South Korean author wins Nobel Lit prize Han kang, best known for her book The Vegetarian, on Thursday became the first Asian woman and the first South Korean writer to win the Nobel literature Prize ‘an innovator in contemporary prose’ KOCHI l friday l October 11, 2024 l `9.00 l PAGES 20 l LATE city EDITION “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style, has become an innovator in contemporary prose,” Nobel committee said Won booker in 2016 for the vegetarian Han began her writing career in 1993 by publishing several poems Han’s The Vegetarian, which tells the story of an ordinary woman’s decision to stop eating meat and the consequences, won the Booker Prize in 2016 CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI Ratan cremated, his legacy lives S u d h i r S u r ya w a n s h i @ Mumbai It’s rare for a businessman’s demise to draw a spontaneous outpouring of emotion from the lay public. But when the person in question is visionary industrialist Ratan Tata, 86, their sense of void is quite understandable, as his work touched millions of lives. Thousands of people thronged the lawns of the National Centre for Performing Arts at Nariman Point on Thursday to pay their homage to him. Known as much for his philanthropy as for his bold acquisitions abroad, he infused the quality of trust and integrity into the Tata brand. His people-centric approach propelled him to realise his dream of an under `1 lakh car in the massy Nano. Though it failed the Buzz on Noel market test, his reputation of as successor having his heart in the right place remained intact. Also, Many consider Noel the Nano plant site shook up Tata, stepbrother West Bengal politics like nevof Ratan Tata, as er before. the heir apparent He was known to chase ideof the Tata Group. as, not wealth. Under his leadHe is a trustee in ership, the salt-to-software two of the most behemoth grew more than 70 influential of these times in size. trusts — the Sir The last rites were perDorabji Tata Trust formed at Mumbai’s Worli and the Sir Ratan Crematorium with full state Tata Trust | P12 honours in the presence of Union home minister Amit Shah, his cabinet colleague Piyush Goyal, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, his deputy Devendra Fadnavis, and Congress leader and former chief minister Sushilkumar Shinde. Shah stood in for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had to fly to Laos to attend the ASEANIndia and East Asia summits. Earlier in the day the Maharashtra cabinet rec, ommended to the Centre to consider honouring Ratan Tata with a posthumous Bharat Ratna. The state government as well as a few others declared a day of mourning and the national flag was flown at half-mast across government offices. The Mumbai Police paid tribute to Tata with a gun salute. Family and friends as well as top officials of Tata group joined the ceremony . Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran, Neville Tata and others during last rites of industrialist Ratan Tata, at Worli Crematorium in Mumbai on Thursday | PTI He valued leadership with trust A titan has left us. Although Ratan ures, but Ratan was a unifier. Tata never had the reputation outHis first real test as a leader came side of India that he should have when he was appointed as chair of had — and richly deserved — he TELCO, later Tata Motors, at a time was the dominant figure in when a vicious strike had Indian business for more brought the Pune plant nearthan three decades. ly to a halt. Ratan’s method Like many great leaders, of resolving the strike was he did not at first aspire to a typical of his later leaderposition of leadership. He ship style. once said that in a perfect He went down to the shop world, he would have become floor, talked to the few reMorgen Witzel maining workers, listened to an architect. Nevertheless, as JRD Tata’s Writer, management historian. their grievances and promAuthor of Tata: Evolution of a leadership of the Tata Group ised to do his best for them. Corporate Brand drew to its close in the late These workers talked to their 1990s, it was clear that Ratan striking colleagues and told was the only obvious choice to succeed them that Ratan was a leader they could him, the only man who could hold the trust. Gradually the strikers began re, group together. The “satraps” who as- turning to work, leaving the leaders of pired to succeed JRD were divisive fig- the strike isolated. “Leadership with trust” was one of Ratan’s values, and he did his best to live by it. Following the collapse of Tata Finance in 2001, he famously promised that every investor and depositor would get their money back; no one would lose a single rupee. Eight years later, I asked him if he had known at the time how much money Tata Finance had lost, and how much the Tata Group would have to pay back. His answer was startling. “No,” he said calmly. “I had no idea. In my mind, I was prepared to liquidate the entire group, sell off every asset we had, in order to pay that debt. We had to do this.” I asked him why “Because if we had . not, no one would ever have trusted us again,” he said. “And everything we have worked for would have been Continued on: P9 thrown away  .” Wayanad relief fund: Take some positive action, HC tells Centre E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e @ Kochi The Kerala High Court on Thursday directed the Union government to come up with some positive action to release funds from the NDRF and Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) to extend help to Wayanad landslide victims. “We need to get Wayanad back on track as soon as possible,” said the court, asking Additional Solicitor General A R L Sundaresan, who was present in the court, to use his good offices and get some positive actions from the Centre on the issue, including bank loan waiver. The court issued the order on a suo motu case relating to the prevention and management of natural disasters registered in the wake of the Wayanad landslides. The state submitted that two parcels of land measuring 65.41 hectares in Vythiri taluk have been identified for the reconstruction of  model townships to accom● More on P4 modate the disaster-affected families.  20 pages, including 4 pages of KOCHI Express