The man who looked east

Syamal Gupta, a senior Tata executive, helped change India's perception

The East India Company exploded the myth that trade follows the flag. It’s the other way round. Political relations develop in the wake of economic ties. So, if “Act East” was not just another slogan to upstage P V Narasimha Rao’s epochal “Look East”, Narendra Modi should study the 10 pioneering years that Syamal Gupta, a senior Tata executive, spent in Singapore.

Not only Singapore. The events that led to Mr Gupta’s appointment to the Presidents Investors’ Advisory Councils of Tanzania, Ghana and Uganda, as well as Namibia’s honorary consul in Mumbai, should similarly enable the prime minister to appreciate that trade and investment lie at the core of constructive diplomacy. As Kamala Harris reminded listeners in Thursday’s US vice-presidential debate, Donald Trump’s unsuccessful trade war with China has impoverished hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Lee Kuan Yew first mentioned Mr Gupta to me. Then, S R Nathan, president of Singapore, did so. Suppiah Dhanabalan, a former foreign minister who might have been Singapore’s first ethnic Indian prime minister, wondered how Mr Gupta managed to slog on in a difficult field like precision tools and dyes at a time when “all kinds of acrobatics were needed for Indians to travel, leave alone set up overseas operations”. Ng Pock Too, politician and businessman, lamented that Tata faded out in Singapore because“the quality of people who came afterwards was not the same as Syamal!”

I was impressed because Singaporeans don’t often compliment Indians from India. Mr Gupta, a mechanical engineer from Jadavpur University before further training at the Imperial College in London and in Dusseldorf, and an early product of the Harvard Business School’s advanced management course, was the exception. 

Like the four Singaporeans, Thomas Abraham, India’s first high commissioner to Singapore, confirmed that Mr Gupta was “a very clever fellow” who spearheaded the campaign that transformed a “pestilential and immoral cesspool” (a British politician’s description of Singapore) that Atal Bihari Vajpayee compared to Calcutta into a glittering international trade mart. In February 1972, Mr Gupta set up Tata Precision Industries, the first Indian company in Singapore and for many years the only one, followed by the first technical training institute. A grateful Lee thanked JRD Tata for both ventures and included Mr Gupta in the delegation he led to Atlanta in 1976 at Jimmy Carter’s invitation to attract American investors to Singapore.

All this I discovered when, intrigued by Lee’s racial sophistication and totally unfounded reputation for being anti-Indian, I spent some time in Singapore unearthing the untold story. The outcome was my book Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew’s Mission India. That’s when I sought out Syamal Gupta and was delighted to find a simple, warm and hospitable man who knew a great deal and had huge achievements but whose natural humility had not been corrupted by success.  

At last — belatedly — we have the tale from the horse’s own mouth. Now pushing 87, Mr Gupta, former director of Tata Sons and chairman of Tata International, covers a wide canvas in the simply told but highly readable Quintessentially Tata: My Journey over 55 Summers. Rupa’s slim volume of well under 200 pages including notes is a steal at only Rs 295. Singapore is only part of Mr Gupta’s story, albeit a shining highlight in both personal and public terms. 

Those who look for lurid details about Ratan Tata’s fall-out with Cyrus Mistry, political canards about the path-breaking India-Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement, or how the promised joint venture between Tata and Singapore Airlines was scuttled will be disappointed. The Panglossian tone of Quintessentially Tata rules out ephemeral excitement. But Mr Gupta does regale us with the unfamiliar picture of “a lot of Indians in dhotis selling foreign exchange” in Singapore markets. He describes Jamsetji Tata’s attempt to rope in Swami Vivekananda after they met on the boat from Yokohama to Vancouver, and giving a ride on his scooter to Ratan Tata.

Like the hero of Kipling’s If, Mr Gupta can “walk with kings — nor lose the common touch.” Among the other political kings he consorted with were A P J Abdul Kalam and Gordon Brown, South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki, and — foremost —Kenneth Kaunda, president of Zambia. 

Indians have an image problem worldwide. Africans saw them as“basically traders” who “did their business in Africa and lived in London while their heart was in India.” Mr Gupta believes he succeeded in changing this mindset. Whether future foreign policy will succeed in taking advantage of the change will depend largely on Mr Modi’s own priorities. But it is worth stressing that Singapore’s GIC, a sovereign wealth fund, would not have agreed last week to invest Rs 5,512 crore in 1.22 per cent of the equity in the holding company of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail if Syamal Gupta’s early initiative had not inspired confidence in India’s future.