A look inside the life of a legend
The Asian Age — May 11, 2005

In the March of 1963, the city of Jamshedpur (then in Bihar; now part of Jharkhand) was consumed by communal flames. Scores of people were killed or maimed. It wasn't the first time Jamshedpur, named after Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, the founder of the House of Tata, became a battleground for religious passions. And it wouldn't be the last.

But even as the Indian Army was bringing the law and order situation in the city under control, a slim, white safari-suit clad gentleman, who could have been somebody's favourite uncle, was making the rounds of the Tata General Hospital, dispensing words of sympathy here and placing a warm hand on the forehead of a riot victim there. Those were small gestures, but an entire city quickly overcame the bitterness generated by the riots because J.R.D. Tata had said everything would be all right.

And it had no reason to disbelieve his words because J.R.D. was seen as a man who kept his word. Cut to the late Sixties, when a certain young man by the name of Ratan Neville Tata, a nephew of J.R.D., joined Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company (renamed Tata Motors in July 2003) as a management trainee. Everyone in the company knew who Ratan Tata was. They also knew that he was on the fast-track and would one day be boss of India's largest truck manufacturer.

But it seems J.R.D. insisted that Ratan Tata live in the same simple but clean quarters given to other management trainees. There would be no special treatment for J.R.D.'s nephew. A whole bunch of books have been written about the House of Tata, a $13-billion conglomerate. Of these, some have been about Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata, the gentleman who looked like a Hollywood actor but was a man of steel who steered the Tata group for more than 50 years, from 1938 until his death in 1991.

Not many of these books mention J.R.D.'s ability to empathise with people less fortunate than himself, especially those living and working for various.Tata group companies in Jamshedpur. Jeh A Life of J.R.D. Tata is the latest offering on the life and times of J.R.D., written by Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy, a Mumbai-based civil servant. While the foundation for the Tata group was laid by J.N. Tata with the setting up of Tata Iron and Steel Company Ltd (now Tata Steel), it was J.R.D. who put the group on the road to growth through expansion and diversification, and, more importantly, the need for India to be self-sufficient in industry.

It was J.R.D. who founded Tata Motors in 1945. "J.R.D. felt that the Tatas were competent to establish an engineering complex of a kind not available in the country. The company was promoted to manufacture heavy engineering equipment, apart from truck bodies and locomotives," writes Dadabhoy. Possibly, his most important contribution was to civil aviation, when he launched Air-India International in 1948. In fact, Air-India International was the first airline from Asia to operate a flight to London.

Apart from expanding his business empire and in the process creating thousands of jobs, Dadabhoy writes, J.R.D. was also instrumental in setting up several world-class research institutions. J.R.D. was instrumental in the setting up of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Tata Energy Research Institute, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and the National Centre for the Performing Arts.

J.R.D. had frequent run-ins with the government, which dropped him as chairman of both Air-India and Indian Airlines a month after Air-India's first Boeing 747, Emperor Ashoka, crashed into the sea off the coast of Mumbai in 1978. "This act.. had the blessings of Prime Minister Morarji Desai. The pettiness of the decision was rivalled only by the utterly disgraceful way in which it was conveyed to the outgoing chairman. J.R.D. came to know about it only when the new chairman, Air Marshal P.C. Lai rang him up and told him about it.

J.R.D. was re-appointed to the board of Air-India in June 1980 after Indira Gandhi returned to power, but was again dropped in 1982, and re-appointed later that year." There is nothing in Dadabhoy' s book that has not been written earlier. In fact, Dadabhoy freely concedes that a lot- of the material in his book is from R.M. Lala, the official biographer of J.R.D. Tata and the Tata group.