Page 82 - EW August 2021

Postscript

Bare knuckled capitalist that NASA, USA had admitted that “talking computers”
were invented through usage of Sanskrit, the language of
HE RETIREMENT WITH EFFECT FROM MAY 1 of ancient India.
Rahul Bajaj (RB) from his exalted position as chair- According to sources in the education ministry,
Tman and chief executive of Bajaj Auto Ltd (BAL), Pokhriyal genuinely believed that he was answerable only
marks the end of an era of combative, bare-knuckled, to prime minister Modi to whom he invariably awarded
me-first capitalism in Indian industry. As founding editor the descriptive ‘honourable’, even in his absence. Even
of Business India and later Businessworld, your corre- NEP 2020 was formally released as the “Hon’ble prime
spondent was well-acquainted with RB and wrote several minister’s gift to the nation”.
eulogistic cover features narrating the spectacular market Accustomed to feeding mainstream media with pre-
dominance of BAL boosting the company’s market cap pared written statements, this sui generis publication was
manifold. #1 on Pokhriyal’s hate list for questioning the incongruity
Soon after he returned to India from the Harvard of appointing a Union minister of education totally igno-
Business School in the 1960s, RB manipulated the ouster rant of Inglish, the link language of India and language
of H.K. Firodia, a talented engineer and CEO of BAL who of the courts and business. Certainly academia and bona
built the scooters factory in Pune. This was a breach of fide educators countrywide have breathed a collective
faith because at the time, the Bajaj and Firodia fami- sigh of relief.
lies were equal, joint promoters of Bajaj Auto and Bajaj
Tempo Ltd (BTL), the latter a company manufacturing Backstab House
light commercial vehicles in collaboration with the blue-
chip Mercedes Benz, Germany.
After Ramkrishna Bajaj, his Gandhian uncle passed N THE SUBJECT OF HARD-KNUCKLED industry
away in 1994, Rahul set about persuading Mercedes Benz, tycoons who brazenly decline to discharge their
the majority shareholder in BTL to dump the Firodias and OIOUs, Ratan Tata (RT), currently chairman emeri-
ally with him. Fortunately, the German company rejected tus of the Tata Group, takes the prize. Several decades ago
his blandishments and BTL has since changed its name to when the chairmanship of Tata Sons — holding company
Force 10 and has prospered modestly. of the Tata Group — was up for grabs on the passing
In the heyday of licence-permit-quota raj, using his in- of the highly-respected J.R.D. Tata in 1993, Ratan was
herited political clout with various Congress governments routinely being rubbished by Tata Steel chairman Russi
at the Centre and close friendship with party heavyweight Mody, who believed he was the best man to succeed JRD.
Sharad Pawar, RB ensured that despite the huge demand- At that time, RT made his case to your correspondent,
supply gap, any competitor who forayed into the Indian then editor of Businessworld and later columnist with
automotive two wheelers market was given a restricted Sunday and Mumbai-based daily The Independent. On
manufacturing licence. As a result in the 1970s, the wait- merits, your editor supported RT’s candidature.
listed period for a Bajaj scooter rose to 14 years. However, Several years later after your correspondent promoted
the BAL monopoly was broken in the mid-1980s when the EducationWorld with laudable national objectives, and
Punjab-based Hero Cycles was licensed to manufacture this publication was struggling to survive, RT rejected
automotive scooters in collaboration with Honda Motors, a request of modest advertising support from the Tata
Japan. Group, pleading abject poverty. Such ingratitude and
Years later when your correspondent launched Educa- back-stabbing comes easily to this unwarrantedly lionised
tionWorld and wrote to RB to discharge his IOUs by way tycoon. In 2013, he appointed Cyrus Mistry as chairman
of small change advertising support, this greedy tycoon of Tata Sons, and soon back-stabbed him for resisting
refused point blank. India Inc is certain to benefit now back-seat driving. Following Mistry’s ouster, RT’s hand-
that this practitioner of ugly capitalism has called it a day. picked nominee N. Chandrasekaran, then CEO of Tata
Consultancy Services, was appointed as the pliant chair-
man of Tata Sons. Thereby hangs another tale.
Unlamented exit most successful company of the Tata Group. This com-
TCS (revenue: Rs.164,300 crore in 2020-21) is the
Y PEREMPTORILY SACKING UNION EDUCA- pany was built byte by byte by the late Fakir Chand Kohli
TION minister Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal in his cabinet (1924-2020), the most extraordinary professional busi-
Breshuffle of July 5, prime minister Narendra Modi ness leader in the history of India Inc.
belatedly righted an egregious error he made two years In 2007, Kohli sanctioned the TCS and Education-
ago when he allocated this important portfolio to this World annual TCS-EW Teachers Awards to celebrate the
mediocre Hindi pulp novelist and former chief minister country’s best primary and secondary school teachers.
of Uttarakhand. Perhaps the only connection this worthy However, after Chandrasekaran was appointed CEO of
had with education was his early career as a teacher in a TCS in 2009, he promptly cancelled the awards project
RSS school. funded by TCS, back-stabbing FCK who had appointed
During his tenure, Pokhriyal distinguished himself at him CEO. Since then, several proposals made to TCS
an international education conference by declaring astrol- to keep FCK’s memory alive by reinstituting the annual
ogy as the “biggest (sic) science of all” and subsequently teachers awards as the F.C. Kohli-EW awards, have been
claimed that plastic surgery was invented in ancient rejected by Chandra’s handpicked successor Rajesh
India as was the first atomic bomb. In 2019 at a convoca- Gopinath. A succession of back-stabbers are flourishing in
tion ceremony of IIT-Bombay, he informed graduates Bombay House, HQ of the Tata Group. Alas poor JNT!

82 EDUCATIONWORLD AUGUST 2021