Is "Kumar" really the most important Bengali in Britain?
The answer to that probably is yes.
To give Sushanta Kumar Bhattacharyya all his titles, he is professor of engineering at Warwick University where he founded the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) in 1980 as an interface between academia and manufacturing industry and remains its chairman.
Kumar is also a member of the House of Lords which makes him Professor Baron (Kumar) Bhattacharyya, of Moseley in the County of West Midlands, Kt. CBE FREng FRS.
But everyone calls him just "Kumar".
Kumar is right now in India - on Saturday, he and Warwick's vice-chancellor Nigel Thrift were at the Taj Mahal Hotel to celebrate the university's 50th anniversary and Indian industry's increasing dependence on WMG. WMG's Indian alumni number 800 - among them Nusli Wadia's sons, Ness and Jehangir; Venu Srinivasan of TVS Motors and his son, Sudarshan Venu, and daughter Lakshmi; and Rahul Bajaj's sons, Rajiv and Sanjiv.
WMG, the biggest centre of its kind in the world, has been praised by US President Barack Obama. China recently bestowed the country's first National Rainbow Bridge Award on Kumar.
Former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called Kumar "a true pioneer". Industrialist Ratan Tata, who bought Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) at Kumar's prompting, holds him in high regard. JLR's German-born chief executive Ralf Speth calls Kumar a "genius in so many ways".
Given all this praise, it is reasonable to wonder whether Kumar has a big head.
He grins and doesn't mind being teased with the question: "Do you think being a genius and being a Bengali are two sides of the same coin?"
"I think so," he laughs.
"Do you think being arrogant and Bengali..."
At that, he cuts in: "I am not arrogant: if you are arrogant you don't survive."
WMG testifies to the fact that he's survived - and rather well, at that. It employs 600 staff and has a turnover of £200m and government and industry grants worth half a billion pounds. It has links with 1,000 global companies, and 4,000 people doing postgraduate work.
The Tata group is already heavily involved at WMG, and investing a further £150m in a 33,300 square metre National Automotive Innovation Centre which will be ready by 2017 and create 4,000 new R&D jobs.
The WMG, essentially a science city with eight research buildings, an hour by fast train from Euston, London, was started with the support of Warwick's first vice-chancellor, the late Jack (later Lord) Butterworth.
Deputy vice-chancellor Stuart Croft, a political scientist who will be vice-chancellor in February, emphasises that Kumar's "importance to the university is growing. He is becoming more central, even more significant because of the sheer scale and quality of the developments in applied engineering that he is leading."
Research is being conducted into cars of the future with much lower emission; lighter but stronger steel; nano and medical digital technology; and advanced robots. There could even be cars that wake up sleepy drivers.
The City of Coventry, where Warwick University is located, recently gave him and Ratan Tata the Freedom of the City, an honour that has been given to only 13 people since 1914.
During the ceremony held inside Coventry Cathedral, Tata confirmed that he bought JLR (in 2008 for £1.15bn) only on Kumar's say so.
"Lord Bhattacharyya forced me to spend the day racing around Coventry in his daughter's Mini Cooper," he said in his speech. "At the end of the day, I came back flabbergasted with the capabilities I saw."
Kumar is encouraged to relate the moment one morning back in 2008 when he mentioned JLR to Tata.
"It was in my house - Ratan is passionate about cars. I said, 'Why don't you come and have a look at JLR? It is being sold anyway to private equity people.' I was concerned that if JLR goes, there will be no car industry (left) in UK. He went and saw and was impressed."
Kumar admits he also asked Tata to buy into British steel but the purchase of Corus proved a nightmare. Tata Steel has had to close British mills and dismiss workers.
Much has happened since 2002 when Kumar's biography, Kumar Bhattacharyya: The Unsung Guru, was published by Andrew Lorenz, former business editor of The Sunday Times.
Kumar likes pointing out the tiny room in the engineering department where he started WMG 35 years ago with literally "a table, a chair and a secretary". It was hard convincing manufacturing industries that they could usefully form partnerships with university engineers engaged in R&D.
But attitudes slowly changed, Kumar notes in an introduction to Lorenz's biography, when "an initial group of five firms agreed to support the (collaboration) programme: British Leyland, Lucas, GKN, Shorts and Rolls-Royce Aerospace." Later they were joined by British Airways and British Aerospace.
Lorenz, now chairman of a financial PR company, FTI Consulting, states that what Kumar brought to WMG "from Day One was something that at that time was very rare - an understanding of what were the key drivers in world manufacturing industry - for example, no one in the UK had heard of the Toyota Production System until he started talking about it, because he had visited Toyota and seen it in action. So he pioneered in the UK what MIT subsequently christened 'Lean Manufacturing'."
Kumar - born in Dhaka in 1940 - had begun his career as an apprentice with the local engineering firm, Lucas. At 21, he had arrived in England after taking a degree at IIT Kharagpur, where his father was a professor of chemistry, to study engineering at Birmingham University. Kumar's passion was to buy old cars, do them up and sell them for a profit.
Incidentally, WMG is setting up a Made in India Manufacturing Centre at IIT Kharagpur.
"It will be a mini Warwick Manufacturing Group," reveals Kumar. "And companies like Tata have decided to put money into it."
When Lucas was taken over, Kumar bought Hilver, a large Victorian house with two acres of grounds which Lucas had once used as a training centre.
Hilver has been home to Kumar, his Irish-born wife, Bridie, and their three daughters, Anita, Tina and Malini.
The Financial Times referred to Hilver when profiling Kumar who, it said, "has always been an internationalist. Surrounding the carefully restored mantelpieces and antique furniture at Hilver, there are artworks and curios from all over the world, including Chinese porcelain, glassware from Murano, exquisite Indian miniatures, antique clocks from France and paintings from South Africa and Thailand."
But Kumar tells The Telegraph that "I am a Bengali - whatever the politics in Bengal, I will always support Bengal."
This is a chance to ask whether, since he is best friends with Ratan Tata, he could undertake a Kissinger role and facilitate a patch up between him and Mamata Banerjee and persuade Tata babu to return to Singur.
Kumar does not look very hopeful.
"Will she apologise?" he asks.
Engineering guru
- An alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, Kumar landed in Britain at age 21
- Began his career as an apprentice with Lucas, a local engineering firm
- Currently professor of engineering, Warwick University
- Founded Warwick Manufacturing Group in 1980; WMG is setting up a Made in India Manufacturing Centre at IIT Kharagpur
- Margaret Thatcher called him ‘a true pioneer’
- Member of House of Lords
- Prompted Ratan Tata to buy Jaguar Land Rover in 2008
- Pioneered in the UK what MIT later called ‘Lean Manufacturing’
