Two lakh people turned up for Om Prakash Jindal’s funeral. It was a resounding testament to the tycoon’s impact and legacy. Jindal, lovingly called Bauji, was not just a titan of the Indian industry, he was also a philanthropist and a politician.
Born on 7 August 1930 to a farmer in Nalwa village of Hisar district in Haryana, he went on to set up the multinational conglomerate—the Jindal Group—which continues to influence India’s industrial landscape. His industrial success is attributed to his love and deep curiosity for mechanics and engineering.
And he did this without a degree or any prior experience in engineering. In an aptly named biography of Jindal—The Man Who Talked to Machines—Anil Dharker describes him as “sixth standard pass engineer extraordinaire”.
Everyone who knows Jindal has a story to tell that reinforces his legacy as an engineering genius. Dhanker mentions one such incident, Jindal left an American engineer ‘thunderstruck’ by managing to get a machine up and running even as the engineer himself was waiting for some missing parts to arrive.
The legend around him is so larger than life that it was said he could identify the problem with a machine just by listening to it.
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A larger purpose
Jindal’s father, Netram Jindal, was once told by a school teacher that his son was more interested in machines than in books, recounts Dharker in his book.
However, the young Jindal, inspired by the stories of the physical prowess of men in his family wanted to be a wrestler.
His path changed when he left Haryana for Kolkata for work. He chanced upon rows of steel pipes with ‘Made in England’ stamps. The 22-year-old was moved to start manufacturing steel pipes in India.
The first step to this journey was setting up a plant in Liluah, Howrah to make pipe bends and sockets. It’s now a multi-billion dollar empire run by his sons.
Jindal was a true innovator at heart. Dharker recounts how amid the violence of Partition, he, using available material, devised a cannon, which he used to protect himself.
Jindal had a great bond with people, especially those who worked for him. He was a people person whose doors were always open, literally. He didn’t even have a secretary, Dhanker wrote.
Despite being a billionaire, Jindal was known for his simplicity. He was almost always seen in a khadi kurta, dhoti and a turban. He preferred the homemade comforts of kadhi, dal phulka and dahi khichdi.
Jindal had six children with his first wife Vidya Devi, who died at the age of 34. Shortly after her death, he married her much younger sister Savitri Devi. They had three children together. She is currently the chairperson emerita of the OP Jindal group.
At the launch of his biography in August 2005, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “…Om Prakashji was not weighed down by fortune or fame. He retained his sense of fellow feeling for his kinsmen and village folk…it would be fair to say that Om Prakashji’s life and work had a much larger purpose than solely making profits.”
It was perhaps this larger purpose that led Jindal to politics. He was elected a Member of the Haryana Legislative Assembly three times and was even elected to Parliament from Kurukshetra in 1996. While his political career saw some ups and downs, he did become a minister in the Haryana government in 2005.
He was sworn in on 10 March 2005, allotted the portfolio on 16 March and died in a helicopter crash on 31 March.
In his tribute to Jindal, Singh said that in losing the tycoon, the nation has not only one of the most dynamic entrepreneurs and most committed political leaders but also a truly fine and sincere human being.
The company website condenses his vision into one sentence—”Where others saw walls, he saw doors.”
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)