Great news. Only, it’s not news.

The Business Week has judged the Tata Group to the world’s sixth most innovative company (http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/innovative_companies/?chan=magazine+channel_special+report, http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/apr/18tata1.htm). That’s quite an honour. To rank among the world’s most innovative is a credit to any corporation. But then, I am hardly surprised. Since the days of Jamshedji Tata, through JRD’s days and ever more in recent times, the Tatas have been a pioneering company. Most of us have known it all along.

This brings me to another issue – the one of our penchant as a people to seek approval. It only takes a single report in some international forum about anyone or anything remotely Indian for us to gush and gloat like schoolboys who’ve won a gold star from the teacher! I don’t understand it. I’ve had the misfortune to be sent several proud-to-be-desi type emails in recent times. These invariably feature some combination of the following reasons to be proud:

• Vedic mathematics/science and our millennia-old intellectual/spiritual culture
• Non-violence – our gift to the world
• CEOs of blue-chip companies who are of Indian origin
• Some dashingly-alive or heroically-dead NASA astronaut of vaguely Indian heritage
• The fact that more than half of Silicon Valley is brown
• Some obscure scientific journal article that endorses the benefits of haldi or neem or yoga or ayurveda

It irks me no end that we have such lame reasons to be proud of who we are. So some gazillion-dollar-turnover company hired a brown CEO. Great. Can we move on? The giants who made our history and the long-forgotten, nearly-mythical people who gave us our rich culture, the remarkable new breed of people shaping India today… none of them need approval from abroad. There is enough within us, our heritage and our history for us to be justly proud. And such intrinsic pride is what we need. For this is the pride of the strong and the clear-eyed and the level-headed. This is the pride that inspires. The other kind – the one that feeds on questionable recognition – is blinding, self-deluding and self-belittling. Let’s choose the right kind of pride.

And in the meanwhile, here’s a cheer for the innovative folk who give us Trueroots, among other things: Tata ki jai!

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