Power, wealth not my main stakes: Ratan Tata

Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata has said that power and wealth are not his two main stakes and ruled out joining politics after his retirement in 2012.

"I will certainly not join politics. I would like to be remembered as a clean businessman who has not partaken in any twists and turns beneath the surface, and one who has been reasonably successful," Tata said in an interview to Fortune India magazine.

"Power and wealth are not two of my main stakes," the chief of the $72,000 billion conglomerate said.

Talking about the leaking of tapes containing his conversation with corporate lobbyist Niira Radia, Tata said, "It's difficult, but more than that, it's hurtful."

"In the US, the NSA and the FBI do not hand out those conversations so that a mayor talking to his mistress has his marital problems aired. That is like what you expect in some little republic," he said.

Earlier in November last year he had said that "top these sorts of banana republic kind of attacks on whoever one chooses to attack, even before the person has, what I consider, every Indian's right to be considered innocent, until found guilty in a court of law, not on the street, not in this way".

He later moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the government to probe the leakage of tapes containing his private conversations with Radia, and stop further publication of the same.

"What are we doing as a country? We are convicting people, alleging things, almost sentencing them before they're proven guilty, and without any proof - just on the basis of hearsay and phone conversations," Tata wondered in the Fortune interview.

"In my case, I am saying that people are authorised to have surveillance on certain people for national security or otherwise," he observed.

"If you have to prosecute, you prosecute. That is your business," he said.