Tarun Das

Calcutta, Nov. 3: His career coincided with that of 14 Prime Ministers and 17 finance ministers, and he stayed at the helm for more than three decades. He is a Bengali but he is neither Jyoti Basu nor Pranab Mukherjee.

Then, he has to be Tarun Das, who has retired from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which was born and brought up under his gaze to become the country’s most powerful pan-Indian business association. The end of the 35-year stint was announced by the CII today.

Das pioneered in the country the concept of a professional chamber — such outfits till then were run largely as extended fiefs of business families. He transformed the “clubby” system into a muscular establishment that can lobby hard and state its case with facts and figures.

Das today summed up the change between 1963 — when man had not landed on the moon, Jawaharlal Nehru was Prime Minister, Bengal was still a force to reckon with in industry and he had begun his career with an industry association — and now.

“Change in the culture and mindset of Indian industry — that it can survive without protection, that it won’t be wiped out by China and that it can globally compete,” the 70-year-old Das said this evening.

Das has stepped down as chief mentor of the CII, a post he had been holding for the past five years. Before that, he led the organisation and its earlier avatar for 30 years.

Das had started out as a management trainee in the then Indian Engineering Association (IEA) on a monthly salary of Rs 750. “We had to go to Udyog Bhavan (which houses the industry ministry) every day as everything was centrally micro-managed. Not that we don’t have to visit it any more, but the frequency has certainly come down,” he said.

How did he manage to remain at the top for so long? “Luck, luck, luck. Somebody up there must be looking after me. So many people try so hard.”

Das did take gambles and some paid off. Instead of joining industry, he opted for a chamber. After merging the IEA with the Engineering Association of India, he decided to move to Delhi as director-general of the new entity, the Association of Indian Engineering Industry (AIEI), in 1974.

“Everyone said ‘don’t go to Delhi. It’s a jungle out there. And you don’t have contacts’. But my father said ‘try. And if you fail, come back’,” Das reminisced.

Das said former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi suggested to him to build an industry body that represents all manufacturing segments.

Till then, national association efforts were mostly confined to engineering. Thus began an initiative to transform the AIEI, out of which the CII was born in 1991, the year Rajiv Gandhi died.

What does Das think of Bengal today?

“Concerned. I think the state should for the time being look at service industry where one can build vertically and also provide white-collar jobs rather than manufacturing which needs large chunks of land,” he said.

“I am planning to write a book. It will be about some 20 individuals who helped change the industry over the years. I want to write it soon,” he added.

Das named P.K. Nanda, a former MD of Metal Box; Rahul Bajaj, Ratan Tata, Suresh Krishna of TVS and Brij Mohan Munjal of Hero Group the outstanding business leaders he had worked with.

As one of the promoters, Tata was among those who played a role in bringing Das as chairman of Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd at a time the company was in doldrums.

Das said he would still be active in HPL, a venture he helped pull out of trouble. His mother, aged 99, lives in Calcutta, where he comes often to see her.

Das felt that his greatest achievement lay in persuading Indian industry to believe that it could compete globally.

Competing chamber Ficci’s Amit Mitra, another association spearhead from Bengal, concurred.

“He left a significant contribution to the evolving business and economic matrix of India,” Mitra said.

“I collaborated and also healthily competed” with Das in the past 15 years as the secretary-general of Ficci, Mitra added.