Indian Tobacco Company centenary marks an unfinished transformation

(Business Standard) Back in the 1950s, a young engineer from a public sector background joined what was then called the Imperial Tobacco Company, and was assigned to its Munger factory in Bihar. His dipsomaniac boss drank whisky all day; so, when a visiting director from Kolkata invited the young engineer to Sunday lunch and asked him what he would have for a drink, back came the answer: “Whisky!” The director looked at the young man strangely, because new recruits to the managerial cadre at Imperial Tobacco were supposed to be up on the social graces, not ask for the wrong drink at the wrong time of day.
It is a testament to how much the company changed over the succeeding decades that that same young engineer went on to become the company chairman. Continued