The Man Who Planted Trees He Would Never Sit Under
Chanakya wrote in the Arthashastra that a king's greatness is measured not by what he holds but by what he leaves standing. Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, born in 1839 in Navsari, Gujarat, seems to have operated on exactly that logic, except he applied it to steel mills, universities, and power stations rather than kingdoms. He died in 1904. The Indian Institute of Science opened in 1909. Tata Steel's first blast furnace fired in 1907. The Tata hydroelectric project at Khopoli came online in 1915. He funded all of it. He saw none of it. That gap between decision and outcome is the whole lesson.
