JAMSHEDPUR | TATA STEEL | JAMSETJI TATA | INDIA

JAMSHEDPUR | TATA STEEL | JAMSETJI  TATA | INDIA

                                                             

Why.. Tata Steel?

A wall of self-sufficiency against a sea of under development,

the Tata Iron and Steel Company was conceived by Jamsetji Tata to put his country on the industrial map of the world. The conception naturally became a symbol of the Swadeshi movement. In the 60 years of its history Tata Steel has accomplished much of which it can be proud. In some respects it could have done better. Today it faces a new challenge which it must meet, remembering always its role of pathfinder, its fundamental objective to serve the cause of India's industrial resurgence.

Why. Tata Steel?

J. R. D. Tata

JAMSETJI TATA alone in his time understood the full significance and potentialities of the industrial revolution that was taking place in the West. Where others thought exclusively in terms of political action, he realised that freedom, without the economic strength to support and defend it would be a cruel delusion and that the strength to defend freedom could only come from economic development .

So extraordinarily advanced were the ideas of  Jamsetji Tata  that it was hard to believe that he was born 125 years ago.

Despite the vast changes that have taken place since then, his ideas and industrial philosophy remain today as fresh and vital as they were to him in his time. Jamsetji dreamt of an industrialised and prosperous India and, under conditions which would have appalled and discouraged a lesser man, he set out to breathe life into his dreams.

The Tata Iron and Steel Company was conceived by Jamsetji Tata to put India on the world's industrial map. Twenty-nine years after Jamsetji discussed this project in London with a member of the then-British Government, this same member. Lord George Hamilton, wrote the following to Sir Dorabji Tata: "If you can establish a reliable steel industry, you will revolutionise the industrial conditions in India." He continued : "So soon as they (the investors) can obtain a satisfactory return from industrial enterprises which, in their initiative, development and production, are entirely Indian, there will be a general inducement to embark on other forms of industrial production Wages will rise and the whole material condition of the population will improve."

In September 1907, 8000 Indians, contributing until then the largest amount ever subscribed for an industrial undertaking, began to implement this forecast. For twenty years and more they got no dividends. Addressing shareholders on June 4, 1925. RD Tata, my father, had to say:

                       

"We are like men building a wall against the sea. It would be the height of folly on our part to give away any part of the cement that is required to make the wall secure for all time. And we should not think of dividends until we have done that .....But make no mistake about this point. We hold this money in trust for you. But you yourselves hold it in trust for the Indian nation."

The point was well taken. The wall was built, true and strong. In 1967, once again the seas of economic stress were piling up.

I explained to shareholders at the Annual General Meeting the extent of the unrest in East India, the depth of the current recession. Not only did the shareholders take all this in their stride, but there were demands that the Company suitably celebrate this, its Diamond Jubilee, by donating to the city of its birth an auditorium named after Jamsetji Tata.

Insight:

         

        Sixty years have passed since the earth was turned in Bihar to prepare for what is even today one of the largest steel producers in South Asia. In the pages of this Jubilee Souvenir, the reader will get an insight into these decades the tremendous struggle they represent the failures, disappointments, mistakes, successes and triumphs of an army of people foreign and Indian. The army was supported not only by investors but also by national leaders for the Steel Company became part and a symbol of the Swadeshi movement. This was inevitable, perhaps, for Jamsetji Tata conceived the enterprise as a pre-condition for the country's massive industriali sation. From this central concept flowed many other benefits.

Welfare:

         If the world's foremost steel consultants were harnessed to design the plant, it seemed appropriate also to rope in its foremost welfare consultants to plan the services of a steel city of wide tree-lined boulevards, parks, gardens and recreation centres, places of worship, clean, airy, well-lit houses. And so it came about in 1916, even when much of industrial England was a slum, that Sidney Webb was writing a memorandum on "The Medical Service in the Welfare Work at Sakchi” while his wife, Beatrice, contributed another on "Co-operative Stores. Benefit Funds and Thrift Agencies." 

From this followed a Committee headed by Mr. Webb, which sent to Sakshi professors of the London University to help plan welfare services whose execution was taken up by such eminent Indian social workers as Thakkar Bapa. Fifty years later, in January 1967 to be Precise, comment on this work was made by another great Indian Social worker. Mr. Jayaprakash Narayan who, during a visit to Sakchi-by then Jamshedpur said: "More than anything else, the concept of trusteeship fostered by Mahatma Gandhi receives much-needed fillip in Tata Enterprises," Mr. Narayan asked : "After all, 

what is this 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 also promoted this concept of trusteeship and today more than 85% of its profits go to trusts."

Trusteeship:                           

        A logical extension of the concept of trusteeship is the Company's recognition of its duty towards the community at large.

The states of Bihar and Orissa have been afflicted repeatedly by floods and drought. Apart from mobilising resources to meet these natural calamities, the Steel Company in co-operation with other Tata Companies in Jamshedpur and the Tata Trusts have been following a policy of organising both immediate and long-term relief.

The Jamshedpur community has been helped to take the initiative in family planning long before this became a matter of state policy. Eight family planning centres and two modern family planning clinics are available to all its residents. Contraceptives and oral tablets are freely distributed at these centres and the Steel Company has encouraged intensive house-to-house propaganda to popularise family planning.