The Hindu Business Line : Two parts of the challenge in making steel

Tata Steel is much in news for accomplishing the largest Indian takeover of a foreign company, by buying Corus in the UK. This is the first expansion outside Asia for the nearly 100-year-old steel company, as if the emperor had taken time to stroll around for new territories.

Well, those who care to know may find that the niceties of the steel industry were discussed on board a ship called the Empress of India, which sailed from Yokohama in Japan to Vancouver in Canada. Year 1893.

"On board were two extraordinary Indians — Swami Vivekananda and Jamshetji Tata. Both were headed for Chicago," writes Niranjan Rajadhyaksha in a chapter titled `A century of lost opportunities', in The Rise of India, a new book from Wiley (www.wiley.com) .

That was `the era of the robber barons' in the US. "People like railroad financier Jay Gould who triggered a stock market crash in 1869 or steel magnate Henry Frick who was shot dead by a business rival." But Tata was different; for, to him what mattered was not just own profits but also the country's progress, notes Rajadhyaksha.

"Tata, like many other merchant princes of the time, had made his initial fortune in the opium trade with China, had started one of the first textile mills in India, and was later to challenge established wisdom with his battle to set up a steel plant in India (it was eventually set up in 1907, three years after his death)."

Jamshetji was heading to the World's Columbian Exposition, `a celebration of technology and industrial progress'; and Vivekananda went on to make history at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, on September 11, 1893.

On board the ship, though, one of the topics that had come up between the two was Tata's plan to start a steel mill in India.

"It is believed that the Swami told Tata that there were two parts to the challenge — manufacturing technology and the science of steel. The former could be bought from abroad but the science had to be researched at home." Thus, reads a snatch in Rajadhyaksha's book.

Wonder if the discussion with Jamshetji inspired Vivekananda's call for `a few strong men with muscles of iron and nerves of steel... ' Be that as it may, five years later, Jamshetji wrote to Vivekananda: "I trust, you remember me as a fellow-traveller on your voyage... I recall these ideas in connection with my scheme of Research Institute of Science for India."

Text of the letter dated November 23, 1898, is available on www.tatasteel.com.

Jamshetji's stirrings were to result in the IISc or the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. A prophetic choice of location, says Rajadhyaksha. "Bangalore would eventually become a breeding ground of scientists and engineers, and hence the natural home of India's software companies a hundred years later."

Interestingly, one of the first recruits for the institute could well have been Vivekananda, if only Jamshetji's exhortation had worked.

For, Tata had wanted to channelise the `ascetic spirit' for `the establishment of monasteries or residential halls for men dominated by this spirit, where they should live with ordinary decency, and devote their lives to the cultivation of sciences — natural and humanistic'.

Wrote Jamshetji: "I am of the opinion that, if such a crusade in favour of an asceticism of this kind were undertaken by a competent leader, it would greatly help asceticism, science, and the good name of our common country; and I know not who would make a more fitting General of such a campaign than Vivekananda."

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in

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Two parts of the challenge in making steel