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Ten Things To Learn From ‘The 108 Upanishads’

Posted on by Penguin India

Roshen Dalal in her book The 108 Upanishads presents a thoroughly researched analysis of the revered philosophical texts, the 108 Upanishads, that form a part of the Vedas. These texts contain the concentrated wisdom extracted from Hinduism over the centuries. Roshen Dalal’s explanations of the core concepts of each Upanishads and her scholarly insights regarding them, makes for one of the most informative reads.

Here we provide some words of wisdom taken from these Upanishads:

In the Katha Upanishad, Yama teaches Nachiketa the concept of the atman. In order to attain a tranquil state of life and transcend death one needs to realize the atman. Yama says that the atman is the master of the chariot which is the body. It is in all living beings and is eternal. Atman is devoid of sound, touch, taste or smell, and never decays. It is only when one realizes that that one can transcend death.

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In the Katha Upanishad, Yama explains to Nachiketa the difference between the wise Soul and a fool, saying that a wise Soul would always choose the good, whereas the fool would choose what seems pleasant not thinking of the future. Hence the fool is far away from realizing the atman.

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In the Isha Upanishad, verses 9-11 state that neither ignorance nor knowledge lead to the Truth. Avidya (ignorance) and vidya (worldly knowledge), both prove to be inadequate and it is only when one transcends both that one can attain immortality.

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In the Isha Upanishad, verses 12-14 explain how both becoming and non-becoming are refutable. It is only when one succeeds in transcending both that the supreme is reachable.

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Along with dealing with the unity of god and the world, the Isha Upanishad also talks about the unity of the paths of action and contemplation in one’s life.

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In the Prashna Upanishad, a rishi named Pippalada preaches that meditating on even a single letter of Om has many benefits. Meditating on all four syllables of Om together would result in the highest reality.

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The Mandukya Upanishad elaborates on the concept of Brahman or the Absolute and the sacred word Om, which also represents Brahman. It further goes on to say that everything is Brahman, including the atman or Self.

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It is also stated in the Mandukya Upanishad that just like the objects in a dream are unreal, so are the objects in the waking state too. It is because the atma imagines these objects through its own maya. Thus, the highest truth is the total unreality of the world.

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The Adhyatma Upanishad states that Brahman is beyond any conception of beginning and end, actions and all worldly forces. It further says that one should perpetually focus on Brahman and meditate on the true Self withinone’s self. Hence, one should not be attached to the world or identify with the body or the senses.

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In the Annapurna Upanishad, Ribhu, a knower of Brahman tells Nidagha how to attain the knowledge of Reality. In order to attain this one should renounce life and make one’s mind detached. A person might or might not act in the worldbut the knower of true reality, can never be an agent or an experiencer of the world.

The 108 Upanishads is a thoroughly researched primer on the Upanishads, philosophical treatises that form a part of the Vedas, the revered Hindu texts.

Meet Upendranath Ashk, The Author of ‘In The City, A Mirror Wandering’

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Unfolding over the course of a single day, Upendranath Ashk’s sweeping novel, In The City, A Mirror Wandering explores the inner struggles of Chetan, an aspiring young writer, as he roams the labyrinthine streets of 1930s’ Jalandhar, haunted by his thwarted ambitions but intent on fulfilling his dreams.

Here are a few things about the about the man behind this wondrous book:

Upendranath Ashk (1910-1996), was one of Hindi literature’s best known and most controversial authors.

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Ashk was born in Jalandhar and spent the early part of his writing career as an Urdu author in Lahore.

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Encouraged by Premchand, he switched to Hindi, and a few years before Partition, moved to Bombay, Delhi and finally Allahabad in 1948, where he spent the rest of his life.

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 By the time of his death, Ashk’s phenomenally large oeuvre spanned over a hundred volumes of fiction, poetry, memoir, criticism and translation.

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Ashk was extremely vocal about taking on his critics, and he had a tumultuous association with many of his fellow writers—most notably his friend and rival Saadat Hasan Manto, about whom he penned a wry and celebrated memoir Manto Mera Dushman (or ‘Manto, My Enemy).

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Ashk is perhaps best known for his six-volume novel cycle, Girti Divarein, or Falling Walls—an intensely detailed chronicle of the travails of a young Punjabi man attempting to become a writer-which has earned the author comparisons to Marcel Proust.

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Ashk was the recipient of numerous prizes and awards during his lifetime for his masterful portrayal, by turns humorous and remarkably profound, of the everyday lives of ordinary people.

Intensely poignant and vividly evocative, In the City a Mirror Wandering is the second novel in the Falling Walls series but stands on its own strength. It is a poignant exploration of not only a dynamic, bustling city but also the rich tapestry of human emotion that consumes us all.

Emergency Chronicles – an excerpt

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As the world once again confronts an eruption of authoritarianism, Gyan Prakash’s Emergency Chronicles takes us back to the moment of India’s independence to offer a comprehensive historical account of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency of 1975-77. Stripping away the myth that this was a sudden event brought on solely by the Prime Minister’s desire to cling to power, it argues that the Emergency was as much Indira’s doing as it was the product of Indian democracy’s troubled relationship with popular politics, and a turning point in its history.

Here is an excerpt from the prologue of his book.

On the recommendation of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the president of India declared a state of Emergency just before midnight on June 25, 1975, claiming the existence of a threat to the internal security of the nation. The declaration suspended the constitutional rights of free speech and assembly, imposed censorship on the press, limited the power of the judiciary to review the executive’s actions, and ordered the arrest of opposition leaders. Before dawn broke, the police swooped down on the government’s opponents. Among those arrested was seventy- two- year- old Gandhian socialist Jayaprakash Narayan. Popularly known as JP, Narayan was widely respected as a freedom fighter against British rule and had once been a close associate of Indira’s father, Jawaharlal Nehru. In 1973, JP had come out of political retirement to lead a student and youth upsurge against Indira’s rule. Although most opposition political parties supported and joined his effort to unseat Indira, JP denied that his goal was narrowly political. He claimed his fight was for a fundamental social and political transformation to extend democracy, for what he called Total Revolution. JP addressed mass rallies of hundreds of thousands in the months preceding the imposition of the Emergency, charging Indira’s Congress party government with corruption and corroding democratic governance.

was reminded of the JP- led popular upsurge in August 2011, when I saw a crowd of tens of thousands brave the searing Delhi heat to gather in the Ramlila Maidan, a large ground customarily used for holding religious events and political rallies. Young and old, but mostly young, they came from all over the city and beyond in response to a call by the anti- corruption movement led by another Gandhian activist, seventy- four- yearold Anna Hazare. The atmosphere in the Maidan was festive, the air charged with raw energy and expectations of change. The trigger for the anti- corruption movement was the scandal that broke in 2010 alleging that ministers and officials of the ruling Congress party government had granted favors to telecom business interests, costing the exchequer billions of dollars. Widely reported in newspapers, on television, and on social media, the alleged scam rocked the country. It struck a chord with the experiences of ordinary Indians whose interactions with officialdom forced them to pay bribes for such routine matters as obtaining a driving license, receiving entitled welfare subsidies, or even just getting birth and death certificates. Venality at the top appeared to encapsulate the rot in the system that forced the common people to practice dishonesty and deceit in their daily lives. Into this prevailing atmosphere of disgust with the political system stepped Anna Hazare. Previously known for his activism in local struggles, he shot into the national limelight as an anti- corruption apostle when he went on a hunger strike in April 2011 to demand the appointment of a constitutionally protected ombudsman who would prosecute corrupt politicians. His fast sparked nationwide protests, giving birth to the anti- corruption movement. An unnerved Congress government capitulated, but the weak legislation it proposed did not satisfy Hazare, who announced another fast in protest. The hundreds of thousands who gathered in August 2011 had come to show their support for his call to cleanse democracy. When the diminutive Hazare appeared on the raised platform, a roar of approval rent the air.

Meanwhile, as the newspapers and television channels reported, the ruling Congress leaders fretted nervously in their offices and bungalows, uncertain how to respond to something without a clear political script. In a reprise of 1975, it was again a Gandhian who was shaking the government to its core with his powerful anti- corruption movement, arguing that the formal protocols of liberal democracy had to bend to the people’s will. And like his Gandhian predecessor Jayaprakash Narayan, Hazare enjoyed great moral prestige as a social worker without political ambitions. Similar to the 2010 Arab Spring and the Occupy movements, there was something organic about the 2011 popular upsurge in India. The enthusiastic participants demanding to be heard were mostly young and without affiliation to organized political parties. The Tahrir Square uprising ended the Mubarak regime; the Occupy movement introduced the language of the 99 versus 1 percent in political discourse; and the Congress government in India never recovered from the stigma of corruption foisted on it by the Anna Hazare movement, leading to its defeat in the 2014 parliamentary elections.

Since then, the populist politics of ressentiment has convulsed the world. In India, the Narendra Modi– led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) devised a clever electoral campaign that used the “development” slogan while stoking Hindu majoritarian resentments against minorities to ride to power in 2014.1 We have witnessed anti- immigrant and Islamophobic sentiments whipped up in the successful Brexit campaign and Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Across Europe, a roiling backlash against refugees has reshaped the political landscape. The role of conventional political parties as gatekeepers of liberal democracy in Germany, France, Italy, and several other countries is in crisis under the pressure of majoritarian sentiments. Strongmen like Victor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Erdoğan in Turkey, and Rodrigo Dutarte in the Philippines have mobilized populist anger as a strategy of rule. They incite pent- up anger and a sense of humiliation to fuel rightwing nationalist insurgencies against groups depicted as enemies of “the people” to shore up their authoritarian power and suppress dissent.

In Emergency Chronicles, Gyan Prakash delves into the chronicles of the preceding years to reveal how the fine balance between state power and civil rights was upset by the unfulfilled promise of democratic transformation.

A Translator’s Perspective Of ‘In The City, A Mirror Wandering’: Ashk and I

Posted on by Penguin India

Unfolding over the course of a single day, Ashk’s sweeping sequel to Falling Walls, In The City a Mirror Wandering explores the inner struggles of Chetan, an aspiring young writer, as he roams the labyrinthine streets of 1930s’ Jalandhar, haunted by his thwarted ambitions but intent on fulfilling his dreams.

Here is an evocative understanding of the author from the eyes of the translator, Daisy Rockwell:

“Part of the richness of In the City a Mirror Wandering lies in the sheer number of poems, folk sayings and songs quoted throughout the text. Some of these quotations are from famous texts and will be readily recognized even by readers of the English version, and some are not.

Among the famous quotations, several contain errors. Where I and other readers have identified these, I’ve added translator’s footnotes, giving the correct version of the text, especially if it was from another language (Sanskrit) or from a famous line of Urdu poetry that we retained in the translation.But why did Ashk include so many errors in his text? Was it because he had no internet, or relied on faulty recollections of famous poems?

Was he sloppy and did he not check his work? Having researched his files years ago, I am inclined towards a different explanation. What I found then was that Ashk was a compulsive editor. If an article was written about him in a newspaper or journal, he’d clip it out and mark it up, as though he were the author himself. This was not so much to make something appear more favourable or flattering, but rather to correct what he perceived as flaws in style or grammar. He would then have these documents retyped and placed in the file alongside the originals, drawing upon them for the purpose of blurbs or further quotation in writing about critical responses to his own work.”

 

Intensely poignant and vividly evocative, In the City a Mirror Wandering is an exploration of not only a dynamic, bustling city but also the rich tapestry of human emotion that consumes us all.

 

What if the Characters in the Ramayana could tell you their own Stories?

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Countless retellings, translations, and reworkings of the Ramayana’s captivating story exist-but none are as vivid, ingenious and powerful as Amit Majmudar’s Sitayana. Majmudar tells the story of one of the world’s most popular epics through multiple perspectives, presented in rapid sequence-from Hanuman and Ravana, down to even the squirrel helping Rama’s army build the bridge, and the medicinal herb Sanjeevani.

Read on to hear from six unusual voices in the Sitayana

 Sita

The daughter of Janaka, the girl who played horsey with Shiva’s own Bow. Daughter of the Earth, found in a furrow. Her fear response never developed properly. That Indian princess-in-exile. Resilient.

“‘You know what the poets call Agni, don’t you? They always refer to it by epithets: “Purifier” and “Bearer Away”. It’s really the same epithet. What the fire “bears away” are impurities. That’s why goldsmiths use fire to test gold. When Agni encounters you, Sita, what can he get a hold of? What can he carry off? He can’t purify what’s purer than he is. You don’t burn, my love, because the Fire finds nothing to burn away”

 

Hanuman

Vanara. Half wind on his father’s side. No one size or strength by nature. A most metaphysical monkey.

 

Vibhishana

God’s spy in Ravana’s court. Saboteur in waiting. Brahmin-Rakshasa hybrid. Least monster and most priest. Has an ‘unnatural proclivity for poetry.’

“It was never this way when I was a boy and my stepbrother Kubera was king. He used that aerial chariot to survey the streets for litter each morning, and come nightfall, he patrolled personally for window vandals. Lanka was a much smaller city then, and its epithet ‘golden’ came from the purity of its coinage, not its building materials. Today, our dominant trait is cruelty.”

 

Indrajit

Firstborn son of Ravana and Queen Mandodari. Formerly known as Meghnad. Warrior who defeated Indra. Next in line for the throne of Lanka.

“Imagine if I’d been one of only four or five sons, coddled and praised and known by name—what an underachiever I would be today! Instead of someone who defeated Indra, chief of the Gods, in one on-one combat. I would still be ‘Meghnad’, which was my birth name, instead of Indrajit. My father gave me that name after I got home from the battle, my head bandaged, my armour so dented it looked like foil crumpled and flattened back out.”

 

Ravana

Half demon-half Rakshasa hybrid. The ten-headed one—the long-nosed philosopher, the one-eyed soldier, the wavy-maned lover, the square-jawed alpha, the messy-haired poet, the shifty-eyed gambler, the moustached actor, and the thin-lipped sociopath.

“If you think my ten heads are evil, wait till you see what’s coming—the thousand-headed bureaucracies of murder and the murderous million-armed street mobs. What are you trying to accomplish, with all your milquetoast goodness? The age of pious sons and faithful husbands is over. The future is one long dark age until the dancing Ascetic stomps it all flat in his sphere of fire.”

 

Mandodari

First Queen of Lanka. Ageing wife. Mother of Indrajit and Akshaye. Has pride of place in the household, but is humiliated in her absence by mistress after mistress.

“He will show me his true form again and love me with it. He will be once again what he always was. Temporarily eternally mine.”

 

Sanjeevani

Green medicinal herb, seven fronds—small pods. All green. Was as common as grass a yuga ago. Now only found on Mount Rishab.

“‘I’m sorry,’ said Vishnu to us plants, ‘but all those several eloquent tongues of yours, always gossiping and poetizing, are going to go still and limp. They’ll be called petals and leaves from now on, and that is that. If the world is getting nastier for the human beings and the animals they’re going to start eating soon, it’s only fair I inflict something on you, too.’”

Countless retellings, translations, and reworkings of the Ramayana’s captivating story exist-but none are as vivid, ingenious and powerful as Amit Majmudar’s Sitayana.

Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan’s 10 Favourite Songs

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Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan is a traditional Hindustani classical vocalist belonging to the illustrious Rampur Sahaswan Gharana, which owes allegiance to the seniya tradition.

Performing since he was eight years old, his career spans over a period of seventy-five years. He has always believed in giving back to the society, be it by identifying and nurturing some of the best musicians in India or mesmerizing the nation through music.

Here is a list of his favourite songs.

Aj hun aaye baalma saawan beeta jaaye by Mohammad Rafi

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Saathi re bhool na jaana mera pyar by Ravindra Jain Asha Bhosle

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Yaad piya ki aaye  by Bade Ghulam Ali Khan

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Piya Haji Ali by A. R. Rahman

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Jhula Kinne daala re by Shahida Khan

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Abhi mujh mein kahin by Sonu Nigam

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Tu hi re by Hariharan and Kavita Krishnamurthy

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Behti Hawa sa tha woh by  Shaan, Shantanu Moitra

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Ka karu sajni aaye na baalam by K. J. Yesudas

A Dream I Lived Alone is a heart-warming story of love, riyaz, dedication and the maestro of music, Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan.

How Pole-Vaulting Can Help Energy, Environment and Employment Problems in India

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An exhilarating manifesto for the future, Leapfrogging to Pole-vaulting by Dr. R.A. Mashelkar and Mr. Ravi Pandit convinces readers to make the shift from reactive leapfrogging to proactive pole-vaulting through radical transformation.

Here are a few pole-vaulting ideas which pose as an example for further development with challenges relating to energy, environment and employment – the 3Es, in India:

One of the most important aspect of pole-vaulting is to not better a sector in order to compete but to genuinely feel the need to develop the sector for a better future. One of the example for this is the White Revolution in India which ended up providing better means of earning for small farmers and milk producers. As in the formation of AMUL where technological improvements of storing and increasing the milk production also played an important role, India needs more of such efficient initiatives in order to generate an all-round development.

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With the advent of new-age technological developments today’s common man has come a long way to living a better life as compared to that experienced by the Kings and Queens of the olden days. One such example is the establishment of Uber in India. It has resulted in creating more job opportunities. Such innovative ideas not only help with significant decrease in the fuel consumption per capita but also help in reducing the impact of vehicular pollution on the environment.

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One of the main reasons for air-borne health problem in rural India is due to the domestic burning of biomass for cooking purposes in such areas. However, the introduction of electricity on these areas has essentially followed a decrease in kerosene and the polluting biomass-fuel consumption. Thus, the replacement of such methods with clean energy resources could further reduce the risk of high pollution levels in the country.

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There is a dire need of alternate sources of clean energy in India. The government could be a great tool in influencing a boosting an innovative and an energy efficient idea. A good example of this is India’s Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA). While it was a market-driven initiative, the valuable support from the government has lead it to result in reduced carbon emissions and brought in an increased investment in the manufacturing of LED bulbs, thereby resulting in a growth in employment rates.

Dr. Mashelkar and Mr. Pandit ably show in this must-read book that, as an interplay of global issues constantly raise the bar for innovation today, there has never been a better time to use our learnings to pole-vault over those bars into a new future!

 

Know About A Sting-Op Through The Eyes Of Bhupen Patel

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Bhupen Patel in his book, The Anatomy of a Sting allows readers a glimpse into the exciting life of an investigative journalist through these narrative accounts. He has exposed a number of unethical activities during the course of his career, including mental asylums admitting patients without paperwork and investigations as well as illegal agents who provide Arab men with “temporary” wives. In this book, he reveals the process of and the efforts behind the scenes of various discreet investigations.

Here we give you a glimpse into one of the intriguing cases cracked by Bhupen Patel –

“To us, a sting operation is nothing less than a police investigation. The difference is that reporters learn on the job without any specific training. Also, we rarely have backup and definitely don’t have arms for self-defence. I decided to do some groundwork first and stepped out to check if the address provided in the classified ad was legitimate. Since I would be accompanied by a female colleague and it would just be the two of us, it was important to have an idea of the surroundings, the number of people there and the escape routes. I visited the office of Saathi Film International, located on the mezzanine floor of one of the industrial units of Anis Compound on the Andheri–Ghatkopar Link Road, a hub of small-scale industries in Mumbai. The ground floor had a few auto garages and spare parts shops. I was not surprised that the office did not have any nameplates or boards. From the dust on the shutters, it looked as though the premises had been shut for over a month. Apart from the door, a window was the only escape route from that small office.

I made inquiries with the staff of some of the shops in the locality but no one had a clue about the production house. A few things seemed clear to me—the company had hired the office just a few days ago and seemed highly suspect. It was unlikely that they would rent an office in this area, which didn’t have the remotest ties with Bollywood. Without any assistance or support from authorities, I wasn’t sure if the story was worth following up. But when I reported back to office, I realized I had to give it a shot.

The Virtual Spy

Once we decided to go ahead with the story, the next important decision was to pick our third and most important partner: the hidden camera. Back then, spy cameras were relatively new, unlike now when the city’s electronic stores on Lamington Road/DB Marg have a whole range at various prices. One can buy spy cameras for Rs 1500–2000, hidden in buttons, spectacles, watches, ties, etc. The ‘Made in China’ cameras can easily pull off three or four assignments without any glitches. But ten years ago, there was very little choice.

The products available were of inferior quality, and the better cameras had a lot of wiring and were tough to carry on your person. I was reminded of a senior reporter friend’s experience. He had been on a sting operation about bribes taken by policemen, and just when his assignment was about to end, his camera had betrayed him. He put his hand in

his pocket to remove cash but unfortunately unplugged the wires from the batteries, which popped out from his shirt. Since spy cameras were not as popular then, luckily for him, the officer bought his theory that he had unplugged the batteries of his hearing machine. I had to make sure I didn’t repeat this mistake.

The Pre-Production

 As a team, it was important for Ruhi and me to be on the same page. All our research was in place but we had to be prepared for the worst. It was important that we discussed the characters we were about to play—the names, backgrounds, families, experiences, qualifications, likes and dislikes, all of it. We decided that Ruhi would pose as a newcomer who had come to Mumbai to try her luck in the film industry. I became the friend who would accompany her to various casting agencies. We fixed the camera in Ruhi’s bag and I decided to wear a watch camera as a backup. We decided to meet somewhere close to the office of Saathi Film International the next morning.

Acting Begins

Location: Office of Saathi Film International

Posing as Ruhi Ahmed, who had dreamed of becoming the next Madhuri Dixit, and Bhupen Shah, her companion, we called on the office of Saathi Film International.We reached at noon, as decided. After going over the details once more, we tried to call the office number listed in the ad but it was temporarily out of service. So we decided to just knock on the door. We were welcomed by the strong stench of gutkha into a small room that had been divided into two, the walls of which were stained red with the constant spitting. I don’t know how Bollywood’s jhakaas man Anil Kapoor and ‘Aakhri Pasta’ Chunky Pandey continued to smile in the posters on the walls in that grimy room. The small space had a wooden table, four plastic chairs for visitors and a wooden shelf with the idols of Hindu gods and goddesses and lit incense sticks. We tried to sit close to the idols, not to pray for a successful sting or our safety, but for some relief from the unbearable odour in the room.

Two men were sitting on revolving chairs, with posters of many struggling actors around them. They were presented to us as big names in the industry, though both of us, as knowledgeable Bollywood buffs, had never seen them. But we played along and admired how they were transforming dreams into reality. I must credit them for their honesty of taking no credit for the career and success of the only two well-known faces on their wall, Anil Kapoor and Chunky Pandey. However, they did mention that they knew the two very well. Trying to come to the point, Ruhi asked them about the advertisement in the newspaper. Brandishing a broad smile, one of them said, ‘Maiiidumb, pahile intra-ducsun to kijiye’ (Madam, first introduce yourself). As per the plan we gave our fake ‘intra-ducsun’ to the man who identified himself as Mahesh Pancholi and his partner as Salim Sheikh. Since we were lying ourselves, we obviously doubted the credibility of their identities.They boasted about how the advertisement had got a tremendous response, which was clearly a false claim, especially with a defunct phone. Moreover, there was not a soul except for us. They went on to claim that after auditioning a series of actors, they had almost made up their minds to sign on two actors who they identified as Prashant Navle and Vaishali Patel. They were both experienced artists who had already done a couple of low-budget movies in the past. ‘Woh toh dedh lakh rupaya bhi de rahe hain phillam keliye,’ (they were even giving Rs 1.5 lakh for the film), boasted Pancholi. We pretended to be immensely disappointed and almost got up from our seats when he held my hand and said, ‘Sad mat hoiye, kuch karte hain. Phillam mein do lead chahiye . . . doosra jodi ab bhi bacha hai’”

Each account in The Anatomy of a Sting will keep you on the edge of your seat and allow a glimpse into the life of an investigative journalist.

Five Stories From ‘If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi’ That Will Get You Thinking

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In eleven sharp, surprising stories, Neel Patel gives voice to our most deeply held stereotypes and then slowly undermines them. His characters, almost all of whom are first-generation Indian Americans, subvert our expectations that they will sit quietly by. Ranging across the country, Patel’s stories-empathetic, provocative, twisting, and wryly funny-introduce a bold new literary voice, one that feels timelier than ever.

Here are some evocative lines from the book that will make you want to read more!

If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi examines the collisions of old world and new world, small town and big city, traditional beliefs (like arranged marriages) and modern rituals (like Facebook stalking).

 

15 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘The Tata Group’

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Tata. A name synonymous with Indian industry. A name known to Indians for generations. A name acknowledged for adventure and achievement, excellence and ethics, innovation and integrity, perseverance and performance, reformation and responsibility, struggle and success. A name known for salt, software, cars, communications, perfumes, pesticides, tea, trucks, housing, hospitality, steel and gold. A name that greets every other Indian every single day.

Here are a few surprising facts about Tata Group.

1. By 2018, every single day, 4.5-crore cups of Tetley tea were consumed across the globe, making Tata Global Beverages the world’s second largest tea company.

2. Established in 1868, it is India’s largest conglomerate, with products and services in over 150 countries, and operations in 100 countries across six continents.

3. With nearly 700,000 employees, it is India’s third largest employer after the Indian railways and defence forces.

4. Acknowledged as the founder of the Tata Group, Jamsetji is often referred to as the ‘father of Indian industry’.

5. The Tata Group has over 100 operating companies of which twenty-nine are publicly listed in India.

6. The Tata group has also been a significant contributor to India’s growth story. In 2018, it contributed about 4 per cent to the country’s GDP and paid 2.24 per cent of the total taxation in India, amounting to a whopping ₹47,195 crore—the highest by any corporate group.

7. An important component of the Tatas’ commitment to society and sustainability was employee volunteering, christened as Tata Engage. F In the first four years, over 150,000 volunteers participated from across Tata companies. The Pro-Engage Project gave options to employees to mentor and coach non-profits to build and sustain their capacity for up to six months mainly during weekends,holidays and after-work hours.

8. In 1945, when management as a discipline was not fully developed even in Western countries, the Tatas set up Tata Industries—the first technocratic structure in Indian business.

9. In late-1880s, when there was no electricity in India, Empress Mills – Tatas’ flagship textile company, was providing healthy work environment in its factories through installation of humidifying systems and dust-removing apparatus to protect the health of his employees and machinery; along with provident fund, gratuity and accident compensation schemes, when they were unheard of in India, and several parts of the world.

10. Sir Dorabji Tata (second Chairman of Tata Sons and son of Jamsetji Tata) provided cheap and clean energy to Mumbai through hydro-electric power generation in 1910 under the Tata Hydro Electric Company (now Tata Power), a century before the term ‘clean energy’ first became popular.

11. In 1952, Tatas started the Lakme brand of cosmetics as an outcome of a request from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s Office.

12. In 1974, when the Chota Nagpur region had become the epicenter of the smallpox epidemic, the World Health Organization (WHO), requested the collaboration of Tata Steel. The company obliged with resources and manpower. In six months, 20,500 villages and 82 towns were inoculated. By 1975, India was declared free of smallpox, for the first time in history.

13. In 1981, Tata Chemicals became one of the first companies in India to provide employee stock options.

14. Employees were even offered loans on lenient terms to buy debentures, along with special assistance of external agencies, who provided them with investor education.

15. In the 25 years after India’s economic liberalization, the Tata companies have created more wealth for shareholders than large conglomerates in India like Reliance and Aditya Birla and similar conglomerates in other countries including Siemens, Mitsubishi, GE and Berkshire Hathaway.

 The Tata Group  decodes the Tata way of business, making it an exceptional blend of a business biography and management classic.

 

 

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