Tata Steel's skills on 'people issues' need honing: MD

Having faced delays in land acquisition for several projects, Tata Steel would have to sharpen its skills in dealing with people issues, said Managing Director H M Nerurkar.

“Confidence-building among people and getting feet on the ground are areas where we need to sharpen our skills,” he said while addressing a ‘national conference on leadership’ organised by the CII-Suresh Neotia Centre of Excellence For Leadership.

Nerurkar’s comments on the need to understand the emotive issues related to land acquisition better were the first to come from the Tata Group, facing delays in almost all major new projects. The most famous resistance being the Nano plant at Singur in West Bengal, leading to a pullout from the site.

Added Nerurkar: “Sometimes, people like us who live in cities do not understand the psyche of the rural people.” Prior to assuming the role of chief operating officer (steel) in 2007, he was vice president (project and technology), in charge of getting through the Kalinganagar project in Orissa — it was announced in 2004 and ran into a serious land agitation problem in early 2006.

Five years after signing the memorandum of understanding with the Orissa government, Tata Steel is still waiting for the last 100 families to leave the site. Land issues had delayed the company’s Chhattisgarh steel project and titanium project in Tamil Nadu as well. In fact, most of new mega industrial projects have been held up across the country due to land woes.

But, Nerurkar also accused vested interests and political parties of having a hand in the agitation for land. He mentioned the company’s ferrochrome plant, 20 km from the Kalinganagar site. Nerurkar said the standard of living of the people around the ferrochrome plant had improved dramatically, yet the people at Kalinganagar were not moving from the project site.

“There has to be some vested interest…what happened here for the Nano project. There is an element of politics. At the political level, there has to be a will from the government to implement projects,” he said.