31st Foundation Day of Tata Central Archives

Tata Central Archives (TCA) celebrated its 31^st Foundation Day on January 7, 2022.

In keeping with the tradition, a webinar was organised on the theme - “Business and Cities”. The guest speaker was Chinmay Tumbe, research scholar and bestselling author whose interests lie in - Business and Economic History, Urban Economics. Mr. Tumbe is with the Department of Economics at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He has also been a faculty at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad. He was awarded with the J.N. Tata Endowment Scholarship and has worked in academic, corporate and government institutions, both in India and abroad.

T.R. Doongaji, Honorary Advisor, Tata Central Archives and Z.D. Mistry, V.P. Finance, Tata Services Ltd. also graced the occasion.

The proceedings of the webinar were conducted by Shobha Ramesh of TCA. She welcomed the guests and dwelt on the interesting facets of the topic. She emphasized how economic development and urbanisation are intertwined and said that many companies world over are engaging themselves with cities for various reasons. She also spoke about the Tatas and their involvement in the development of cities.

Mr. Tumbe’s presentation touched upon how big industrial houses, businessmen were part of the city development programmes and local municipalities during the earlier days and how this has been eroded over time. He spoke about city clusters, smart cities, branding of cities, city planning, future cities and the road map ahead. He also mentioned how important it was for cities to have their own archives.

This was followed by a Question and Answer session.

In the absence of the Archivist, Rajendra Prasad Narla, the vote of thanks was then given by Shobha Ramesh.