Do we like Ratan Tata?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decades of visible kindness and giving, and nothing harmful in his own words, but little on the record about LGBTQ+ issues specifically.
Ratan Tata joined the Tata Group in 1961 and took over from JRD Tata as chairman of Tata Sons in 1991, just as India opened up its economy. He held the job until December 2012, then came back briefly as interim chairman in 2016. He died in Mumbai on 9 October 2024, aged 86.
The big swings were international. In 2008 Tata bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford for $2.3bn, and in 2021 the group took over Air India. The Tata Nano, launched in 2009 as a cheap car, stopped production in 2018 because of low sales. Not every bet landed, but they were bold ones.
The messiest chapter was the 2016 removal of Cyrus Mistry as Tata Sons chairman. Mistry fought it, and a 2019 tribunal order briefly put him back. In March 2021 India's Supreme Court overturned that order and found the ouster legal, rejecting his claims of mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. A corporate stoush, not a scandal about how he treated ordinary people.
On the harm test, the sources we read show no hateful words, conspiracy theories or culture-war grifting from him. We also found no statement from him on LGBTQ+ rights either way, so the pass rests on the absence of harm, not on a record of advocacy. That's honestly where the record sits.
The kindness is well documented. After the 2008 Mumbai attacks he helped reopen the damaged Taj hotel, backed a welfare trust for victims, and visited victims' homes. He reportedly skipped a lifetime achievement meeting with King Charles in 2018 because one of his dogs was unwell, and the King later said “That's the man Ratan is.”
The Ford story is a good one. After a humiliating meeting with the carmaker, he later offered it a rescue deal when it was in financial trouble, instead of seeking revenge. He also set up a $28 million scholarship fund at Cornell for undergraduates from India, and received the Padma Bhushan in 2000 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2008.