By Rajat Subhra Chatterjee
0080
“ Pluck this little flower
And take it, delay not !
I fear, lest it droop and drop
Into the dust.
It may not find a place
In thy garland
But honour it with a touch of pain
From thy hand. “ – Tagore
Certainly Tagore had not scribbled these lines with Ratan Tata in mind. But today, when one of the brightest stars from the blue sky has just been missing, making a huge vacuum even in the endless sky, the lines seem to be so appropriate.
An Industrialist and a Gentleman that was Ratan Tata who had been a huge Philanthropist. His life can not be evaluated by the honours he had been conferred with. An Alma Mater of Cornell University ( BAcrh ), the late Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons and Tata Group, was honoured by the Govt. of India with Padmabibhusan, And not with Bharat Ratna, which he so richly deserved. If Ratan Tata did not get a Bharat Ratna, others are pee nuts compared to him.
Ratan Tata started working at Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO), now known as Tata Steel, as a technical officer in the engineering division in his initial years. From there, his rise like a phoenix with most significant contribution to Industry in particular and to the entire humanity in general, has hardly any peer in the country.
Philanthropy:
Ratan Tata’s contribution to philanthropic Endeavour has had no limits. He established the Tata Institute for Genetics and Society (TIGS), which is housed in Tata Hall which is located in the northeast corner of the Harvard Business School’s campus, and is devoted to the mid-career executive education program. It is seven stories tall, and about 155,000 gross square feet. It houses approximately 180 bedrooms, in addition to academic and multi-purpose spaces.
The executive center is named as TATA Hall. The Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech is named after Ratan Tata, where academics and industry gets mixed in a building on the Roosevelt Island campus. The seven-floor structure is meant primarily as a business incubator for students, faculty, and staff. TCS is also housed in this building. In 2014, Tata Group endowed the Indian Institute of Technology , Bombay and formed the Tata Center for Technology and Design (TCTD). He also formed the MIT Tata Center of Technology and Design at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a mission to address the challenges of resource-constrained communities, with an initial focus on India.
Tata Trusts under the chairmanship of Ratan Tata provided a grant of ₹750 million to the Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science to study mechanisms underlying the cause of Alzheimer’s disease and to evolve methods for its early diagnosis and treatment. This grant was to be spread over 5 years starting in 2014.
The Tata Group’s entry into health care traces its roots way before the era of Ratan Tata to the 1941 establishment of Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) in Mumbai. But it was under the umbrella of Ratan Tata that the hospital emerged as one of the best centers for cancer treatment and research in the country. His involvement was not only financial but personal as well, interested in developing the capacity and capabilities of the hospital so that it can serve patients from all over India, particularly the deprived ones.
Memoirs:
Yours truly has had the unique opportunity to meet and briefly interact with two of TATA’s Grand Dadies. During early nineties, one morning I was entering the TISCO Jamshedpur plant and in came Russi Modi’s car. He alighted from the car and picked up a cycle specially kept for him and went inside the plant. It was his way and style of supervising the entire plant and used to interact with workers. It is astonishing to know that Russi used to know most of the workers by their first names.
In late nineties, my company was engaged in TISCO for the foundation work of one of the blast furnaces, On a hot mid afternoon, I was standing little away from the main site with a soft cap on and my helmet was held in hand. Suddenly I got a feather touch tap on my shoulder and turning around found Mr. Ratan Tata was standing. Smilingly he uttered, – Son, I know it is too hot standing with the helmet on, but the rule is be safe and save others. I was speechless and felt ashamed being the HR Head of the company. Mr. Tata did not say another word and was gone. I saw him only one more time. I was entering Bombay House, HQ of Tata Sons. His car came just then. He stepped out and went slowly towards his exclusive elevator and was gone out of my sight.
That was Ratan Tata. It is now very tough to say TATA to such a RATAN.
RIP.
Concluded.
