Too Clever by Half

The ugly battle between Ratan Tata, incumbent chairman of Tata Sons Ltd, the holding company of the salt to automobiles conglomerate (annual revenue: Rs.726,000 crore) and Cyrus Mistry, until recently chairman of the company who was ousted in a Tata-orchestrated boardroom coup in October, has transformed into a prolonged war. On December 20, Mistry filed a complaint with the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) alleging oppression of minority shareholders — Mistry’s family-controlled company Shapoorji Pallonji Pvt. Ltd owns 18.5 percent of the equity of Tata Sons, while Tata trusts own 66 percent.  Mistry, who was appointed chairman of Tata Sons in 2012 after a reported global search, has a strong case. Although Ratan has won over the shareholders of Tata Sons and all major companies of the group with lachrymose lamentations and a spate of unsubstantiated charges of mismanagement against Mistry, the plain truth is that by ignoring established tradition and retaining chairmanship of the Tata trusts, Ratan, who retired at the mandatory age of 75 four years ago, clearly intended to remain de facto chairman of the Tata Group, including Tata Sons. Therefore, when Mistry who was mealy-mouthedly advised by his predecessor to “be his own man”, set about correcting his (Ratan’s) bloomers such as the disastrous over-priced acquisition of the UK-based Corus Steel, unravelling the Tata Docomo tangle and rescinding contracts awarded to Ratan’s pal Melhi Mistry (no relation) by Tata companies, Ratan orchestrated a clandestine coup against his elaborately chosen successor. Now evidence of Tata’s whimsical style of decision-making, abuse of office and nepotism is about to be presented to NCLT.  Time up for this over-hyped tycoon, about to be outed for being too clever by half for his own good.  Troubled ghost  In his engaging new compendium Democrats & Dissenters, historian, sociologist, polymath Ramachandra Guha laments the conspicuous drought of right-wing intellectuals who could be a useful counterpoint to liberals and particularly Left intellectuals, poseurs and pundits who dominate the Indian academy, media and public discourse. But he conveniently overlooks the inconvenient truth that the left-liberal priviligentsia who captured the commanding heights of post-independence India’s academy, stridently blocked the entry of Right intellectuals into academia to study and research free market economics, shouting down even mildly pro-free enterprise liberals. Your editor experienced Left intolerance and ridicule as founder-editor of Business India (estb.1978) and Businessworld (1981) which — although none will admit it — prepared public opinion to accept the historic liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy in 1991.  However early last year, Swarajya, a right-wing journal originally launched by C. Rajagopalachari (‘Rajaji’), a stalwart of the freedom movement who was quick to discern that inorganic Nehruvian socialism spelt disaster for free India, and broke with Master Joe in the 1960s to form the Swatantra party which inter alia highlighted India’s entrepreneurial traditions, was re-launched from Bangalore. Unfortunately, despite being edited by reputed journalists R. Jaganathan (my successor at Businessworld) and Sandipan Deb, and boasting a high-powered advisory board including former Citibank CEO Jaitirth (‘Jerry’) Rao…