The Praful Bidwai Column
Legitimising 'Moditva?'
MR. Ratan Tata, one of India's best regarded industrialists, has dismayed many by deciding to shift the Nano car factory from Singur in West Bengal to Sanand near Ahmedabad in Gujarat.
The Singur agitation against land acquisition cannot explain the decision. Some alternative land acquisition formulas were proposed, which would have marginally raised project costs, but increased the compensation to farmers/sharecroppers. Tata Motors summarily rejected these.
Many states wooed it with incentives. Gujarat's offer probably wasn't more attractive than those made by Maharashtra, Karnataka or Uttarakhand, which must have matched the super-favourable treatment given in West Bengala subsidy estimated at half the project's cost!
The Tatas chose Gujarat not for specific concessions, but because they were taken in by Chief Minister Narendra Modi's image as a dynamic, no-nonsense leader, and attracted to the "Gujarat Model" of development, based on rapid, haphazard industrial expansion at high human-rights and environmental costs.
They were confident that Mr. Modi's ruthlessness, repressive labour policies, and despotically imposed "stability" would ensure the project's "smooth" implementation.
By making this move, Mr. Tata has bestowed legitimacy upon Mr. Modi's ghastly brand of politics. This was expressed eloquently in Mr. Tata's distinction between the "Bad M" (Mamata) and the "Good M" (Modi.).
Last year, Mr. Tata famously told businessmen: "You're stupid if you're not in Gujarat." Now, he has put his imprimatur on Mr. Modi's "leadership" despite his connivance at a terrible pogrom of Muslims in 2002, executed by the sangh parivar.
Mr. Tata has behaved like any other businessman looking for low-risk investments and high profits. Within the logic of profit maximisation, it's hard to fault him. But the Tatas are meant to be different: an enlightened, liberal-minded and ethical group driven by considerations larger than profit alone.
Mr. Tata's admirers believe he "can do no wrong." They also attach a mystical value to the Nano as a great managerial-technological achievement, priced at Rs.1 lakhand destined to become a middle class "dream machine."
However, as this column contended in January, the Nano is likely to have serious safety and maintenance problems because its design cuts corners and uses flimsy materials instead of solid, durable ones.
It's unlikely to meet elementary safety and emission norms while maintaining the one lakh-rupee price. It will choke India's roads, stoke rampant consumerism and resource waste, discourage public transport, and become a social and environmental liability.
However, the premise about the Tatas' exceptional nature involves three propositions: it pioneered Indian industrialisation through Empress Mills and Tata Iron and Steel in the 19th century, and plays a highly innovative role under Ratan Tata; it has an unblemished labour relations and environmental record; and it's a model of corporate social responsibility, which averts aggressive practices.
The first half of the first proposition is undoubtedly true. The Tatas established textile and steel as swadeshi enterprises. They also set up other industries. But the group's in-house innovation has recently stagnated. It has expanded through acquisitions, like the $13 billion Corus takeover.
Ever since he became the Tata chairman, Ratan Tata has tightened his family trusts' hold on group companies. Under the legendary J.R.D. Tata, Tata Sons Ltd. owned just 3% of their equity. Now, it holds a controlling share.
The Tatas' labour relations record is patchy. As historian Dilip Simeon has documented in his The Politics of Labour under Late Colonialism, they promoted communalism and employed goondas in the 1920s and 1930s. Nelco was closed down after a prolonged lockout.
Many Tata projects have recently got into serious environmental conflicts in Maharashtra, Gujarart, Jharkhand and Orissa.
The Tatas admittedly run many charitable trusts. But Mr. Ratan Tata has also been lobbying for Dow Chemical being allowed to escape its responsibility for the aftermath of the Bhopal disaster as the heir of Union Carbide. He wants Dow to be freed of its legal liability to clean up the contaminated plant site, which has poisoned water and affected 25,000 people.
Under Ratan Tata's stewardship, the Tata group has turned aggressively acquisition-oriented. The Corus takeover created a $7.4 billion debt. But that didn't stop the Tatas from taking over Jaguar-Land Rover. Labour unions in these companies don't feel reassured of job protection and good industrial relations.
On top of this comes the Nano factory's move to Gujarat. Implicit in this is an endorsement of Mr. Modi's style of governance, and above all, sanctification of his viciously communal politics.
The decision will be interpreted as an invitation to forget the haunting reality of the massacre of Muslims in 2002, the worst carnage of its kind in Independent India, and a major assault on secularism and democracy, from which Gujarat hasn't still recovered.
The victims of the carnage continue to be denied justice, live in insecurity, and face all manner of harassment, including fake encounter killings.
The recent report of the Nanavati Commission has only added insult to injury by declaring the burning of a train coach at Godhra a planned conspiracy instead of an accident, and by giving a clean chit to Mr. Modi.
Mr. Tata's endorsement of Moditva is in line with a long process of the Indian industrialist class reconciling itself with it, helping erase the memory of the pogrom, and "normalising" Hindu communalism.
This is happening at a dangerous moment in India's evolution. Hindutva attacks on the religious minorities are rising in Orissa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The minorities are also victimised in the name of fighting terrorism. The Indian state has shown no will to stop this and bring the culprits to book.
As the latest National Integration Council meeting showed, even Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is willing to implement a ban on the Bajrang Dal, if the Centre orders one. But will the Centre do this, or duck the problem of communalism like the Tatas have done?
India's survival as a pluralist secular democracy hinges on this.
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