Traditional Sciences Congress

more of an exception than it should have been. An industrial firm needs trained managers who cannot only understand and implement the bureaucratic division of labour, but can also utilise the peculiar strengths (the less-than-perfectly liquid, idiosyncratic assets) of the firm. When we are talking about a group the firms of which are bound together in customer-supplier relationships, an ability of the managers of different firms to understand one another's needs would addto the synergy of the group. However, in India, partly because of the advantages taken of the legal immunities of the Hindu Undivided Family, the synergy has been confined only within a family group, and the centre of attention has become the development of the family rather than of the group. The Tatas were perhaps forced, by lack of legal immunities of a similar magnitude and by the lack of polyphiloprogenitive members within the nearest kin group, to develop a professional management cadre with loyalty to the industrial group rather than to a particular family in a narrow sense. Will the legal immunities of the Hindu Undivided Family have to be demolished before similar professionalisation takes place in other family-controlled conglomerates ?