Dehra Dun, Nov. 15: Tata Group chairman, Mr Ratan Tata, on Monday said he did not enter the airline business as he was not comfortable with the idea of dishing out a bribe of `15 crore to a minister, as had been suggested to him by an industrialist.
He regretted that despite being a pioneer in the airline industry, the group had faced enormous problems in setting up a domestic airline in collaboration with Singapore Airlines.
“We approached three Prime Ministers as well. But an individual thwarted our efforts to form the airline,” Mr Tata said, recalling how he spurned the suggestion by a fellow industrialist.
He, however, did not name the individual. Amid Tatas’ efforts to set up a joint venture with Singapore Airlines, a fellow industrialist had said: “You are stupid people. The minister in question was asking for `15 crore. Why didn’t you pay the money?”
Narrating the incident, Mr Tata said, “I did not want to go to the bed knowing well that I set up an airline by paying `15 crore.”
Mr Ratan Tata’s predecessor, Mr J.R.D. Tata, had set up the first commercial airline in India — Tata Airlines — in the 1930s and that was later in the 1950s taken over by the government and rechristened as Air India.
Responding to questions about how he succeeded without compromising his ethics and values, the septuagenarian said he did not have a methodology in this regard, but went on to narrate the entire history of how Tatas failed to re-enter the aviation business.
After taking over the reins of the group, he tried at least on three occassions to pursue the aviation business and accordingly moved the government of the day in 1995, 1997 and 2001.
On the last ocassion, (2001), it was the BJP government when Tatas and Singapore Airlines withdrew as sole bidders their joint bid for Air India, citing political opposition to the sale.
Earlier in 1995 and subsequently in 2000, the consortium had made concerted efforts to pick up stake in Air India, but the controversies that engulfed disinvestment through a strategic sale in a public sector unit and the unions’agitation prevented materialisation of the bids. Mr Tata, who took over the group in 1991 and has since overseen the global expansion of the group, said he doesn’t have plans to change his retirement plans, which was due in 2012.