Is the capitalistic model broken?

Amid the public outpouring of grief upon the passing of Ratan Tata, I became reflective. Could Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev's long-cycle theory be at work about enterprise management? Is it in decline? Should there be fresh thought and action? Can future business leaders be loved as much as they are respected?

- R GOPALAKRISHNAN

Ratan was not the first group head to receive adulation. Archives show when Jamsetji died in 1904, the public was full of praise and love for him, as indeed happened when Dorabji Tata died in 1932, and yet again, when JRD Tata passed on in 1993. How many enterprises have earned the public's respect and love over a century and more?

A crucially important attribute of these leaders was their ability to lead leaders. Jamsetji relied upon Bezonji Mehta and Burjorji Padshah. JRD honoured leaders who, in his own opinion, were "better than him" - for example, Sumant Moolgaokar, Nani Palkhivala, and Darbari Seth. Ratan's success was enhanced by leaders like Faqir Chand Kohli, Noshir Soonawala, and Jamshed Irani. As JRD would say, Tata leaders had to be "affectionate".

In 1910, a student of Lucknow University, B Mukherjee, asked noted economist Alfred Marshall about how India could grow faster. Recall that 1910 was the peak of the Raj and the Georgian British Empire, with the imperious Lord Curzon having left as viceroy just five years earlier. Exactly 114 years later, I quote Marshall's reply: "If India had a score or two men like Mr Tata (Jamsetji), and thousands of men with Japanese interest in realities, with virile contempt of speech-making in politics and law courts India would soon be a great nation" (italics mine).