By AK Srivastava
J.R.D. Tata was born on 29 July 1904 to an Indian Parsi family in Paris. As his mother was French, he spent much of his childhood in France, and as a result, French was his first language. Tata received his education in London, Japan, France, and India. When his father joined the Tata company, he moved the entire family to London. During this time, J.R.D.’s mother died at the age of 43 while his father was in India, and his family was in France. After his mother’s death, Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata decided to relocate his family to India and sent J.R.D. to England for higher studies in October 1923.
Upon joining the French Army, J.R.D. Tata was assigned to a regiment of spahis. He impressed a colonel with his ability to read, write, and type in both French and English, leading to his assignment as a secretary in the colonel’s office. After serving in the French Army, his father decided to bring him back to India, where he eventually joined the Tata Company. In 1929, Tata renounced his French citizenship and became an Indian citizen. In 1930, he married Thelma Vicaji, the niece of Jack Vicaji, a colorful lawyer. Although he was born to a Parsi father and his French mother converted to Zoroastrianism, J.R.D. Tata identified as agnostic. He found some Parsi religious customs, like their funeral rites and exclusiveness, irksome. Nevertheless, he adhered to the three basic tenets of Zoroastrianism: good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, without professing belief or disbelief in God.
On 10 February 1929, Tata obtained the first pilot’s license issued in India and founded India’s first commercial airline, Tata Airlines, in 1932. This achievement made him one of the first Indians to be granted a commercial license. In the same year, Tata Aviation Service, the forerunner to Tata Airlines and Air India, took its first flight. In a de Havilland Puss Moth, he flew the first commercial mail flight to Juhu.
J.R.D. nurtured his airline venture until 1953 when the government of Jawaharlal Nehru nationalized Air India. He joined Tata Sons as an unpaid apprentice in 1925. In 1938, at the age of 34, Tata was elected Chairman of Tata Sons, making him the head of the largest industrial group in India. He succeeded his second cousin, Nowroji Saklatwala, in this role. For decades, he directed the huge Tata Group of companies, with major interests in steel, engineering, power, chemicals, and hospitality. He was renowned for his business success while upholding high ethical standards, refusing to bribe politicians or engage in black market dealings.
He served as a trustee of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust from its inception in 1932 for over half a century. Under his guidance, the Trust established Asia’s first cancer facility, the Tata Memorial Centre for Cancer Research and Treatment in Bombay in 1941. He also founded the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS, 1936), the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR, 1945), and the National Center for Performing Arts.
Tata cared greatly for his workers and, in 1956, initiated a program of closer ’employee association with management’ to give workers a stronger voice in the company’s affairs. He firmly believed in employee welfare and espoused the principles of an eight-hour working day, free medical aid, workers’ provident scheme, and workmen’s accident compensation schemes, which later became statutory requirements in India.
He was also a founding member of the first Governing Body of NCAER, the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi, India’s first independent economic policy institute, established in 1956. In 1968, he founded Tata Consultancy Services as Tata Computer Centre. In 1979, Tata Steel instituted a new practice: a worker being deemed to be “at work” from the moment he leaves home for work until he returns home from work, making the company financially liable to the worker for any mishap on the way to and from work. In 1987, he founded Titan Industries. Jamshedpur was also selected as a UN Global Compact City due to the quality of life, sanitation conditions, roads, and welfare provided by Tata Steel.
Tata received several awards, including the Padma Vibhushan in 1955. The French Legion of Honour was bestowed upon him in 1983. In 1992, for his selfless humanitarian endeavors, Tata was awarded India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna. In the same year, he also received the United Nations Population Award for his crusading efforts towards initiating and successfully implementing the family planning movement in India.
Tata died in Geneva, Switzerland, on 29 November 1993, at the age of 89, due to a kidney infection. A few days before his passing, he said: “Comme c’est doux de mourir” (“How gentle it is to die”). Upon his death, the Indian Parliament adjourned in his memory, an honor not usually given to individuals who are not members of parliament. He was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
(Author is President of Jamshedpur Citizen Forum. The views expressed are personal.)
