Book review: Salt of the Earth

It's said that without salt our civilisation may not have progressed. It was the ability of this simple compound to preserve food that helped humans travel, grow and flourish. Born out of a chemistry between poisonous chlorine and corrosive sodium, this placid compound is also the starting point for many a chemicals company.

The journey of Tata Chemicals, which turned 75 in 2014, too began with salt. Or, as the Salt of the Earth points out, it began with India's pioneering salt man and, perhaps, one of our first chemical engineers, Kapilram Vakil, who set up the Okhamandal salt works, in present-day Mithapur. This was acquired by Tata Chemicals. Today, Tata Chem produces not just salt and chemicals, but fertilisers, water purifiers and pulses, among others.

Vakil was a remarkable man who not only battled with science and research, but was also an ardent nationalist who struggled against the constraints placed by the British. He had to deal with cartels from Aden and fierce price discounting to kill Indian manufacturing. The story contains other interesting people - from Darbari Seth, his son Manu, to JRD and Jal Naoroji, and the workers at Mithapur, who have been brought out of anonymity. A comment by one of them on how the company's character has changed from the time of Darbari Seth (then it was familial, now it is professional) is quite telling. The book does not get bogged down in technicalities of soda ash production or factory statistics. Instead, it focuses on the people, the economics of the business, the industrial milieu, the acquisitions (notably the buyout of General Chemicals Industrial Products of the US that catapulted Tata Chem into the global league) and strategies - some that worked, some that didn't.To be honest, one did pick up the book with some suspicion, given that it is produced by the Tatas, and written by their corporate communication folk (and even published by a Tata company). It could well have turned out to be a one-sided eulogy. Fortunately, however, the book does not shy away from talking about some of the controversies - the speculation surrounding Manu Seth's exit or the strategic mistakes the company made. Though, the bias of reporting these events is still always on the Tata side.But then, very few Indian companies have bothered to document their stories and a rich wealth of archival information and pictures lie lost on some dusty desks. At least, here it has been unlocked for students of business history to enjoy.

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BANKABLE BOOKS

Are publishers passionate hobbyists rather than viable business people? At one of the Jaipur Bookmark discussion series running parallel to the Lit fest, panellists debated whether publishing always needed to be subsidised. Manas Saikia, Founding Partner and MD of Cambridge University Press India, recounted how a banker told him that if he had blank paper he could finance it, not a printed book, as he did not know whether it would sell or not. Scribe's Founder, Publisher and CEO Henry Rosenbloom felt that books were a high-risk, high-reward business and bankers were wary as nothing was a sure bet. But there was one ground rule, he said: "In books, instant success is dangerous and repeated failures is terminal."