Jamsetji believed that India would have truly laid aside its imperialist yoke only when it realized the full potential of its natural resources and became a modern, industrial nation. Over a hundred year later, as India still continues on the journey, is vision remains the group’s main guiding force.
Jamsetji saw disciplines such as medicine and science and industries such as energy and steel as building block in the emergence of a brave and bright new country. After creating the most modern textile mills, he committed the group to setting up India’s first steel plant and the first hydroelectricity plant and bestowed half his personal wealth to found the country’s first institution of higher learning, the Indian institute of science. Thus did he set the mandate for the group: to look beyond the generation of products and profits to serving the communities in which TATA companies functioned.
JRD’s outstanding contribution, the greatest among the many he made, was to expand was to expand the group on the basis of principles and values and ethics. He worked in a world of onerous regulations. He had the courage to object to them publicly, but he never broke the law. JRD imparted the discipline that he expected his people to follow. Never, not once did he ask anyone to do so.
Business was but one facet of the JRD mosaic. He played the part of statesman in India and abroad. He espoused causes like family planning and, in his later years, became a staunch supporter of women’s rights, and had deep concern for the plight of the girl child.
