The Tata group has been embroiled in different kinds of controversies in the past with human rights and environmental activists.

In January 2006, policemen at Kalinganagar in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, opened fire on a crowd of tribals killing some of them.

The tribals were protesting against the construction of a boundary wall on land historically owned by them where a steel plant is to be set up by the Tata group.

In November that year, survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy - said to be the world’s biggest industrial accident - were outraged by Tata chief Ratan Naval Tata’s efforts as head of a government panel to bail out Dow Chemicals, the new owner of Union Carbide that ran the chemicals factory where poisonous gas leaked killing thousands in December 1984.

Supplies of transport equipment made by Tata Motors to the military junta in Burma have also been criticised. The multinational industrial conglomerate is now looking at setting up a truck manufacturing plant in the neighbouring country with financial support from the Indian government.

After protests by environmental groups, including Greenpeace, the Tata group has reportedly modified its plans of establishing a port at Dhamra in Orissa that could threaten one of the world’s largest mass nesting sites for Olive Ridley turtles, an endangered species.

But the Nano car project is arguably the most controversial endeavour by the business group that prides itself on its ethical practices.

Supporters of the car say it would be a boon for India’s upwardly mobile middle classes, but others worry that the Nano would only add to pollution and traffic congestion in Indian cities and should not have been subsidised by different government agencies.