Driving TATA out of Bengal: A historic blunder

While some powerful people of the current regime in Bengal were take pride of doing TA-TA to TATA I was wondering who is the actual looser in this game and what the side effects of such a mis adventure are. I am also critical of the earlier regime because the Singur mess occurred primarily due to their faulty land policy. The State Govt. should have a land policy like Gujarat which is proven to be highly successful and well appreciated.

 Let us go through some Fact Sheet. Tata Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate which has operations in more than 80 countries across six continents. Tata Group has over 100 operating companies with each of them operating independently. Out of them 32 are publicly listed. The major Tata companies are Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Tata Power, Tata Chemicals, Tata Global Beverages, Tata Teleservices, Titan Industries, Tata Communications and Taj Hotels. The combined market capitalization of all the 32 listed Tata companies was INR 8.2 Trillion ($ 103.27 billion) as of July 2014. Tata receives more than 58% of its revenue from outside India. The Tata Group and its companies & enterprises is perceived to be India's best-known global brand within and outside the country as per an ASSOCHAM survey. The 2009, annual survey by the Reputation Institute ranked Tata Group as the 11th most reputable company in the world. The survey included 600 global companies. The Tata Group has helped establish and finance numerous quality researches, educational and cultural institutes in India. The group was awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in 2007 in recognition of its long history of philanthropic activities.

Now let us compare Tata’s annual turnover with Bengal’s net state domestic product (NSDP) which is 3.6 Trillion Indian rupees. Tata’s annual turnover of INR 8.2 Trillion is about double of Bengal’s NSDP of INR 3.6 Trillion. We should not also forget the state's total financial debt stood at INR 1.92 trillion (US$32 billion) as of 2011.

TATA is the pride for Brand India and the main pillar for the mission of ‘Made in India’. It has also acquired many foreign companies like Jaguar-Land Rover and Corus to name a few. Tata is also UK's largest private sector employer. To understand how big TATA brand is let me share my own experience that I had in London in 2002. I was working with one UK based IT company and was posted in the country side of Wales. During one long weekend I was visiting London with my wife. I was in search of a value for money Bread and Breakfast hotel accommodation in London. I zeroed in one hotel where the owner asked about my profession. I told that I work in Software – he was not very well versed so I had to tell I work in Computer. He responded ‘’ Do you work for TATA?’’.  It took few seconds for me understood he was referring TCS.  Without further confusing him I lied him and said yes I work for TATA and got the accommodation instantly. TATA has played the instrumental role for India’s IT revolution and later on Wipro, Infosys and others added value to that. After seeing TATA’s onshore-offshore software delivery success story  IBM, Accenture, HP, Microsoft, Google, American Express, RBS and any NCs got attracted to Indian IT talent pool and set up large development centres in India.  

It is common sense that if we could have had a cordial relationship with TATA, Bengal definitely would have got many more investment than of today. TATA would have brought more Industry in Bengal and many other Industry houses would have also invested in Bengal. Unfortunately we have not done that and now looking at Singapore. BTW geographical size wise Singapore is almost same as Calcutta.

Didi went to Singapore with her blue eyed boys including her favourite movie star Paglu but no logical person is expecting any wonder from her visit. Now think about this hypothetical scenario where this TA-TA episode had not happened and just imagine if she could have got Ratan during her Singapore visit along with her in place of Paglu what could have been the impact of such a visit and the outcome. TATA already has a Joint Venture with Singapore Airlines. TATA also exports IT to many Singapore based companies.

I sincerely hope people of Bengal would align them with the Vision of Modi ji and vote for a party which is development focused.  I dream for the day when we would bring back TATA in Bengal along with many other Industry houses towards Industrial revolution in Bengal to make our motherland Sonar Bangla.

Jai Hind.

Keshab Ray.