Beyond the last blue mountain by Lala R M

Author:Lala, R M [Lala, R M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: GAPPAA.ORG
Published: 2015-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

Part III

CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY

Chapter I

Chairman

‘As a schoolboy,’ says J.R.D., ‘when I was watching games of polo being played in Pune, I was hoping one day I too would play polo. On another day I wanted to be a good tennis player or a motor racing driver—all those ordinary urges of young people who want to do something with their personal lives. So really there is nothing that I did or showed signs of doing until I was suddenly put in a position where I was on test and testing myself. From 1926 to 1938 I considered myself really on test.’

Even so Sir Nowroji’s death in July 1938 was a shock to J.R.D.: ‘You know, we never think that people are going to die tomorrow. I thought Sir Nowroji would go on for at least five years more for he was not very old.’

J.R.D. is fond of saying that his co-Directors appointed him Chairman of the Board of Tata Sons, ‘in a moment of mental aberration.’ I’ve questioned him three times about the decision to appoint him Chairman and he’s given me a different answer every time. The first time he replied, ‘Maybe they found I was hard working.’ On a second occasion he said, ‘I was appointed Chairman probably because I was the only surviving Director of Tatas (other than Lady Tata) who was permanent under the firm’s constitution, and I presume I had made some mark on them. I did not have a high opinion of myself then nor do I even now, except that I am now recognised.’ On a third occasion he replied, ‘Perhaps they preferred me to Sorabji Saklatvala (Jamsetji’s nephew) who was old and not too bright.’

How did the other Directors, all senior to him, react to working under a young man? J.R.D. was to learn later that the only one sceptical of his abilities to be a suitable Chairman was Ardeshir Dalal, though Dalal had seconded the proposal to appoint him Chairman.

The first Indian to be Municipal Commissioner of Bombay, Dalal was a cold, austere figure, feared rather than loved. Dalal felt that J.R.D. had become Chairman purely by virtue of his being a member of the Tata family. ‘He thought I would be a non-working young man, sort of a playboy liking his racing cars and aeroplanes but he found that I was working as hard as anybody else. About a year after my becoming Chairman he made some remarks that were repeated to me. He had admitted to a friend he was wrong in his assessment of me.’

In 1938, when he was appointed Chairman of the largest industrial conglomerate of industries of India, the tradition round the world was that seniority counted in the selection of top posts. The Kennedy era, when bright young men would hold high office, was still far away. So J.R.D. had no real precedent to follow. In any event the Tata empire was unique to India and J.R.D. needed to figure out how he would run an empire of steel, aviation, electric power, insurance, cement, oil and soaps and textiles.

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