Calcutta, April 1: What does it take to conceive a small car plant in Bengal? Is it an audacious idea that others may call crazy?

Some might be tempted to call the Tatas ‘nuts’ for choosing to go to Singur — and then hang in there when the controversy snowballed into a political conflagration when there are clearly alternative choices at hand.

But the Tatas have done this several times in the past that it has become almost second nature for the group to do things that others find “completely nuts” with all the attendant hassles that come out right at the end.

Tata Sons executive director R. Gopalakrishnan believes the goddess for Tatas is not shareholders’ value but stakeholders’ value. Two days after Tata Motors’ managing director Ravi Kant said rather brusquely that “nobody has the right to speak about the location that we choose” and drew the opposition’s ire, Gopalakrishnan said the Tatas wanted to work with everyone and were keen to connect with society at large.

“It is important to engage with society in which the business is located, even if the engagement is small,” said Gopalakrishnan.

In an interaction with the Calcutta media, Gopalakrishnan tried to underscore the fact that in the 130-year-old history of the group, the Tatas had shown themselves to be risk takers who were driven by an entrepreneurial spirit.

“The Tatas have got a unique form of entrepreneurship… In every 10-15 years, the Tatas have done something, which was completely considered nuts at that point of time, and then they somehow get into a lot of hassles and they come out right. So if you think that something is completely crazy now, it might have a life of 5-10 years before you find out what the actual outcome is,” he said.

He referred to early years of Tata Steel, Tata Chemical, Taj Hotels in Mumbai and the Indica experience of Tata Motors to drive home the point. For instance, the early years of Tata Chemicals were disastrous. An international expert told J.R.D. Tata that “you are in the wrong place, doing the wrong job”. JRD is said to have replied: “This is not the first time we have done this… when we go to a place we arouse hope in people.”

While refusing to be drawn into a direct reference to the Singur spat — he emphasised that he was only speaking about the “Tata group’s attitude towards investment” — Gopalakrishnan obliquely said even this saga could be construed as evidence of the Tatas’ entrepreneurial spirit that worked “for a larger purpose and not just to make profits”.

Asked if there was any step that the group had taken recently that could be termed as “crazy”, he said: “There is something close to you but I am not going to talk about it. Some people think it’s nuts.”

The Tatas have maintained that they had many offers for the small car plant but they were bowled over by the sincerity of the Bengal government.

Most of the time, the Tatas have come out “right” after fighting all the odds, he added.