Last week, Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus, Tata Sons Ltd, received the 18th MMA Amalgamations Business Leadership Award at a function in Chennai. At the event, Tata fielded a few questions from Raghothama Rao, past president, MMA. Excerpts from the interaction:

How should government and business partner for accelerating economic growth and equity in India? Please give us three principal areas where business and government can collaborate.

I think government and corporations have a combined task in moving the country ahead. It means creating a nation that moves towards equality, that gives equal opportunity, that increases the prosperity for all levels of the people and stands out as a country in today’s world as a democratic nation.

Therefore, government has the role of improving the infrastructure, creating an environment for its people that gives them security, safety and gives them the opportunity for growth based on merit. Corporates, on the other hand, have the role that their name implies, i.e. entrepreneurship. They are the entrepreneurs, they have to generate the speed that drives the country; the corporate world has to exist side by side, complementing each other’s role, not conflicting, not, in fact, diffusing each other but moving together to get the country to rise.

Whenever this has ceased to happen, the nations had tumbled economically or moved to the direction of being dictators, creating crony capitalism. I don’t think I have spelt out three specific areas but I think the Government’s role is to govern the infrastructure and govern the ambience of the country. The entrepreneur’s role is to create values and to give the country and people a chance for jobs, a chance for advancement and to help growth take place.

I think the Government alone can never make growth take place. It can only provide an infrastructure to (make that) happen.

What are the steps that Indian business and corporates should take to make the ‘made in India’ brand as powerful a brand as ‘made in Japan’. What do we do from Corporate India do to make this happen?

Part of this answer may be a little controversial. The Indian business world seems to thrive, unlike the spectrum of business people elsewhere in the world, on envy or frowning on success.

The net result is that we tend to pull each other down needlessly whereas in other countries, you see business pulling together. It has been difficult to get 20 business leaders in a room to move away from talking about their own companies to what they could provide to the new India.

How many collaborations between Indian companies do you see in India against elsewhere in the world? How many research activities do you see together between business leaders in India?

So, industry in India has to be more compatible with each other, more trusting and more collaborative than it is today. There should be pride and happiness that it takes place in India.

Then when you go beyond the shores of India, there is no reason to feel incapable of leading an enterprise outside India provided you do the right thing and operate in the right value system.

So I think we have all the ingredients to do what you said. It is the attitude of not giving due recognition to success that holds a lot of companies back.

It is said that ‘manufacturing is the next mantra’ that we should focus on for economic growth and getting more people employed. Chinese manufacturing is 10-15 times our size. There is a fear that China will swamp Indian products. What do you think Indian manufacturing should do to strengthen itself?

Once again let me be provocative! China and India have the same population size. If a Chinese industry can scale itself up to a particular size, what stands in the way of an Indian company doing exactly the same thing?

We don’t have licensing anymore that puts the ceiling on how many units we can produce. Why do more mega companies not exist in India? I don’t see any reasons why should we be fearful of Chinese goods. We should be willing to compete with them. Again, the Government should provide an environment that makes us competitive and remove the constraints in the way of growth.

What should be the vision for the Indian auto industry over the next 10 to 15 years? We are already known as the hub for small car manufacturing. Is that all that is possible?

Being in Tamil Nadu brings to my mind the fact that here in this State, there has been the establishment of some famous industries and they go back a long time.

It has been an industrial community built on values, ethics and technology, quite often from generation to generation. Why has that not happened to the same extent in other parts of India?

What do we need now? Look at the auto industry. It has grown today mainly with the growth in international companies in India.

Yet the Indian car industries and Indian component industries survive. We should be bolder, we should think bigger than we are and have the confidence of knowing that we can grow because the potential in this country is enormous. It is for us to grasp and grow and it is for us to grow with pride not within the shores of India but in the international marketplace where we can compete.

We should not be in a position to over-promise, which we tend to do, and (we should) be ethical in what we offer in the marketplace.

In terms of corporate governance, ability to manage risks and tough times, what are the lessons that Indian corporates can learn from successful MNCs you have seen at close quarters?

Something that comes to my mind is from the 1970s. A small company started in a garage; Apple Computers, started with an idea, an idea that had not been tried. A country that reacted to these ideas and accepted them, created the first Apple computer. The second generation was the Macintosh which brought the main frame computers to a desk and enabled an individual to have a personal computer. The founder of the company was sacked and the company owners failed.

The founder came back to head the company and entered the smartphone business, created a tablet computer and it became one of the most valued companies in the world.

What can one learn from that? From one Apple, to two Apples and more! It is a question of how the company perceived its good luck and creativity. We should not be always trying to follow.

We should really try to lead and never follow. As a nation also, we should be trying to lead and not to follow because as a nation, something has been successful here! We are on the threshold of retailing which is the next new big business in India. It is terrific. There are many more areas like this and India could possibly teach some of the countries how to get to be a successful business enterprise. We don’t have to learn from the Western world only.

We measure success in terms of GDP and similar economic measures. Should we not, instead, be looking at quality of life or the happiness index?

I hold a view that the quality of life follows the footstep of having a robust growth in the country, the creation of jobs, and the creation of opportunities.

We don’t have the term ‘quality of life’. It comes from a socialistic state where the Government provides that comfort of quality of life. If it comes from a democratic open society, it comes from growth rates of the country that provides jobs and opportunities, reduces unemployment, encourages creativity and, therefore, in a country of a billion-plus people, how can any government focus only on the creation of the enhancement of the quality of life without having behind that an engine of prosperity for the nation that drives the growth?

The enhancement of life comes then from the distribution of that wealth. So you first have to create that wealth and then distribute it.

What is your vision for India over the next 15 or 20 years in terms of what we can achieve as a nation? Where does corporate India fit into this vision?

I am not an astrologer! The India that we love to see is an India where the corporate and the government sector work together on a convergent path to growth and prosperity.

Most importantly, I would like to see an India where all Indians have an equal opportunity — not that a small per cent of people can get into college and a vast number of people stand by and lose that opportunity, an India where people can find jobs based on merit and based on capability.

I really believe that our country is a tremendous one with great potential.

You see in the bright eyes of little kids who are going to spend the rest of their lives scrounging for a way to live day-to-day, when they have an opportunity to have an education and go to work and they could make a contribution.

How many people around us have made a success of their lives, who had never gone to school, unlike some of us who are privileged to do.

Do we have enough of them or should our country be able to say “we have created leaders from any quarter of life and it does not make any difference what their name is, what their inheritance is, what is the amount of wealth they have; still all of them have an equal opportunity”. That is the India that I would like to see.

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