Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (July 29, 1904-November 29, 1993) was a pioneer aviator and leading businessman.
J.R.D. Tata was born to an Indian father and a French mother in Paris.
He was educated in France, Japan and England before being drafted into the French army for a mandatory one-year period.
JRD then set his mind on securing an engineering degree from Cambridge, but his father summoned him back to India. He soon found himself on the threshold of a business career in a country he was far from familiar with. This was a young man aware of his obligations to the family he belonged to.
JRD entered the Tatas as an unpaid apprentice in December 1925. At 22, soon after his father passed away, he was on the board of Tata Sons, the Group’s flagship company. In 1929, aged 25, he surrendered his French citizenship to embrace the country that would become the central motif of his life.
The first of JRD’s big adventures in business was born of his childhood fascination for flying. He had taken a joyride in an airplane as a 15-year-old. In 1929, JRD became one of the first Indians to be granted a commercial pilot’s licence. A year later a proposal landed at the Tata headquarters to start an airmail service that would connect Bombay, Ahmedabad and Karachi. JRD needed no prompting.
In 1932, Tata Aviation Service, the forerunner to Tata Airlines and Air India, took to the skies. The first flight in the history of Indian aviation lifted off from Karachi with JRD at the controls. JRD nourished and nurtured his airline baby through to 1953, when the government of India nationalised Air India.
When JRD was elevated to the top post in the Tata Group in 1938, taking over as chairman he was the youngest member of the Tata Sons board. Over the next 50-odd years of his stewardship, the Group expanded into chemicals, automobiles, tea and information technology.
He played a critical role in increasing India’s scientific, medical and artistic quotient. The Tata
Institute of Fundamental Research, the Tata Memorial Hospital, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the National Institute of Advanced Studies and the National Centre for the Performing Arts, each an exemplar of excellence in its field, were projects that would not have come to fruition without JRD’s steadfast support.
JRD spent a considerable amount of time and resources in figuring out and propagating methods to control the country’s population growth. To this end he helped start what eventually became the International Institute of Population Studies. In 1992, JRD received the United Nations Population Award, a recognition for a lifelong obsession.
He and his wife, Thelma, whom he married after in 1930, did not have any children. JRD, though, always appeared most comfortable with kids. When JRD breathed his last, in a Geneva hospital on November 29, 1993, it could be truly said that an epoch had ended. A noble bit of India—and Indianness—was gone forever.
He was awarded Bharat Ratna in 1992 for his commendable services towards the nation.
