Hitting out at the work culture of managers of British firms, Corus and JLR, Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata has said 'nobody is willing to go the extra mile' in critical situations, while their Indian counterparts would work till midnight in 'a war-like situation'.
"It's a work-ethic issue. In my experience, in both Corus and Jaguar-Land Rover (JLR) nobody is willing to go the extra mile," he said in an interview with The Times daily.
His comments comes at a time when the Tata Group has announced cutting of 1,200 jobs at Scunthorpe plant, as well as shedding 300 jobs at Teeside and Hartlepool sites of Corus.
Tata suggested that British managers did not "go the extra mile" while those in India were working in "a war-like situation".
"I feel if you have come from Bombay to have a meeting and the meeting goes till 6 pm, I would expect that you won't at 5 o'clock say, 'Sorry, I have my train to catch. I have to go home'. Friday from 3.30 pm you can't find anybody in their office," he said.
He added: "In India, if you are in a crisis, if it means working to midnight, you would do it. The worker in JLR seems to be willing to do that, the management is not".
"The entire engineering group at JLR would be empty on Friday evening, and you have got delays in product introduction. That's the thing that doesn't happen in China or in Indonesia or in Thailand or in Singapore," he said.
However, Tata said "the new management has put an end to that," adding that there was a "certain comfort level that comes from a country that has had good times".
He also said Britain and the US could expect to suffer a further dwindling of manufacturing bases unless their approach changed.
Tata is a member of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Group, co-chairman of the UK-India CEO Forum, which meets at Downing Street, and one of the closest senior David Cameron.
He lamented a lack of dynamism in industry here, saying that Britain "needs a real push. It needs nationalism. The sort of spirit that comes during a war. It needs people really to want to see the UK sitting again, may be not as a colonial power, but as an economic power", he added.
However, Tata Group in a statement has said that "the Times article fundamentally misrepresents the interview."
In response to the Times claims that Tata said British managers were "lazy", the statement said "at no stage in the interview did Tata make this comment.
"This entire interview was recorded and the transcript will confirm the misinformation created by this alleged quote," it said, adding that the interview took place two months ago.