group veteran, Doongaji, proudly sporting a silver medal awarded to him for 25 years' service and looking forward to a gold medal when he completes 35, admits he is just a tad biased: "My soul is in tune with the house of Tata," he says. His comparison with the Mahatma apart, the association with Gandhi is reflected in dozens of documents, photographs and other material in the archives. The other giants of India's freedom movement - Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru, Subash Chandra Bose, Rajendra Prasad, and Dadabhai Naoroji - are also there.

President K. R. Narayanan also finds a place: as one of the beneficiaries of the J.N. Tata endowment, initiated in 1892 to send students abroad for higher education. Narayanan's career, from the loan-cum-gift to the young journalist through his "satisfactory", "very satisfactory", and "excellent" academic reports at the London School of Economics to his career in the Indian Foreign Service, is all recorded. The last entry in the two-page ledger extract is a note expressing the Trust's pride in his appointment to the highest post in the country. First mooted by J.R.D. Tata when Tata Airlines was nationalised, the archives sadly lack detailed records of this venture. Everything from 1932, when it was set up, until its nationalisation in 1953, has disappeared, except what was in JRD's personal files. The plan was revived in 1980 by R.M. Lala, after the centenary celebrations of Jamsetji's first venture, the Empress Mills in Nagpur, which he set up in 1877. Eventually launched by JRD at a function in January 1991, it has taken another decade of painstaking work to fructify.

Each of the 80 firms in the group contributed: Tata Steel, India's largest private steelmaker; the comparatively low-profile Tata Chemicals, India's biggest soda-ash maker; the Taj group of hotels; Tata Consultancy Services, Asia's largest software exporter; and Titan, the sixth largest watch brand in the world. "Every company has an inspiring story behind it," Doongaji points out. The Taj chain was set up because Jamsetji wanted luxury hotels that did not discriminate among its guests, unlike some British establishments that had signs saying "Indians and dogs not allowed". And when told only Birmingham had the right climate for a cotton mill, he said, "Then we must import the weather!" Thus was born the humidifier, now standard equipment in textile mills. The archives also house memorabilia such as paintings, awards, medals, citations, video and audio clips. Other exhibits include chairs used by Jamsetji and JRDs Mumbai office room, replicated to the last detail at group chairman Ratan Tata's instance.

JRD himself is immortalised in a unique photograph taken after his historic pioneering flight from Karachi to Bombay's Juhu airport on 15 October 1932. Come 29 July, J.R.D. Tatas's birth anniversary, he will have his own day at the archives: an exhibition of his life and achievements. Explains Doongaji, who was also JRD's executive assistant: "The theme will keep changing to highlight moments of Tata history at different periods." Things are pretty fluid: it's an uncharted sea, he says, as this is the first time a major Indian corporate house is doing something like this.