The Grave Challenges that Tatas Faced

 

The House of Tatas is known as a salt-to-silware conglomerate. Its listed companies have a market cap of more than 300 billion USD. Its group companies are leading players in jewellery retail, commercial vehicles, cars, steel, airlines, airconditioners, hotels, packaged consumer products like tea and salt, chemicals, coffee chains, housing, lending solutions, tea, e-health, e-grocery retailing and more. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is a behemoth and is the largest IT services company in India. 

The list of businesses the Tatas run is very long.

More important, it is one of the business groups that has lasted for more than a hundred years. It is still thriving. It has an excellent reputation and the brand generates a certain amount of trust.

The stories of its philanthropy are known and so are its pioneering ventures into airlines, steel or luxury hotels(Taj, Mumbai). Less known are the challenges it faced in its early stages where it may not have survived.

This is the fascinating bit about businesses where entrepreneurs take risks and survive. Overcoming these life-threatening risks typically is a turning point. The entrepreneurs learn from these events and rework the business model.

The group was founded by Jamshedji Nuserwanji Tata in Mumbai. He set up a trading company and earned a lot of money during the American Civil War. But when the collapse of the American economy happened in 1865, the firm made huge losses. Jamshedji had to honour heavy debts and had to sell his house in Fort, Mumbai to meet his obligations.

Jamshedji's son Sir Dorab took over in 1904. The Tata Steel Company was set up in 1907 and started manufacturing in 1911. But in 1924 it was on the verge of closing down and Sir Dorab had to get a loan of INR 10 million from the Imperial Bank of India to establish a public limited company. To do this Sir Dorab had to pledge his entire personal fortune( INR 10 million) and his wife's jewellery. 

The highly risky decisions at these pivotal moments are what makes the journey so interesting.

 

We the Leaders: My foray into writing a book

 

Leadership is a fascinating subject. Partly because it is part of our everyday usage but it is not easy to explain it, partly because it has so many facets. This is one of the most written about topics in management literature. Academics, top global CEOs. Journalists - everyone had a stab at it.  

I was also transfixed by the idea of understanding it. I still am. The world has seen the leadership of Gandhi, also of Churchill; Jobs, and also of Eric Schmidt. Their styles within even a narrow domain of human endeavour could not be more different.

Who is a leader? What is leadership? How do you become a leader? How much more effective can you be by becoming a good leader? Is it action or is it inspiration? Is leadership contingent or does it have permanent values? What role does culture play in leadership style? Is a Japanese leader different from a British one? Can you transfer leadership skills from a monastery to a commercial organisation?

The leadership puzzle has countless questions. My book, published as an introduction to leadership drew from my experience as a leader of a commercial entity and my readings. 

I thought it would be more appealing to have a short book but the regret I have now is I should have put more on each topic.

But then there is always a tomorrow.

( The book is available on Amazon)

The Divergent Paths of India and Pakistan

 It has been 75 years since both the countries became independent. Pakistan was carved out of British India in 1947. It consisted of East and West Pakistan. In 1971, East Pakistan separated and became Bangladesh.

Pakistan and India today stand at two very different points in their trajectories and it is interesting to see which points of departure triggered these diverse paths.

The most critical difference right at birth was the way the core identity was defined. India decided to be a secular republic whereas Pakistan decided to become an Islamic country. This meant religion was to be given primacy in the formulation of any policy. Many parts of religion are incompatible with modern democratic values and Pakistan like any other country has not been able to resolve these conflicts. This became more of a problem after the Islamic radicalisation process started by Zia Ul Haque. 

Gandhi died in January 1948. Patel died in 1950. But from the top echelons of Congress, a stellar set of leaders from Nehru, Maulana Azad, and Rajgopalchari were there to see the country through the initial tumultuous years. Nehru continued till 1964 and gave a sound democratic framework and built several institutions in the fledgeling republic. In Pakistan, Jinnah was ailing and died in 1948. The first Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan was shot dead in 1951. After that, the political leaders did not have that stature and the first decade after independence witnessed a lot of turbulence ending with military rule.   

The Indian founding fathers were foresighted enough to calibrate the power of armed forces. The army retained its stranglehold over power in Pakistan and over time this has led to several military coups and regimes disrupting the democratic fabric.

The basic ethos of the Indian constitution was diversity. It tried to accommodate languages, religions, and cultures. The Pakistan establishment dominated by the Urdu-speaking West Pakistan elites tried to impose their language and culture on the very different Bengali East Pakistan. This led to resentment finally culminating in the liberation of Bangladesh. This weakened the country significantly not only militarily and strategically but also psychologically. The country could not then recover from a vicious cycle of events after that. 

Today India has one of the largest economies in the world, a vaunted technological workforce, and macroeconomic stability. Pakistan is still struggling with debt and supplying basic amenities like electricity and water.

It is sad but shows how history can be cruel if people are not alert and allow their leaders to choose self-aggrandising paths over progressive thinking. 

 

The Nature of Power

 

There is a popular saying that goes like this: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

A quick run through the 20th century's violence is enough to prove that. 

Hitler died in April 1945. The allied forces had captured Germany, and a few embattled Japanese regiments were waging a feeble war. The conclusion was foretold. Yet the US establishment decided to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This killed and wounded 250 thousands people forever. These were not forces fighting the war - they were innocent people who had no direct role in the war. 

General Franco killed thousands of Spaniards who opposed him. Stalin sent millions to Siberia and got many eliminated. The Pol Pot regime in Cambodia killed fellow citizens.Many Chinese lost their lives in the Cultural Revolution.

Most of us meet many types of human beings including political leaders and it is truly impossible to find someone at a personal level who wants to indulge in genocide. But the same leaders become power-hungry and do not mind ordering mass eliminations.

It is only power and nothing else that transforms ordinary people into cruel despots. It changes their psyche. They rationalise all their inhuman actions with glib explanations. They distance their real selves from the tragedy that their actions bring. They lose their soul. Power is the evil that captures their humanity.