DelhiDareDevil
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It’s sad Mukesh Ambani lives in such opulence: Tata
‘We’re Doing Little To Ease Poor’s Misery’
Ashis Ray | TNN
London: Tata group chairman Ratan Tata has said he is surprised why fellow tycoon Mukesh Ambani wanted to live in the opulence of a billion dollar home in south Mumbai.
‘‘It makes me wonder why someone would do that,’’ Tata said in an interview published on Saturday in The Times newspaper of London. ‘‘The person who lives in there should be concerned about what he sees around him and (asking) can he make a difference,’’ Tata said when asked about Antilla, the new 27-storey Ambani home on Altamount Road.
‘‘If he is not, then it is sad because India needs people to allocate some of their enormous wealth to finding ways of mitigating the hardship that people have,’’ he said.
Tata expressed his concern over the widening rich-poor gap. ‘‘We are doing so little about the disparity. We are allowing it to be there and wishing it away,’’ he said.
The Indian tycoon, who bought steel maker Corus and car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) in 2006 and 2008 to become the biggest manufacturing employer in Britain, also questioned British managers’ work ethic, saying they do not ‘‘go the extra mile’’ unlike their Indian counterparts.
‘‘It’s a work ethic issue. In my experience, in both Corus and JLR, nobody is willing to go the extra mile, nobody,’’ Tata said. ‘‘I feel if you have come from Bombay to have a meeting and the meeting goes till 6pm, I would expect that you won’t, at 5 o’- clock, say, ‘Sorry, I have my train to catch. I have to go home’.’’
Tata said things were different in India. ‘‘If you are in a crisis (in India), it means working to midnight, you would do it. The worker in JLR seems to be willing to do that; the management is not.’’ He said the entire engineering group would be empty on Friday evenings previously at JLR. But that had changed. ‘‘The new management team has put an end to that. They call meetings at 5 o’clock.’’
Tata also spoke about shifting Nano’s 85% installed plant from West Bengal to Gujarat after Mamata Banerjee led a campaign against land acquisition in Singur in the context of comparing efficiencies. ‘‘In the dead of night, you had to start taking tools out of that factory (in Singur), build another factory, deliver a car from an interim factory; and do all this in a year,’’ he said.
‘‘The first thing you (the JLR management) will say: ‘it can’t be done’, that you would need a court order or police protection or whatever. Yet we did it.’’His comments come as Tata Steel proposes to close part of its plant in the UK, putting at risk 1,200 jobs. India lucky to have Cameron in UK
London: Tata group chairman Rata Tata, owner of steel maker Corus and car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), has questioned British managers’ work ethic, saying they do not ‘‘go the extra mile’’ unlike their Indian counterparts.
In an interview to The Times newspaper of London, Tata said the UK has a high level of despondency about itself. ‘‘I have a greater degree of bullishness about the UK and what it stands for. But nobody seems to want to exert the effort to make the UK truly competitive or bring it back to the glory that it was,’’ he said. ‘‘I think there is a feeling that there is no innovation — there is great innovation in the UK. There is great technology.’’ Tata, who is a member of British prime minister David Cameron’s Business Advisory Group and cochairman of the UK-India CEO Forum, said India was lucky to have Barack Obama in the US and Cameron in the UK.
‘‘Both of them are open to ideas; they are very pragmatic in their views. Each of them feels that India is a land of some opportunity for themselves,’’ he said. ‘‘I think he (Cameron) is doing something quite far-sighted, because we really have long traditional ties with England.’’ Tata was the only person outside the government to have had two private meetings with the British PM.
I totally agree with statements from Tata.
