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The Tata Group, India’s largest conglomerate, spends millions each year on education, renewable energy, health care and charity. Can the Tata brand of compassionate capitalism take on-and take over-the global economy?

Last year, $75 million was reinvested in Indian society, spent on education, research, health care and charitable causes. Chudamani Sardar’s biogas installation and solar panel are just two examples.

The Tatas made their fortune during the 19th century in the Chinese opium trade—an episode on which the official family literature is silent. But the “Tata bible”—The Creation of Wealth, 270 pages bound in gleaming black leather—does tell of the pioneering work of Jamsetji Tata. He dreamed of making India a technological and industrial superpower equalling those of the imperialist West. For him, having a steel industry with well-educated executives was essential to the success of this independent nation in the making.

Tata died in 1904 and never saw his dream come true. But within three years, his sons had built the country’s first steelworks in the eastern part of colonial British India, where tribal peoples, tigers and elephants ruled, atop the country’s best iron ore reserve. They named the city Jamshedpur in honour of its spiritual father.

A century later, the steel town still eats, sleeps and breathes Tata. Nowhere in India have Jamsetji Tata’s ideas been more convincingly preserved than in Jamshedpur. Unsuspecting visitors feel as though they’ve arrived behind a steel curtain, where Tatalitarianism indoctrinates society. It’s Tata this and Tata that. There’s Tata Airport and Tatanagar railway station; Tata Motors cars drive down Tata-laid roads, which are lit at night with electricity provided by Tata Steel’s power stations. To unwind, residents can attend cultural performances at Tata Auditorium or play sports at Tata Athletic Academy or Tata Football Academy. Founder’s Day is observed every year on March 3, the great helmsman’s birthday.

Jamsetji envisioned a model city that would bring development and dignity to India. “Be sure to lay wide streets planted with shady trees, every other of a quickgrowing variety,” he wrote to one of his sons in 1902. “Be sure that there is plenty of space for lawns and gardens. Earmark areas for Hindu temples, Muhammadan mosques and Christian churches.”

Jamshedpur is still an oasis of green parks, spacious residential complexes, first-class amenities like water and electricity and professional sports centres. It also boasts something extremely unusual for India: a modern, efficient garbage collection service. This 64-square-kilometre (25-square-mile) city is home to 700,000 residents—only 20,000 of whom are on Tata Steel’s payroll—and can justifiably be called a model city.

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