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00:00Dr. Mamin Chandi joins us now. He is former director Tata Medical Center and speaking with us on this occasion.
00:07Dr. Chandi, thank you so much for giving us your time on NDTV network.
00:12I think we should just start with your best experience and something that you truly fondly remember of an interaction with Mr. Tata. Let's start there.
00:24As you know, the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai was started in 1941 in memory of Lady Mehrabai Tata.
00:32And that is today one of the best cancer hospitals in India.
00:37And Mr. Tata was always on the board of Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai.
00:43And at his visits, he would comment about the large number of people from Eastern India who were in the hospital.
00:50He says, don't they have facilities in Eastern India?
00:53And that was when in 2005, he conceived of the Tata Medical Center, Kolkata, which would provide state of the art cancer care for people in the Eastern region of India.
01:07And that was when Dr. Dinshaw was appointed as project director.
01:14And she kept asking me, come, come.
01:16And I sort of put it off.
01:18I was then the head of the department of oncology at Christine Medical College, Velo.
01:23In 2009, I retired.
01:25And Mr. Krishna Kumar persuaded me to join the Tata Medical Center in Kolkata.
01:34And therefore, I had my first contact on a rainy day at the site where construction was going on.
01:45And I was asked to make a presentation from Mr. Tata on my vision for Tata Medical Center.
01:51Tata didn't say a word.
01:53But I was told the next day by Krishna Kumar that he had decided to appoint me as the director.
02:01And my association with Mr. Tata was really at a town hall in the hospital campus.
02:11And I remember asking him, sir, why did you buy Tata Jaguar Land Rover?
02:20So he looked at me and he said, you know why we bought Jaguar Land Rover?
02:26We bought it to have access to technology.
02:30I want the same gearbox that is in the Land Rover to be in the trucks we manufacture.
02:36Quality was always an essence.
02:41I remember once telling him I want more beds in the hospital.
02:44He looked at me and he said, I will not have patients cheek to jowl in the hospital.
02:50So I would remember going and asking for 10 crores for the laboratories.
02:55And that would be sanctioned.
02:58The buildings at Tata Medical Center in Kolkata, you would think you're in a research center in Scandinavia.
03:06As you know, Mr. Tata is a graduate of architecture from Cornell.
03:12And that excellence in terms of the building, the infrastructure that was created at Tata Medical Center.
03:21I can tell you that today the Tata Medical Center Kolkata is probably the best cancer hospital in eastern India.
03:28And that is the legacy of the Tatas of wanting to give back to society what they earned from society.
03:37And I don't think there's any company in the world where 60 percent of the stock is owned by the trust and is given back to society.
03:46So my appreciation of the man was the legacy that he took forward of Jamshedji and JRD.
03:54And the fact that we created an institution with the largest of the Tata Trust, which is, I think today, state of the art, providing much needed cancer care.
04:07Patients don't really have to go anywhere else now.
04:10They can get that treatment in eastern India.
04:12So that is my association with this person who was a legend.
04:17What was the initial vision when it came to cancer care?
04:22And how did that vision evolve down the years when it came to Mr. Tata going in?
04:30At many board meetings, I would bring up the issue that what I want is not just a hospital, but a teaching and training institution.
04:42We must teach people how to treat cancer.
04:45And we must research the issues that are important to India.
04:50And whenever anybody else said, no, we don't really need research, Mr. Tata would say no.
04:57I disagree.
04:59Research must be an essential component of Tata Medical Center.
05:04And that is our mandate to find solutions for problems which are relevant to this country in cancer.
05:12And we've done that with Childhood Acute Lymphatic Leukemia.
05:16So his vision of saying this is not just a hospital.
05:20This is a medical institution where we will train people to treat cancer.
05:25And we will also research issues that are relevant in cancer for India.
05:31So whatever is state-of-the-art anywhere in the world.
05:34I remember when we wanted phase two.
05:37Within two years of opening, we were already crowded out.
05:42And I asked the board saying, can we build phase two?
05:45And we got the same American architect's canon design.
05:50And Mr. Krishnamurthy told me, he said, you will go five times to Mr. Tata before he agrees on the construction and the building.
05:59But the architect was so good that one presentation, the architect, Mr. Tata, was bowled over and said, go ahead.
06:07So we have now a beautiful building in Calcutta.
06:11Yeah, that's just such a wonderful insight there into the man that was Ratan Tata.
06:17Dr. Chandi, I just want to understand what was a tough thing to persuade Mr. Tata for?
06:24Any such experience that you faced where you really had to persuade him to make a decision?
06:29Or was it always easy if he knew it was for the greater good?
06:33The issue was the expansion.
06:37We wanted a 260 crore expansion just two years after the phase one was completed.
06:44And I remember talking to Mr. Tata.
06:48And you know, his greatness was that he said, I don't think this is necessary now.
06:56But if Chandi wants it, Chandi can have it.
07:01So that is the insight to say, OK, this guy thinks it's necessary.
07:07I will let him do it.
07:14I will let him do it.