A news
article titled ‘Tata Group, Mistry’s elephant, India’s most important
business group is socially responsible but financially disappointing’,
published in the Indian Express dated 26 September and first published in the
Economist caught my attention today. What is surprising to me is that while the
financial health of the Tata Sons is being questioned in the
article, the Tata group continues to enjoy social credibility in spite of its grave
human rights violations for nearly a century now.
That
a company like the Tata continues to enjoy social impunity and respect has got
to do a lot with the explicit legitimacy conferred to it by some of the most
respected individuals and institutions of the country.
The
article in the Economist, reminds me of a write up that I had written in the
year 2006 regarding Tata’s social conduct. I had not published the write up
then as I had not yet generated my own blog. I had written the piece in the
wake of Ratan Tata, the then Chairman of the Tata Sons being conferred the degree of Doctor
of Literature. I reproduce the short piece here:
"7th
May Sunday, 2006 news coverage in The Hindu on the conferring of the degree of
Literature to Ratan Tata at the 66th Annual convocation of the Tata Institute
of Social Sciences (TISS) held at Mumbai has been disturbing in many ways .
First and foremost, that the head of Tata group should be awarded such
accolades so soon after the brutal killings of the adivasis at Kalinganagar who
were protesting the construction of a wall by the Tata Company for its steel
plant is bad enough. However what is more disturbing is that the degree was
conferred by the most prestigious institute of social work in the country!
One
did not expect this from TISS- certainly not after the brutal killings of
adivasis at Kalinganagar. Although TISS has the name 'Tata' attached to it, it is after all an autonomous institution.
What
is ironic is the fact that TISS felicitated Baba Amte at the same time as it
did Mr. Ratan Tata. Baba Amte's ideology is diagonally opposite to that of Mr
Ratan Tata. Be it the case of liberalization, privatization, globalisation,
nuclear power, displacement in name of development, or in short, the very world
view itself. In fact, while Baba Amte
has been a staunch anti dam activist, the Tata's had successfully crushed one
of the first anti dam struggles in the country popularly known as the Mulshi
Satyagraha, in Maharashtra. Had the Mulshi Satyagraha succeeded against the
building up of a dam at the confluence of the Nila and the Mula Rivers by the
Tatas in the 1920s, the history of dam
building in the country probably would have been different today.
One
wonders therefore that who does TISS want its students to emulate -Baba Amte or
Ratan Tata? It surely cannot be both at the same time.”
 |
| Memorial of protesting Adivasis killed at Kalinganagar. Photo source: http://www.countercurrents.org/desai160510.htm |
The
accolades being showered on the Tatas is not a recent phenomenon. I wish to go
back in history a little and recall that even Mahatma Gandhi showered praise on
the Tatas as recorded in Mahatma Gandhi's secretary Mahadevbhai’s diary volume 8, year 1925:
“…We
enjoyed the hospitality of Tata’s for two days. He showed us his township with
a lot of love and even now he continues to shower immense love…When I was in
South Africa, Ratan Tata had sent me huge support- he was the first to send Rs
25000, and he had written that I could ask for more if required. Therefore I am
under a great obligation to the Tatas…”
That
Mahatma Gandhi, a strong opponent of the kind of industrialization promoted by
the Tatas should say this is indeed surprising. What is disturbing is that
Gandhiji said this while the Tata Steel Plant at Jamshedpur had serious labor
unrest in which many workers were killed!
Gandhiji also ignored the fierce
struggle by the affected people against the Mulshi dam being built by the Tatas
when he spoke so.
It is also interesting to note that while some of the mainstream and popular books on Indian history detail the struggles of people in Kheda, Bardoli, Chauri Chaura, Champaran, the strike by textile mill workers in Ahmedabad, etc. rather well, one hardly finds any reference to the powerful struggles of workers and peasants against the Tatas in Mulshi near Pune or Jamshedpur. This is in spite of the struggles having been fought around the same period before India's independence.
However some of the less known books on Indian history have detailed these struggles rather well and I wish to share as examples the social history of the Tatas as
written in some of these books as follows:
1.
In the book ‘A steel man in India’, published
in the year 1943, John L Keenan writes about the striking workers at the Tata
steel in the 1920s as follows:
“…of all
the changes I could perceive, the deepest was … in the attitude of the workmen
in general toward the management…The old friendly spirit of affection which our laborer had felt for
his foreman had been replaced by an acute distrust not far from hate…this
unhappy state of things…came about as a result of a strike. When it began, the
men were not truculent; they seemed to be enjoying a well earned holiday and
spent the days laughing and telling stories. Then few of them conceived it to
be a great joke on the company if they should tear up the rails connecting the
works and the railway station…the commanding officers of the troops which the
government had sent to the area to maintain order were promptly informed of the
mischief afoot…Soldiers detailed to prevent the men from destroying plant
equipment ordered the prankish strikers to leave. They emphatically refused.
The soldiers were ordered to load and take aim. The men, like overgrown
children, laughed at the soldiers and their officers. The order was then given
to fire. Thirteen strikers were killed and many more were taken to the
hospital…the men did not forget the death of their fellows…”
2.
In the book titled ‘Mulshi Satyagara’, Rajendra
Vohra writes the following about the struggle against the Mulshi dam being
built by the Tatas in the early 1920s [translated from Marathi]:
“…Later,
the officer [of Tata] named Anderson arrived with 20-30 workers, other seventy
five workers joined him, they forcefully pushed the satyagrahis aside…By
then, stone throwing began; five-six workers were injured. According to Kesri
[newspaper], the company workers threw stones and injured people... By then
the people of Paud [village] had assembled… The company workers were to attack the
satyagrahis as well as the villagers. However they were stopped by the
Mamlatdar and the police from doing so. On seeing the large assembly of
villagers, the workers left…on the other side preparations for the next satyagraha
were on. Six hundred people had registered their names with the Satyagraha
Mandal…As per the information, the Government was to declare the area
around Mulshi as prohibited area and the company [Tata] was to deploy three
hundred to four hundred Pathans to stop the satyagrahis outside
the area. There was a possibility that the Pathans would resort to violence.
This is how both the sides were preparing themselves… on 13th April,
Balukaka…and Gujar Gopal were beaten up badly…on 17th April, a lady,
Rakhmai Dhamale and two others from
Maval were beaten up. On 19th apart from the workers, in order to beat
up people, Goondas [hooligans] were brought in…but the satyagrahis
stayed true to their pledge of non violence…when the satyagrahis tried
to enter [the construction site], the workers started beating them up…next day
the company goondas beat up the activists severely. The women of Maval had to face severe
insults. They were pulled by their hair and sand was thrown on them…"
3.
In the book, ‘From Plassey to Partition’,
Shekhar Bandhopadyay writes the following:
" The Bombay Textile workers struck
eight times between 1919 and 1940…And not just in Bombay, such strikes took
place in Ahmedabad (1918,1923,1935, 1937), in Sholapur (1920, 1922,1934,1937),
in Jamshedpur (1920,1922, 1928, 1942)…The TISCO management, wherever it found
an opportunity, tried to crush the Jamshedpur Labor Association…and in this the
local colonial administration was always with the management. Even the goondas or the hooligan elements, who were as a matter of
routine patronized by the employers and hired as strike breakers, were
protected by the local police officials as institutionalized tools of violence…"
4. Mahadevbhai's Diary Volume 8 [translated from Gujarati]:
"Jamshedpur too is not free of the
pollutants that accompany an industry… Some of the difficulties were almost
inevitable...At the end of ten years, the most difficult tasks that
require utmost caution are being done by Indians too like the Americans and the
British...but
those Indians who do the same type of work probably are not being paid even
half of the wages paid to the whites. We saw a skilled worker of Wells in the
steel factory who lifted from a hot plate with a pair of tongs a steel sheet
and placed it on other machinery skillfully, like one would turn a chapatti on
a hot plate. And we saw an Indian doing
the same work equally skillfully. But both do not get equal wages… The
superintendents of various departments were earlier Europeans but are now
Indians and they work as skillfully as the Europeans today. But they are not paid properly...
The city has been planned by the company’s
engineers themselves. Here too due to the contracts with the white officials
there is a division between the whites and the blacks…Higher officials are sitting with clubs and
libraries. There is no facility for lower ranked workers…
If one looks at the life here, it can be
said that western evils have had bad influences here...Two shops of local and one of English liquor has been
licensed by the company itself and here thousands of rupees worth of liquor is
consumed every month. And because of the
alcohol, the rate of crime is very high…
Two years’ ago there was a strike and unrest lead to firing too. However that is an old
history. The situation was such that the company was not willing to recognize
the union and the secretary of the union Shri Shet was also dismissed. And Mr
Andrews had forced Gandhi to come in order to get the union recognized... "
While
the above shows some of the incidents associated with the Tata's way or working before independence, it can be said that
these have continued post India's independence too. Once again I wish to highlight a few examples here:
1. In the year 2003, some seventy odd
retrenched workers of Tata Power Company were demanding compensation or
permanent jobs with the company. But when their long-standing demand fell to
deaf ears, out of sheer desperation, two workers immolated themselves. One of
the two workers died the same day and the other, 8 days later.
2. The fisher people of the once calm and scenic
Chilika Lake in Orissa too had to wage a tough struggle against the Tatas to be
able to protect their traditional livelihood. While the Tatas ultimately
withdrew from executing their plans in the lake, it left behind a troubled social-economic community.
3. In Orissa, at Gopalpur, two people
died in police firing in the 1990s while they resisted the acquisition of land
for a Tata plant. While the plant remains abandoned today, large tracks of
lands acquired for the project continue to remain with the Tatas.
4. The brutal killing of fifteen adivasis in
police firing at Kalinganagar, Orissa in the year 2006 as they protested against the boundary
wall being built on their lands by the Tatas can be considered
to be one of the worst cases of repression in the history of people’s struggle in Independent
India.
5. People
at Singur, West Bengal waged a fierce struggle which the government tried to
curb with equal force so that the Tatas could build a car plant. Although the Nano car plant
was built in Gujarat subsequently, the Tatas refused to return the lands to the
farmers of Bengal! [ http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article101.html ]
The
track record of the Tatas on the environment front too has not been good. But
this shall be covered in the next post.
Therefore,
while the financial health of the Tata group is being questioned in the
financial circuit today, it surprises me that the group’s social conduct goes unchallenged.
End.
