I had crossed thirty and life had become for the first time full: a dear and caring wife, our two kids growing up, parents and two siblings next door, frequent get-together with childhood and school friends and their souses as neighbours, lots of former office colleagues and their families still in touch, lot of current colleagues who became family friends, established recognition as an effective, contributing manager with descent workload and considerable freedom, articles published in journals and business dailies with token honorarium, assignments as visiting faculty in a business school for a small honorarium, invitations to participate in intellectual discussions organised by local information centre of a foreign government, frequent participation in executive development programmes, workshops and seminars of various business schools and academic or professional institutions and of course a descent salary and other benefits from the employer.
There was of course one trouble: a pain on either side of the back at the end of the spinal chord would recur frequently making me unable to walk or even move the body even by a fraction of centimeter. It was amazing that the pain would slowly develop while I would be returning from office in the evening, would respond to hot water bag treatment around the area of the pain for two/ three hours to enable me to watch TV and take dinner and then go to bed, would become severe again some time around 4 AM, requiring heat treatment with hot water bag again for two hours, before I got up around 6 AM. With lot of difficulty I would get up from bed, have my tea, visit the toilet and take my bath by which time the pain would go and I would be ready to go to office. Soon my wife would be expressing doubt if there had been any pain and lot of suffering during the only the 12 to 13 hours I spent at home! Even my colleagues did not have any chance to know that I had suffered excruciating pain and nearly immobilized for a greater part of the period when I was not in the office.
I had observed that the pains developed mostly when the intensity of acid and constipation would increase and/ or when I would have strained the back or legs while lifting or moving heave furniture or something like that. The pain always responded to heat treatment but never responded to strong pain killers. I had consulted many doctors, general physicians to specialists and homeopaths but the problem did not go. I got reconciled with the idea of living with the problem throughout my life. But some thing helped to reduce the incidence of such attacks and the period of suffering each time an attack would occur. The office doctor at the United Bank had prescribed a tablet, meant for arthritis pain. I had taken one or two courses but forgot the name of the medicine after I joined Coal India. The office doctor, at Coal India, Dr. Sarkar, after some experiments prescribed zolandin alka that worked, especially if I could start taking this tablet as soon as the pain started developing. For each attack, about 6 tablets of Zolandin alka over three days would completely cure me, while butazolandin tablets had no effect. Soon after I had left Coal India, zolandin alka was withdrawn and not manufactured any longer. I had to find out another pain killer that was mild and yet worked. That was Dolonex 25 mg. Until I had reached 50, I had to consume 6 x 8 = 48 dolonex tablets a year. Since then consumption of this tablet has progressively reduced to a maximum of 10-12 tablets a year, mostly for milder pains here and there. But my younger son developed a similar problem during his late twenties and found dolonex useful for a three / four years before he virtually discontinued taking this or any other pain killers as incidence of attacks came down. That was the unfolding story of my major association with pain killers of a particular variety.
Notwithstanding the bouts of attack of excruciating and immobilizing pains, life was so pleasant, busy and engaging. While in Coal India, we had two special tourism trips with travel expenses paid for by my employer. Once we had been to Bhubaneswar and Puri in Oriya. Four of us stayed in a hotel, probably named Puri Hotel very near to the blue waters of the Bay of Bengal in to which Sri Krishna Chaityana had disappeared. The hotel was ordinary meant for low budget tourists but was clean, spacious with adequate water, electricity and bath facilities besides a restaurant serving really good food. It would hardly take two minutes straight-line from the beach to the hotel.
Topu would not allow our sons to step inside the water beyond the point where the water level touched their knees and that also for a few minutes. Despite the lessons she had taken as a school girl in the swimming pool of the Ordinance Factory Club in Dum Dum, she was herself most reluctant go beyond the point where water level touched her knees. She did not allow me also to enjoy sea water touch my naval even with the available swimming assistance service in the Puri beach. So, apart from the time it took us to take some pictures of our in the midst of the sea water, most of our time on the beach was spent looking at the waves rushing towards us and cleaning our ankles as we sat on the sloping sands enjoyed strolling over them. Occasionally, however, waves did drench us enough. But I could not repeat the experience of my childhood when my younger brother and I jumped along with the incoming waves while holding our father’s hands. Of course we walked along the roads to visit the Puri temple and many other temples and religious spots there. As we went deep inside the Puri temple to see the idols, Jhupa looked at them and observed ‘Bhunrosilyali’, a children story book character - ugly and scaring jackal that scared kids). We offered flowers in worship to deities.
With Puri at the centre, we took trips to Bhubaneswar, a city of small temples all around and a huge temple. Also, visited the new Capital city of Oriya and the Nandan Park, some kind of an open, miniature zoo that the children liked as much. we did. We also took trips to Udaygiri, Khandagiri and the Sun Temple at Konarak: the children liked the big statues of lions there.
It was an enjoyable trip. The children liked the overnight journey by train. At this time, both the sons were studying in the kid schools. But two years before this trip, we four had a trip to Delhi. At that time, Chupa was not yet in a position to walk on the roads and Jhupa was yet to start going to school. We stayed first few days in a hotel, then moved to an affectionate cousin’s apartment and for a couple of days enjoyed the company and care of Khokada - my cousin, Gouri Boudi- his wife, Baro Mashima, my mother’s elder sister. Then we moved to the apartment of another of my cousin Murali (the fourth son of my other maternal aunt) who lived there alone. Topu had to cook food for us there. We took a trip to Agra and Vrindavan. At Agra we spend quite a few hours at the Taj Mahal. Chupa had to be carried in the lap most of the time. Separately, we took trips to visit the various tourist spots in both old Delhi and New Delhi. This was my second visit to Delhi and I was somewhat familiar with these cities – at that time with very little traffic and population in New Delhi city.
Equally interesting were the small trips that only two of us took when the son’s were still small and we had to keep them under the care of my mother while we were away from home. One such trip was by bus to Bankura, Bishnupur, Nabadwip (including the ISCON temple) and Kamahati in Midnapore. This was arranged by my former United Bank of India colleague, Suhas Talukdar: conducted tourist tour business was one of his businesses at that time. He also arranged another trip to Digha sea beach when our sons also accompanied us. We had lot of fresh fried pomfret (perciform sea fishes belonging to the family Bramidae) one evening in a hired cottage in Digha.
Once we had a long, widing trip: four of us as also my parents. We went to Durgapur by train one morning to visit my cousin's home where my aunt (father's younger sister) also lived. The next day, we went by bus to Burnpur to vist my father's cousin and also to my wife's maternal uncle, a doctor, in Assansol before returning to Durgapur. The next day we went to Purulia by bus, spent a night before leaving for Jamshedpur, where my father's another sister lived. Finally, we went by train and bus to Birmitrapur, off Rourkela where my elder brother Mejda worked. My parents stayed back there, while we four returned back to Kolkata on the sisth evening.
There were however worries too and some turned to be funny or brought great relief soon. Topu’s mother was worried that Chupa, her second grandson was not showing teeth in time. The pediatrics assured Topu that there was still time and hope. I told her not to worry, if Chupa did not develop teeth, she might be one of the wonder child with potential to earn lots of money. Chupa would ultimately get all the thirty-two.
Jhupa took some time to learn pedaling and riding the tri-cycle they brothers received jointly as a gift from the grand mother weeks after our pulling and pushing the cycle with both sons enjoying the. Even after Jhupa started cycling on his own, Chupa was still lazy enough to prefer a ride on the back. By the time Chupa learned to cycle, they became more interested in exploring Topu’s bicycle. And it was the chain that attracted them the most. One day, the bicycle from the stand with both the sons tumbling down and chupa’s toe stuck between the chain and the teeth of the wheel around which the chain moves. Chupa was crying allowed. I somehow managed to take the toe out to find a deep bite with blood coming out. I washed the wound with Dettol, let it dry for a while and then applied homeopathic liquid Arnica. Since the children had been already on various protective shots program for immunization, the wound healed within a day or two, though for quite a while Chupa kept crying, " Oh what a great damage Dada (elder brother, Jhupa) has inflicted on me. I shall not be able to walk again.”
The children get saved from accidents some how. Another evening when, the two sons were on their rounds of exploring various corners of the house, we heard the sound of a heavy weight falling on the floor. We rushed to the spot to find the children dumb-struck and apparently unhurt. They had pulled some curtain strings that led to the electric steel iron fall from a high shelve: it seemed that the electric iron managed to dash against the corner of two walls to miss hitting the children before landing on the floor. An external examination and observation for a while showed that they were normal.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Coal Comfort for Entertaining Life: My Unfolding Voyage 077
Life during the Coal India employment period was becoming increasingly
interesting as time passed. A decent pay and coverage of all medical expenses of my family and colleagues, mostly mining engineers, finding me acceptable though the thrill of working with inspiring and caring Chairman like Lt. General Grewal was lost soon after he was forced to go, provided a decent support to life at home. I had already shifted to a sprawling flat just opposite to my parent’s residential home resulting in daily interaction with my parents and my two sons growing up with daily sessions with their grand parents, uncle, aunt and elderly cousins, enjoying their time, attention, care, love and affection and making daily evening one-hour session with my in-laws living seven minutes walking distance away. At the same time, we had all the privacy and fun at home with the sons growing up – learning to walk, talk, play and entertain. My younger son was taking a longer time to grow his first tooth and my mother in-law was very worried: I had to tell her that I had never heard of an infant growing up to be a toothless man or woman and if my son happened to make a record, he could be a great source of money. He did not get to making money for me that way.
Running an independent family gave us the freedom to invite friends and
relatives for lunch and dinner at my residence. We would have special beer-
dinner sessions: the most common participants in such parties were recently-wed couples – Ashis and Ruma, Pai (Tapan) and Ruby, Chanchal and Mahua. Some times other friends like Gopal and Robi Ghose (Tapan) would join. One of them would become intoxicated even before the bottles were opened. Ashis, Chanchal and Gopal played soccer with me in my school days. Chanchal was a classmate in the higher secondar school.
At United Bank we had six days a week but in Coal India, it was five day a week. Two days of great fun. On Saturdays I would make the weekly purchases of groceries, mutton, chicken, potatoes, vegetables and fish. Sometimes I would take my elder son along to the market place. We would go walking and return in a cycle rickshaw. My father in-law felt he could help me as he goes to market daily: so, I gave him the opportunity to ensure that he still would select the daily fish for his daughter but at my expense. He would deliver the fish and have some sweet exchange with his grand children every morning on weekdays after I would have left for office around 8-15 AM.
Soon we had the first TV at home,thanks to Suhash Talukdar, an ex-colleague
at United Bank of India who had already turned an entrepreneur and whom I had
provided some services twice a week in the evening in exchange for 8
rossogollas as evening snack. He and his family loved us very much. He took us to various places like Bankura, Bishnapur, Kamarhati, Digha, Nabadweep-
Mayapur (ISCON temple) in tourist buses: he operated a tourist transport
operation business, publications business, matrimonial matching services and
newspaper business. He gifted us a black and white TV manufactured by
Cinevista (manufacturer of Mumbai that closed operations after a few years).
Those days, TV telecasting was limited to few hours in the morning and evening on weekdays. We used to go to my parent’s residence or my land-lord’s flat to enjoy the Sunday films or Calcutta soccer league and shield final matches, especially those between East Bengal and Mohan Bagan or Md. Sporting clubs. With the TV at home, we could enjoy all that at home now. But my wife did not like the idea of sons looking at TV all the time as this could affect their eyes and concentration: we had to allot a limited time for them. But if they were at home and we two were only watching TV; they had to be forced to play elsewhere. One afternoon when we two were enjoying a film, my wife suddenly found two pairs of eyes under the curtain of the entry door to the TV room: the two sons quietly lying down on the floor outside the TV room door and watching the film! My grand daughters are luckier: my sons and their souses allowed virtually free access to
TV and computer viewing to their children at least during the first three/ four years of life.
Since Jhupa and Chupa was already walking and running, it was time to get
them a tri-cycle. I got a tri-cycle with an additional seat at behind the saddle: funding was by my mother in law. Jhupa learned to cycle quickly, Chupa was lazy enough to be satisfied with getting the ride for quite a while. On a winter week-end, four of us went out to the Zoo, had lunch at Chan Gua, a Chinese restaurant, now not as popular as it was then and then enjoyed a circus show: wild animals were still on the show those days. The children had a ride by a double-deck bus. On return home, Jhupa asked me to buy him a double-deck bus. When asked him as to where we could keep the bus, he had pointed out to the 30 square-feet vacant plot of land near our residence. It took a little while that the idea of buying a regular double-deck bus was not a feasible idea. But both were happy when I bought them a toy chariot car each that they could pull along with the help of a string and a toy steam driven steamer that would move along the water in a large vessel when a candle inside was lighted.
Jhupa would often go with me along to the market walking down the lane.
Sometime, I would buy him some candy on the way back with some to spare for his brother. One day he would suggest to me that I buy him some chocolate
while we were on our way to the market. I told him that he could buy the
chocolate now if so wished but might like to consider using the money later to buy the same thing or something else of his choice later. If he would chose the option to buy immediately; he would be foregoing the option to buy something later as the money available is fixed and once spent cannot be reused later. I had felt then that he scarecely understood what I had said at that age: probably he wanted to take more time to understand and decided to buy chocolate later. Once when four of us went to the Rathayatra festival, we brought some toys for the sons. While returning, Jhupa suggested “what if we had tasted some fried papad sold at the fair!” His mother would not agree to allow children to take fried papad from wayside vendors. So, all of us had to return home to enjoy papad fried by the Lady of the House.
A three-minute walk from the residence, we had a nice, clean restaurant called Quality. Being on the main highway Jessore Road and beside a petrol-pump (gas station), it had roaring business during the day but was relatively less crowded late in the evening. Sometimes Topu would call off cooking the dinner and we would walk down to Quality to enjoy Chicken Curry or Punjabi Traka (special pulses preparation) served with hot roti straight from the oven. The boys liked the Tarka very much. On our way back home, we would buy hot loaves and "S"-shaprd biscuits, fresh from the small counter at the wayside bakery.
Jhupa being 15 months elder to Chupa got eligible first to get into play school. But those days there was shortage of play schools and I had already been influenced by the Soviet Land Magazine that children should not get into formal education until five years old. So, I would postpone getting Jhupa admitted to a play school. My friend suggested that I was committing a mistake and must find a good school for my sons soon. Thanks to Chobi Didmoni, our next door neighbour. She was the Assistant Headmistress of Girl’s High School about 10 minutes away from our residence by cycle rickshaw. The School had started a Nursery Kindergarten section in theSchoola few months back. She had been observing and conversing with my wife and children everyday over her first floor balcony having a clear view of my children’s open verandah play site. She suggested that we get Jhupa admitted to the Nursey class, even though the classes had already started a few months ago. The next day, Jhupa, aged three, got admitted to the School. That marked the beginning of his long 21-year journey in formal education ending with three master’s degrees including two from US universities.
interesting as time passed. A decent pay and coverage of all medical expenses of my family and colleagues, mostly mining engineers, finding me acceptable though the thrill of working with inspiring and caring Chairman like Lt. General Grewal was lost soon after he was forced to go, provided a decent support to life at home. I had already shifted to a sprawling flat just opposite to my parent’s residential home resulting in daily interaction with my parents and my two sons growing up with daily sessions with their grand parents, uncle, aunt and elderly cousins, enjoying their time, attention, care, love and affection and making daily evening one-hour session with my in-laws living seven minutes walking distance away. At the same time, we had all the privacy and fun at home with the sons growing up – learning to walk, talk, play and entertain. My younger son was taking a longer time to grow his first tooth and my mother in-law was very worried: I had to tell her that I had never heard of an infant growing up to be a toothless man or woman and if my son happened to make a record, he could be a great source of money. He did not get to making money for me that way.
Running an independent family gave us the freedom to invite friends and
relatives for lunch and dinner at my residence. We would have special beer-
dinner sessions: the most common participants in such parties were recently-wed couples – Ashis and Ruma, Pai (Tapan) and Ruby, Chanchal and Mahua. Some times other friends like Gopal and Robi Ghose (Tapan) would join. One of them would become intoxicated even before the bottles were opened. Ashis, Chanchal and Gopal played soccer with me in my school days. Chanchal was a classmate in the higher secondar school.
At United Bank we had six days a week but in Coal India, it was five day a week. Two days of great fun. On Saturdays I would make the weekly purchases of groceries, mutton, chicken, potatoes, vegetables and fish. Sometimes I would take my elder son along to the market place. We would go walking and return in a cycle rickshaw. My father in-law felt he could help me as he goes to market daily: so, I gave him the opportunity to ensure that he still would select the daily fish for his daughter but at my expense. He would deliver the fish and have some sweet exchange with his grand children every morning on weekdays after I would have left for office around 8-15 AM.
Soon we had the first TV at home,thanks to Suhash Talukdar, an ex-colleague
at United Bank of India who had already turned an entrepreneur and whom I had
provided some services twice a week in the evening in exchange for 8
rossogollas as evening snack. He and his family loved us very much. He took us to various places like Bankura, Bishnapur, Kamarhati, Digha, Nabadweep-
Mayapur (ISCON temple) in tourist buses: he operated a tourist transport
operation business, publications business, matrimonial matching services and
newspaper business. He gifted us a black and white TV manufactured by
Cinevista (manufacturer of Mumbai that closed operations after a few years).
Those days, TV telecasting was limited to few hours in the morning and evening on weekdays. We used to go to my parent’s residence or my land-lord’s flat to enjoy the Sunday films or Calcutta soccer league and shield final matches, especially those between East Bengal and Mohan Bagan or Md. Sporting clubs. With the TV at home, we could enjoy all that at home now. But my wife did not like the idea of sons looking at TV all the time as this could affect their eyes and concentration: we had to allot a limited time for them. But if they were at home and we two were only watching TV; they had to be forced to play elsewhere. One afternoon when we two were enjoying a film, my wife suddenly found two pairs of eyes under the curtain of the entry door to the TV room: the two sons quietly lying down on the floor outside the TV room door and watching the film! My grand daughters are luckier: my sons and their souses allowed virtually free access to
TV and computer viewing to their children at least during the first three/ four years of life.
Since Jhupa and Chupa was already walking and running, it was time to get
them a tri-cycle. I got a tri-cycle with an additional seat at behind the saddle: funding was by my mother in law. Jhupa learned to cycle quickly, Chupa was lazy enough to be satisfied with getting the ride for quite a while. On a winter week-end, four of us went out to the Zoo, had lunch at Chan Gua, a Chinese restaurant, now not as popular as it was then and then enjoyed a circus show: wild animals were still on the show those days. The children had a ride by a double-deck bus. On return home, Jhupa asked me to buy him a double-deck bus. When asked him as to where we could keep the bus, he had pointed out to the 30 square-feet vacant plot of land near our residence. It took a little while that the idea of buying a regular double-deck bus was not a feasible idea. But both were happy when I bought them a toy chariot car each that they could pull along with the help of a string and a toy steam driven steamer that would move along the water in a large vessel when a candle inside was lighted.
Jhupa would often go with me along to the market walking down the lane.
Sometime, I would buy him some candy on the way back with some to spare for his brother. One day he would suggest to me that I buy him some chocolate
while we were on our way to the market. I told him that he could buy the
chocolate now if so wished but might like to consider using the money later to buy the same thing or something else of his choice later. If he would chose the option to buy immediately; he would be foregoing the option to buy something later as the money available is fixed and once spent cannot be reused later. I had felt then that he scarecely understood what I had said at that age: probably he wanted to take more time to understand and decided to buy chocolate later. Once when four of us went to the Rathayatra festival, we brought some toys for the sons. While returning, Jhupa suggested “what if we had tasted some fried papad sold at the fair!” His mother would not agree to allow children to take fried papad from wayside vendors. So, all of us had to return home to enjoy papad fried by the Lady of the House.
A three-minute walk from the residence, we had a nice, clean restaurant called Quality. Being on the main highway Jessore Road and beside a petrol-pump (gas station), it had roaring business during the day but was relatively less crowded late in the evening. Sometimes Topu would call off cooking the dinner and we would walk down to Quality to enjoy Chicken Curry or Punjabi Traka (special pulses preparation) served with hot roti straight from the oven. The boys liked the Tarka very much. On our way back home, we would buy hot loaves and "S"-shaprd biscuits, fresh from the small counter at the wayside bakery.
Jhupa being 15 months elder to Chupa got eligible first to get into play school. But those days there was shortage of play schools and I had already been influenced by the Soviet Land Magazine that children should not get into formal education until five years old. So, I would postpone getting Jhupa admitted to a play school. My friend suggested that I was committing a mistake and must find a good school for my sons soon. Thanks to Chobi Didmoni, our next door neighbour. She was the Assistant Headmistress of Girl’s High School about 10 minutes away from our residence by cycle rickshaw. The School had started a Nursery Kindergarten section in theSchoola few months back. She had been observing and conversing with my wife and children everyday over her first floor balcony having a clear view of my children’s open verandah play site. She suggested that we get Jhupa admitted to the Nursey class, even though the classes had already started a few months ago. The next day, Jhupa, aged three, got admitted to the School. That marked the beginning of his long 21-year journey in formal education ending with three master’s degrees including two from US universities.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Leontief's Input Output Matrix : My Unfoolding Voyage 076
My elder son, Jhupa, was about 15 months old and the younger one, Chupa was just a year old. My wife had terrible time dealing with the pangs of growth of the little ones. So, I though if I could give her some relief. I had a meeting with Dr. Guha, the economist on deputation from the Indian Economic Service to the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute at Ranchi. A train would take me at around 8 PM from Kolkata (Howrah Railway Station) to reach Ranchi around 7 AM next morning. I took Jhupa along with me: he had his cereal mixed milk at night and slept comfortably beside in the First Class Air Conditioned Coupe. I dropped him at my relative's residence for the day and went to the meeting. After two day's meeting, we returned on the fourth night back to Kolkata. He enjoyed the trip. We had another such trip (free for children below the age of three), but we missed the train on the onward journey for the third trip. He was unwilling to get down from the cab to enter home: he was extremely disappointed. This was the only time I had missed boarding a train because the train departure time was advanced by two hours in the winter season and I was not aware.
I was already aware that the Government was still pegging coal prices below the cost of production. What was surprising is that by pegging coal prices below cost of production, Government India encouraged unscientific and unsafe mining leading to loss of precious coal reserves and corruption. This socialist technique was further consolidated by Mrs. Indira Gandhi by coal nationalisation. Coal price and distribution continued to be controlled by the socialist brained Government: safety improved, modern methods of capital intensive long wall mining and opencast mining was introduced at a rapid pace, coal workers were now together to bargain better leading to galloping rise in wages and benefits. Coal India's cost of production soared. But Government kept the prices of coal below cost of production, bearing the losses of the coal companies and the burden of rising capital expenditure on coal capacity expansion. Experts Committees were formed to recommend price revisions: one would have had to read those Committee reports to believe that such poor quality reports could be prepared for signature by esteemed economists - clearly the coal department must have been staffed by the less brilliant material from the administrati8ve services. Four decades later, India is currently in need to import both coking and non-coking coal.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, we had argued for a more rational, long-term coal pricing policy. Many notes were prepared and sent to the Government with little effect. When I remarked that these efforts that we were making were sheer wastage, Mr. Nagar, the Executive Secretary to the Chairman consoled me that at a later date in future the value of these notes would be realized. I knew it would be too late then.
Lt. General Grewal of course had another concern at the same time. He pointed out that increase in coal prices to cover cost of production, however desirable would increase the cost of production of coal itself. I understood his point in terms of the inter-industry flow of materials that we learned through the Leontief Input Output Models. I had learnt that the Planning Commission in its attempt to check consistency of the five year plan material balances used some less than 100 by less than 100 industry models. But I did not ever come across evidence of the use of such models for pricing policies. But Chairman Grewal's point was valid. Coal goes as input for both electricity generation and steel making. A rise in coal prices would increase the cost of electricity generation and steel making. This will lead to rise in prices of electricity and steel both of which are needed in huge quantities to extract coal and hence coal costs would rise. The coefficients were known and it would have been rather easy to calculate approximately the impact of letting coal, steel and electricity prices to work themselves out through their inter-linkages. Indian policy makers however were not comfortable dealing with such quantitative analysis in the 1970s or 1980s.
One implication of Chairman's concern over the above price linkages was that each of these sectors conserved energy and materials use to save on costs on a continuous basis. Mr. R.C. Shekhar, the then Director Finance of Coal India was very affectionate to me: he asked me to present a paper on Energy Conservation at the Annual Conference of the Society of Internal Auditors in Kolkata. I had access to various news bulletin and journals on energy conservation published in the UK and the USA. Remember energy conservation had become a priority after the two successive petroleum oil price shocks of 1971 and 1977. I presented a paper on energy conservation and energy audit and Mr. Shekhar liked it enough to refer to me as his protégé in after my presentation at the Conference.
But despite all efforts, we could not produce an empirically valid cost function for coal. Part of the reason was that our team consisted mostly of cost accountants and charted accountants who were more comfortable in computing and allocating costs rather that allow cost observations to throw up a cost function. It was unfortunate that despite having recruited an econometrician in me, they failed to estimate a cost function that had sttistically significant regression coefficients and R square. In retrospect, I knew the reason why I could not contribute to make the project a success. There was no data analysis and validation before mounting on a main frame computer to obtain regression results. The computer time was hired from outside agency. The modelling did not take into account mines of different types: open cast, inclines and shafts or their vintages with proportion of development workings and actual coaf face extraction using different technologies. Nor, was the objectve of estimating a cost function was clear. When I arrived at Coal India, they were already having the comoputer results and I was consulted if the results were acceptable. Those days there were no dek computers available to play with various models and the data. I could provide them very little help except commenting that the results were not statistically acceptable and the possible reasons why the regression results were different from what they had expected. Besides, my knowldge of econometrics was already dated - I was not aware of the advances in econometrics that had taken place in the previous seven/ eight years.
I was already aware that the Government was still pegging coal prices below the cost of production. What was surprising is that by pegging coal prices below cost of production, Government India encouraged unscientific and unsafe mining leading to loss of precious coal reserves and corruption. This socialist technique was further consolidated by Mrs. Indira Gandhi by coal nationalisation. Coal price and distribution continued to be controlled by the socialist brained Government: safety improved, modern methods of capital intensive long wall mining and opencast mining was introduced at a rapid pace, coal workers were now together to bargain better leading to galloping rise in wages and benefits. Coal India's cost of production soared. But Government kept the prices of coal below cost of production, bearing the losses of the coal companies and the burden of rising capital expenditure on coal capacity expansion. Experts Committees were formed to recommend price revisions: one would have had to read those Committee reports to believe that such poor quality reports could be prepared for signature by esteemed economists - clearly the coal department must have been staffed by the less brilliant material from the administrati8ve services. Four decades later, India is currently in need to import both coking and non-coking coal.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, we had argued for a more rational, long-term coal pricing policy. Many notes were prepared and sent to the Government with little effect. When I remarked that these efforts that we were making were sheer wastage, Mr. Nagar, the Executive Secretary to the Chairman consoled me that at a later date in future the value of these notes would be realized. I knew it would be too late then.
Lt. General Grewal of course had another concern at the same time. He pointed out that increase in coal prices to cover cost of production, however desirable would increase the cost of production of coal itself. I understood his point in terms of the inter-industry flow of materials that we learned through the Leontief Input Output Models. I had learnt that the Planning Commission in its attempt to check consistency of the five year plan material balances used some less than 100 by less than 100 industry models. But I did not ever come across evidence of the use of such models for pricing policies. But Chairman Grewal's point was valid. Coal goes as input for both electricity generation and steel making. A rise in coal prices would increase the cost of electricity generation and steel making. This will lead to rise in prices of electricity and steel both of which are needed in huge quantities to extract coal and hence coal costs would rise. The coefficients were known and it would have been rather easy to calculate approximately the impact of letting coal, steel and electricity prices to work themselves out through their inter-linkages. Indian policy makers however were not comfortable dealing with such quantitative analysis in the 1970s or 1980s.
One implication of Chairman's concern over the above price linkages was that each of these sectors conserved energy and materials use to save on costs on a continuous basis. Mr. R.C. Shekhar, the then Director Finance of Coal India was very affectionate to me: he asked me to present a paper on Energy Conservation at the Annual Conference of the Society of Internal Auditors in Kolkata. I had access to various news bulletin and journals on energy conservation published in the UK and the USA. Remember energy conservation had become a priority after the two successive petroleum oil price shocks of 1971 and 1977. I presented a paper on energy conservation and energy audit and Mr. Shekhar liked it enough to refer to me as his protégé in after my presentation at the Conference.
But despite all efforts, we could not produce an empirically valid cost function for coal. Part of the reason was that our team consisted mostly of cost accountants and charted accountants who were more comfortable in computing and allocating costs rather that allow cost observations to throw up a cost function. It was unfortunate that despite having recruited an econometrician in me, they failed to estimate a cost function that had sttistically significant regression coefficients and R square. In retrospect, I knew the reason why I could not contribute to make the project a success. There was no data analysis and validation before mounting on a main frame computer to obtain regression results. The computer time was hired from outside agency. The modelling did not take into account mines of different types: open cast, inclines and shafts or their vintages with proportion of development workings and actual coaf face extraction using different technologies. Nor, was the objectve of estimating a cost function was clear. When I arrived at Coal India, they were already having the comoputer results and I was consulted if the results were acceptable. Those days there were no dek computers available to play with various models and the data. I could provide them very little help except commenting that the results were not statistically acceptable and the possible reasons why the regression results were different from what they had expected. Besides, my knowldge of econometrics was already dated - I was not aware of the advances in econometrics that had taken place in the previous seven/ eight years.
Learning From Observing Colleagues: My Unfolding Voyage 075
In the late 1970s and 1980s, Coal India was still an organization trying to integrate a wide variety of work cultures and management styles reflected in diverse groups of miners, workmen, office employees, managers, engineers of various disciplines, geologists, doctors, accountants and others who got into a single umbrella due to nationalization: the nearly six lakh manpower of Coal India had come from a large number of relatively small and medium coal mining companies, largely in the private sector. And, there was the large number of new recruits in various engineering and professional disciplines that Coal India recruited in the first few years. It must have been a huge challenge to the Chairman Lt. General Grewal and his successor Chairmen.
The managers who came from private enterprises did not like each other because they had all been reduced to the same category with the special images that some of them enjoyed being part of a foreigner owned business group with special privileges and compensation. As a group, they also disliked the importance the erstwhile public sector NCDC managers enjoyed because they were more conversant with the public sector culture the new Coal India had to adopt. Almost all top and senior managers had very little exposure to management functions at the higher levels of an efficient corporate bureaucracy that a large organization like Coal India had to develop. Many of the senior and top managers were now in the headquarters of the holding company and subsidiary company headquarters to work on strategies, business plans, management development, accounting integration, technological up gradation and marketing plans, monitoring the execution of the strategies and plans, and provide analytical inputs for Board-level decision -making. Many of them felt fish out of water having lost the great kingdoms they enjoyed in the far-flung collieries with their bungalows, clubs and cars. Those who remained in the coalfields found their colleagues at the headquarters intrusive and wasting their valuable time in meetings, telephone calls and visits.
This is an environment that gives birth to funny behaviorial patterns, good for keen observers to pick up and entertain colleagues over lunch and tea breaks and at evening get together. I was fortunate to have some of these keen observers as my close friends: one of them was a mining engineer about six / seven years elder to me and another colleague of my age, a brilliant M.Sc Statistics who had a variety of interests and expert in caricature. Some of the interesting episodes they and some other colleagues shared with me are worth sharing on the blog to give a flavour of those days.
A Chairman and Managing Director, Mr. X of a subsidiary had gone on tour to the coalfields. On return to his headquarters, two days later, he found that his Chair has been occupied another person Y who showed him the copies of X's appointment letter and the transfer order served on X.
A Chief General Manager went with his tem to make a presentation to the Chairman & Managing Director. The Chairman criticized him left and right in the presence of his team during the presentation. He kept saying sorry to the boss and at the end when he went back to his own office, he consoled his team. "Do not get upset my boys. Everyday does not go the same way. This was one of those few bad days. We can hope for better days in the future." He had no regrets in his face.
Mr. E, an excavation engineer developed his own style of getting successive promotion every four years by adopting what was referred to as Udipi Strategy by his colleagues. One year before the promotion interviews were due, Mr. E would activate himself and get involved in various kinds f work tat were discussed and monitored by the bosses meetings. He would be able t please the bosses with his hard work, specially his presence around whenever the bosses needed some assistance. He would get good reports and clear the promotion interview with ease. Soon after promotion and generally a posting at a different police, he would suddenly feign incompetence and slow. Bosses would scold him for non-performance but with a smiling face he would promise to rectify errors and do the same work fast again. Frustrated the bosses will tell." are you a dullard? An ass?” With smile he would respond " Yes, Sir.” He would always respond with "Yes, Sir”. Even if he had been asked to keep mum. The bosses would soon stop giving him and involving him in any work. He would spend the next two and a half years without ay work or interaction with the bosses and then he would resurface into activity to prepare grounds for his next promotion.
Coal India subsidiaries used to recruit assistant in large numbers after a gap of two years or so. These were supposed to graduate assistants. One candidate could not answer any question the interviewer asked. So, finally they asked who India’s Prime Minister was." He pleaded ignorance. He was given a clue: the Prime Minister was a woman. He replied, Mrs. Nandini Satpathy", Nandini was a Chief Minister of Orissa a few years back and this candidate did not know the name of Mrs. Indira Gandhi! Another candidate who turned up one day after the day of scheduled interview explained that he could not come the previous day as the local buses went on strike and added that the passengers also protested against that strike by not paying the bus fare on the next day when the buses started plying again!
The list of selected candidates would run into four/ five pages. Even after the Selection Committees had finalized and authenticated the lists, names of some candidates would be deleted and some others added by replacing the pages other than the first and last ones.
Then, there was one on one of my bosses when he was still a manager of a colliery. He had gone down the shaft around 10 AM on his daily inspection of the coal faces where miners were extracting coal. There was some special problem somewhere and he had to solve the problem with the assistance of his colleagues. Message was sent down to him from the pit head that his wife was enquiring about his delay in coming back home for lunch. He sent message that he would return in thirty minutes. Wife sent message again at 12-30. A similar reply was sent by him from the underground to the pit head. This went on for another two half hour intervals. When the fifth message arrived from his wife at2 PM, he sent baclk a message: "Salee ko bata doe aaj lunch off: tong na koray" (tell the sisterin-law not to harras me any longer as I will skip lunch today). Refering to wife as sister in-law!
The managers who came from private enterprises did not like each other because they had all been reduced to the same category with the special images that some of them enjoyed being part of a foreigner owned business group with special privileges and compensation. As a group, they also disliked the importance the erstwhile public sector NCDC managers enjoyed because they were more conversant with the public sector culture the new Coal India had to adopt. Almost all top and senior managers had very little exposure to management functions at the higher levels of an efficient corporate bureaucracy that a large organization like Coal India had to develop. Many of the senior and top managers were now in the headquarters of the holding company and subsidiary company headquarters to work on strategies, business plans, management development, accounting integration, technological up gradation and marketing plans, monitoring the execution of the strategies and plans, and provide analytical inputs for Board-level decision -making. Many of them felt fish out of water having lost the great kingdoms they enjoyed in the far-flung collieries with their bungalows, clubs and cars. Those who remained in the coalfields found their colleagues at the headquarters intrusive and wasting their valuable time in meetings, telephone calls and visits.
This is an environment that gives birth to funny behaviorial patterns, good for keen observers to pick up and entertain colleagues over lunch and tea breaks and at evening get together. I was fortunate to have some of these keen observers as my close friends: one of them was a mining engineer about six / seven years elder to me and another colleague of my age, a brilliant M.Sc Statistics who had a variety of interests and expert in caricature. Some of the interesting episodes they and some other colleagues shared with me are worth sharing on the blog to give a flavour of those days.
A Chairman and Managing Director, Mr. X of a subsidiary had gone on tour to the coalfields. On return to his headquarters, two days later, he found that his Chair has been occupied another person Y who showed him the copies of X's appointment letter and the transfer order served on X.
A Chief General Manager went with his tem to make a presentation to the Chairman & Managing Director. The Chairman criticized him left and right in the presence of his team during the presentation. He kept saying sorry to the boss and at the end when he went back to his own office, he consoled his team. "Do not get upset my boys. Everyday does not go the same way. This was one of those few bad days. We can hope for better days in the future." He had no regrets in his face.
Mr. E, an excavation engineer developed his own style of getting successive promotion every four years by adopting what was referred to as Udipi Strategy by his colleagues. One year before the promotion interviews were due, Mr. E would activate himself and get involved in various kinds f work tat were discussed and monitored by the bosses meetings. He would be able t please the bosses with his hard work, specially his presence around whenever the bosses needed some assistance. He would get good reports and clear the promotion interview with ease. Soon after promotion and generally a posting at a different police, he would suddenly feign incompetence and slow. Bosses would scold him for non-performance but with a smiling face he would promise to rectify errors and do the same work fast again. Frustrated the bosses will tell." are you a dullard? An ass?” With smile he would respond " Yes, Sir.” He would always respond with "Yes, Sir”. Even if he had been asked to keep mum. The bosses would soon stop giving him and involving him in any work. He would spend the next two and a half years without ay work or interaction with the bosses and then he would resurface into activity to prepare grounds for his next promotion.
Coal India subsidiaries used to recruit assistant in large numbers after a gap of two years or so. These were supposed to graduate assistants. One candidate could not answer any question the interviewer asked. So, finally they asked who India’s Prime Minister was." He pleaded ignorance. He was given a clue: the Prime Minister was a woman. He replied, Mrs. Nandini Satpathy", Nandini was a Chief Minister of Orissa a few years back and this candidate did not know the name of Mrs. Indira Gandhi! Another candidate who turned up one day after the day of scheduled interview explained that he could not come the previous day as the local buses went on strike and added that the passengers also protested against that strike by not paying the bus fare on the next day when the buses started plying again!
The list of selected candidates would run into four/ five pages. Even after the Selection Committees had finalized and authenticated the lists, names of some candidates would be deleted and some others added by replacing the pages other than the first and last ones.
Then, there was one on one of my bosses when he was still a manager of a colliery. He had gone down the shaft around 10 AM on his daily inspection of the coal faces where miners were extracting coal. There was some special problem somewhere and he had to solve the problem with the assistance of his colleagues. Message was sent down to him from the pit head that his wife was enquiring about his delay in coming back home for lunch. He sent message that he would return in thirty minutes. Wife sent message again at 12-30. A similar reply was sent by him from the underground to the pit head. This went on for another two half hour intervals. When the fifth message arrived from his wife at2 PM, he sent baclk a message: "Salee ko bata doe aaj lunch off: tong na koray" (tell the sisterin-law not to harras me any longer as I will skip lunch today). Refering to wife as sister in-law!
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Mock Committe Role: My Unfolding Voyage 074
My little sons were growing up fast Jhupa has already started talking in our language and Chupa was picking up words here and there. I bought a Phillips audio recorder player. I started recording their voices, my wife's Rabindra Sangeet renderings and my father's Prayer in Sanskrit (Chandipath). This piece of instrument would soon have yet another application that I never imagined when I had acquired it.
A Parliamentary delegation would be meeting Coal India's Chairman and top officials soon to discuss the company's performance and problems especially those related to coal costs, pricing, subsidies and marketing arrangements. Chairman called a meeting of Directors, senior officers and some select specialists like me. He discussed the subjects of interest to the visitors and then arranged some mock Committee sessions. Along with the Director Finance I was part of the three members mock Parliamentary Committee and all others present were assigned the role of responding to the questions asked by the members of the Committee. The mock committee sessions continued in the Chairman's presence for three successive days. Many senior officers were very angry with Chairman's selection of a recent recruit like me on the Committee to ask questions to them. I understood why Chairman had selected me: first, I would be as much close to members of the Parliament as possible given my lack of knowledge about the Coal Industry and Coal India to be able to come out with dumb and awkward questions out of ignorance so that the management can get prepared to deal with them, and second, provide me with a quick opportunity of picking up knowledge. But the senior managers felt offended that I was asking questions to them.
At the end of three mock sessions, Chairman selected me to prepare a detailed note on the relevant subjects based on the learning at the mock sessions and allotted three different officers to help me get further material as may be necessary. In about four/ five days, I prepared the draft notes. These were circulated to select senior officers, discussed in a meeting at Chairman's office and I was told to finalize the Notes and prepare a booklet to be given to the visiting Parliamentary members. I received excellent encouragement, cooperation and appreciation for my work from seniors during this period: people had started accepting me.
Once that was completed, Chairman called me and assigned me the task of presenting the subject matter of two of the notes to the visitors with slides (PCs were yet to come to Indian offices in 1977. After two days, Chairman asked me make the slide presentation to him giving me just 10 minutes. I did as desired by him and then he asked me if I had a Tape-recorder at home. I had the one recently purchased. He advised me to rehearse the 10-minute presentation in the front of a mirror at home and getting it recorded, listen to the recording carefully and improve in the subsequent rehearsal. That was a great lesson that I had picked up then: the military forces give so much to rehearsing in simulated war conditions!
Two days before the event, Chairman instructed me and some others to visit the Rotunda Hall in the State Secretariat (Writers' Building) to do a kind of stage rehearsal with presentations equipments. The actual went off well. I got two special increments in salary on the recommendation soon: though Chairman had recommended for six increments, the personnel department pointed out that the Chairman's powers were limited to only two. Chairman was a little disappointed. He would soon suggest to me that I write articles for the journal published by the subsidiary CMPDI. I wrote probably two articles for the journal in the next one year.
But soon this Chairman would have to go. The political party that ran the Central Govt. and appointed Lt. General Grewal as the Chairman would lose the elections. The new Government would like to have someone else who would listen to the commands of the Coal Secretary and act less like a leader of all employees and miners of the Coal India. The subsidiary company chairmen, all from within the coal industry, did not like to be commanded by a former military General. Government had already constituted a special committee to evaluate the performance of Coal India and suggest measurers for improvement. When the Baveja Committee report was sent to Coal India for comments, I was given a copy of this. I prepared a point by point rejoinder on the Committee’s findings and gave it the Chairman. He was pleased with my note but had probably no intention to fight back as he was anticipating an ouster. He told me to get my note edited and publish in the Newspaper op-ed column. I arranged that in the name of a special correspondent.
But before the Chairman changed, my directed bosses changed a number of times. The first boss, Mr. Asa Singh, having worked for long in the private coal mining sector found it difficult to work in the public sector environment dominated by personnel from the erstwhile public sector coal company, the National Coal Development Corporation: he resigned to start his own business in Auragabad. For about a month, I was forced into the cabin vacated by Mr. Asa Singh to directly head the corporate planning department for a month. Then I had to shift my office again to report to the next boss, the Chief Mining Engineer in charge of coal production activity monitoring at the Coal India headquaters. He admitted that he had no idea as to what corporate planning he should engage me in and left it to me decide whatever I would like to do. But he spend at least an hour every week discussing with me on various subjects and showed some affection towards me.
After a few months, an experienced mining engineer, Mr. Kapila from the coalfields got transferred to the headquarters to head the Corporate Planning Department. He was there for about five months but met me not more than three/ four times. I has started working out my own areas of activities: writing speeches and articles for the Chairman, acting as consultant to the Director Finance and the Deputy Chief of Finance on special projects, have brain-storming sessions with young MBAs in the marketing department, collaborate with CMPDI economist, Dr. Guha, on specific planning assignments, attending various training programmes and conferences as the Chief of Management Development Department considered me free for such assignments and occasionally deliver speeches on behalf of the new Chairman when he had to be away on other important assignments. It was all good time but I felt I was not getting utilized properly. I tried to get alternative jobs: a cement company Chairman in Calcutta needed an economist but the company was not willing to spend much on the economist’s pay.
A permanent Chief of Corporate Planning would soon join after the new Chairman; a former Tata group coal mines manager, assumed office. Mr. Mishra, the new boss was a serious but pleasant boss with intellectual orientation. He had earlier worked with the new Chairman when he was the Chairman of the subsidiary Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. Mr. Mishra was quiet affectionate and encouraged me to work on various assignments that he would bring as well as those I had felt I should be working on. But equally interesting were gossip sessions with very interesting and experienced observers within Coal India: these sessions brought out various aspects of management in Coal India.
A Parliamentary delegation would be meeting Coal India's Chairman and top officials soon to discuss the company's performance and problems especially those related to coal costs, pricing, subsidies and marketing arrangements. Chairman called a meeting of Directors, senior officers and some select specialists like me. He discussed the subjects of interest to the visitors and then arranged some mock Committee sessions. Along with the Director Finance I was part of the three members mock Parliamentary Committee and all others present were assigned the role of responding to the questions asked by the members of the Committee. The mock committee sessions continued in the Chairman's presence for three successive days. Many senior officers were very angry with Chairman's selection of a recent recruit like me on the Committee to ask questions to them. I understood why Chairman had selected me: first, I would be as much close to members of the Parliament as possible given my lack of knowledge about the Coal Industry and Coal India to be able to come out with dumb and awkward questions out of ignorance so that the management can get prepared to deal with them, and second, provide me with a quick opportunity of picking up knowledge. But the senior managers felt offended that I was asking questions to them.
At the end of three mock sessions, Chairman selected me to prepare a detailed note on the relevant subjects based on the learning at the mock sessions and allotted three different officers to help me get further material as may be necessary. In about four/ five days, I prepared the draft notes. These were circulated to select senior officers, discussed in a meeting at Chairman's office and I was told to finalize the Notes and prepare a booklet to be given to the visiting Parliamentary members. I received excellent encouragement, cooperation and appreciation for my work from seniors during this period: people had started accepting me.
Once that was completed, Chairman called me and assigned me the task of presenting the subject matter of two of the notes to the visitors with slides (PCs were yet to come to Indian offices in 1977. After two days, Chairman asked me make the slide presentation to him giving me just 10 minutes. I did as desired by him and then he asked me if I had a Tape-recorder at home. I had the one recently purchased. He advised me to rehearse the 10-minute presentation in the front of a mirror at home and getting it recorded, listen to the recording carefully and improve in the subsequent rehearsal. That was a great lesson that I had picked up then: the military forces give so much to rehearsing in simulated war conditions!
Two days before the event, Chairman instructed me and some others to visit the Rotunda Hall in the State Secretariat (Writers' Building) to do a kind of stage rehearsal with presentations equipments. The actual went off well. I got two special increments in salary on the recommendation soon: though Chairman had recommended for six increments, the personnel department pointed out that the Chairman's powers were limited to only two. Chairman was a little disappointed. He would soon suggest to me that I write articles for the journal published by the subsidiary CMPDI. I wrote probably two articles for the journal in the next one year.
But soon this Chairman would have to go. The political party that ran the Central Govt. and appointed Lt. General Grewal as the Chairman would lose the elections. The new Government would like to have someone else who would listen to the commands of the Coal Secretary and act less like a leader of all employees and miners of the Coal India. The subsidiary company chairmen, all from within the coal industry, did not like to be commanded by a former military General. Government had already constituted a special committee to evaluate the performance of Coal India and suggest measurers for improvement. When the Baveja Committee report was sent to Coal India for comments, I was given a copy of this. I prepared a point by point rejoinder on the Committee’s findings and gave it the Chairman. He was pleased with my note but had probably no intention to fight back as he was anticipating an ouster. He told me to get my note edited and publish in the Newspaper op-ed column. I arranged that in the name of a special correspondent.
But before the Chairman changed, my directed bosses changed a number of times. The first boss, Mr. Asa Singh, having worked for long in the private coal mining sector found it difficult to work in the public sector environment dominated by personnel from the erstwhile public sector coal company, the National Coal Development Corporation: he resigned to start his own business in Auragabad. For about a month, I was forced into the cabin vacated by Mr. Asa Singh to directly head the corporate planning department for a month. Then I had to shift my office again to report to the next boss, the Chief Mining Engineer in charge of coal production activity monitoring at the Coal India headquaters. He admitted that he had no idea as to what corporate planning he should engage me in and left it to me decide whatever I would like to do. But he spend at least an hour every week discussing with me on various subjects and showed some affection towards me.
After a few months, an experienced mining engineer, Mr. Kapila from the coalfields got transferred to the headquarters to head the Corporate Planning Department. He was there for about five months but met me not more than three/ four times. I has started working out my own areas of activities: writing speeches and articles for the Chairman, acting as consultant to the Director Finance and the Deputy Chief of Finance on special projects, have brain-storming sessions with young MBAs in the marketing department, collaborate with CMPDI economist, Dr. Guha, on specific planning assignments, attending various training programmes and conferences as the Chief of Management Development Department considered me free for such assignments and occasionally deliver speeches on behalf of the new Chairman when he had to be away on other important assignments. It was all good time but I felt I was not getting utilized properly. I tried to get alternative jobs: a cement company Chairman in Calcutta needed an economist but the company was not willing to spend much on the economist’s pay.
A permanent Chief of Corporate Planning would soon join after the new Chairman; a former Tata group coal mines manager, assumed office. Mr. Mishra, the new boss was a serious but pleasant boss with intellectual orientation. He had earlier worked with the new Chairman when he was the Chairman of the subsidiary Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. Mr. Mishra was quiet affectionate and encouraged me to work on various assignments that he would bring as well as those I had felt I should be working on. But equally interesting were gossip sessions with very interesting and experienced observers within Coal India: these sessions brought out various aspects of management in Coal India.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
MiningTravails: My Unfolding Voyage 073
It was a sprawling bungalow in which I retired to bed one evening after a sumptuous dinner and then get up early morning, brushing my teeth and looking from the window in the big bathroom attached to room where I had slept, to enjoy the beautiful garden with peacocks roaming around. It was the guest house of the Easter Coalfield Ltd. in Sanctoria, an hour's drive from the Asansol Railway Station that I had reached after a five hour train journey from Kolkata (Howrah station). My visit to coal mines had just begun. Over the next few days I would visit a number of departments of the company from Planning to production control and personnel to finance and from engineering to workshops. As scheduled I had to walk down an incline to enter a coal mine and negotiate through slippery, muddy paths underground to reach the entry to a very thin coal seam where an operator was riding on a scrapper machine to scrape the seams to take coal out and then shovel the material on the belt that was evacuating the coal pieces and dust and hauling them to the surface bunkers. The manager of the colliery explained me various things throughout my voyage in and out of the dark tunnels deep under the ground. After the 150 minutes trip I was completely exhausted, even though excited by the ingenuity of engineers in devising the technique of scrapper mining. I went back to the Area General Manager's guest house, had a bath and then had a luncheon meeting with him and his engineering and finance colleagues.
During the visit to the incline mine, the colliery manager had asked me a question which I could not figure out and was haunting me. He had asked me, "Mr. Sen, what is carpet mining?" I had to admit that I had no idea and found the manager quite disappointed. It was during the lunch that I could figure out how this question arose. Some of the engineers assumed that I am a new specialist recruit engineer with knowledge of carpet mining technology: the confusion arose because I was coming from the Corporate Planning Department of the holding company and somewhere down the line pronunciation of corporate got distorted into carpet. If there could be scrapper mining, there could also be carpet mining of coal!
The next mine I vested was the Chinakuri Coal mine. We went deep underground, as usual with long boots, helmets and other accessories, through a shaft (lift/ escalator) that two quite a while before we reached the level we got of the shaft to enter the broad, illuminate channels leading to coal faces being mined. I was told that we were already underneath the bed of a river flowing over our heads. It was a sprawling mine, looked very modern and well developed and was cool with very little seepage of water or coal dust fines floating around. It was a rather comfortable journey. I do not remember now if the coal faces I had visited were mined under Board & Pillar system or the new long wall mining machinery was installed. This was a colliery that had seen devastation with many miners losing their lives in 1958.
My next trip would be to the Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. headquartered in Dhanbad. I think I had taken an early morning train, probably called the Black Diamond Express, from Kolkata (Howrah) Railway Station to Reach Dhanbad around mid- day, about 6 and half hours journey. Dhanbad was a tough terrain with little greenery and full of dust. But it had all the mines that had the reserves of coking coal required for making metallurgical coke - an important input for steel plant blast furnace operation. Here I vested an incline mine and a mine that had to be entered through shaft. The experience was similar to that of Easter Coalfield mines and offices, except that more people conversed in Hindi in Dhanbad while more people conversed in Bengali in Sanctoria. Bharat Coking Coal organised a day's visit to Dhanbad School of Mines and the Central Fuel Research Institute (now renamed as Central Institute of Mining & Fuel Research) Research Institute. It was interesting to find lot of research papers were being published but it did not appear that the coal industry was using such knowledge as one would have wished. The researchers I had met did not seem to show much vibrancy and enthusiasm.
After two weeks, I would visit Ranchi, an overnight train journey from Kolkata to Ranchi that headquartered both the Central Coalfields Ltd (CCL) and the Central Mine Planning and Development Institute (CMPDI). The seven-day program here was similar except that I spent two days at CMPDI’s various departments including two lovely long sessions with Dr. Guha, an Indian Economic Service officer who joined CMPDI on lien for a few years. At CCL I had the first exposure to really big open cast mines with dumpers, shovels and draglines operating all over the surface and excavating coal through blasting of coal seams near the surface. If the underground mines were a scare to people on the ground for the risk of the subsidence due to inadequate sand-filling of empty spaces created by extraction of coal, the open-cast mines were a sore to the eyes, besides being lost greenery and ecological imbalance unless restored properly after coal extraction. To round off my coal-belt visits, I traveled next to Nagpur, the headquarters of Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL) where I visited one each of opencast mine and underground mine. Not all managers of collieries were as careful as one would have wished: at one colliery, the manager ran out of vehicle resources to reach me back to Nagpur guest house of WCL and put me in an auto rickshaw that took about 200 minutes to reach me there.
The four weeks in the coalfields was indeed a brief but useful exposure to coal mining operations and its environment required for a corporate planner in a coal company. The discussions with various departments of subsidiaries and CMPDIL provided an overview of the organizational structure and dynamics, besides building a network of helpful colleagues. Equally important was to get a sense of the management styles and deficiencies at different subsidiaries that I had to report to the Chairman as unbiased observation of a fresher. I had, within this short period, gathered lot of anecdotes about the coal mining managers/ executives and their office politics at various levels. A good start to corporate planning exercise relating to internal environmental scanning!
During the visit to the incline mine, the colliery manager had asked me a question which I could not figure out and was haunting me. He had asked me, "Mr. Sen, what is carpet mining?" I had to admit that I had no idea and found the manager quite disappointed. It was during the lunch that I could figure out how this question arose. Some of the engineers assumed that I am a new specialist recruit engineer with knowledge of carpet mining technology: the confusion arose because I was coming from the Corporate Planning Department of the holding company and somewhere down the line pronunciation of corporate got distorted into carpet. If there could be scrapper mining, there could also be carpet mining of coal!
The next mine I vested was the Chinakuri Coal mine. We went deep underground, as usual with long boots, helmets and other accessories, through a shaft (lift/ escalator) that two quite a while before we reached the level we got of the shaft to enter the broad, illuminate channels leading to coal faces being mined. I was told that we were already underneath the bed of a river flowing over our heads. It was a sprawling mine, looked very modern and well developed and was cool with very little seepage of water or coal dust fines floating around. It was a rather comfortable journey. I do not remember now if the coal faces I had visited were mined under Board & Pillar system or the new long wall mining machinery was installed. This was a colliery that had seen devastation with many miners losing their lives in 1958.
My next trip would be to the Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. headquartered in Dhanbad. I think I had taken an early morning train, probably called the Black Diamond Express, from Kolkata (Howrah) Railway Station to Reach Dhanbad around mid- day, about 6 and half hours journey. Dhanbad was a tough terrain with little greenery and full of dust. But it had all the mines that had the reserves of coking coal required for making metallurgical coke - an important input for steel plant blast furnace operation. Here I vested an incline mine and a mine that had to be entered through shaft. The experience was similar to that of Easter Coalfield mines and offices, except that more people conversed in Hindi in Dhanbad while more people conversed in Bengali in Sanctoria. Bharat Coking Coal organised a day's visit to Dhanbad School of Mines and the Central Fuel Research Institute (now renamed as Central Institute of Mining & Fuel Research) Research Institute. It was interesting to find lot of research papers were being published but it did not appear that the coal industry was using such knowledge as one would have wished. The researchers I had met did not seem to show much vibrancy and enthusiasm.
After two weeks, I would visit Ranchi, an overnight train journey from Kolkata to Ranchi that headquartered both the Central Coalfields Ltd (CCL) and the Central Mine Planning and Development Institute (CMPDI). The seven-day program here was similar except that I spent two days at CMPDI’s various departments including two lovely long sessions with Dr. Guha, an Indian Economic Service officer who joined CMPDI on lien for a few years. At CCL I had the first exposure to really big open cast mines with dumpers, shovels and draglines operating all over the surface and excavating coal through blasting of coal seams near the surface. If the underground mines were a scare to people on the ground for the risk of the subsidence due to inadequate sand-filling of empty spaces created by extraction of coal, the open-cast mines were a sore to the eyes, besides being lost greenery and ecological imbalance unless restored properly after coal extraction. To round off my coal-belt visits, I traveled next to Nagpur, the headquarters of Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL) where I visited one each of opencast mine and underground mine. Not all managers of collieries were as careful as one would have wished: at one colliery, the manager ran out of vehicle resources to reach me back to Nagpur guest house of WCL and put me in an auto rickshaw that took about 200 minutes to reach me there.
The four weeks in the coalfields was indeed a brief but useful exposure to coal mining operations and its environment required for a corporate planner in a coal company. The discussions with various departments of subsidiaries and CMPDIL provided an overview of the organizational structure and dynamics, besides building a network of helpful colleagues. Equally important was to get a sense of the management styles and deficiencies at different subsidiaries that I had to report to the Chairman as unbiased observation of a fresher. I had, within this short period, gathered lot of anecdotes about the coal mining managers/ executives and their office politics at various levels. A good start to corporate planning exercise relating to internal environmental scanning!
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Times Travel: My Unfolding Voyage 072
When airplanes were not available on the planet, intercontinental travel was the quickest by sea from one port to another. On ships, one would spend two-three months to reach United Kingdom or the United States. Since then the ships have increased the speed and ferry goods over the same distance in a couple of weeks or less. Air travel reduced the time spent on travel but over the last few decades the times taken to travel by air has not declined but in some cases have increased substantially. The speed of aircrafts has indeed increased. But the numbers of passengers the latest aircrafts haul are much higher than it used to be decades back. But the overall travel time did not decline as a result. For, the airlines take more time to screen and load baggage of 4 to 5 times more passengers, the security screening takes more time. Passengers spend more time walking longer distances between boarding gate to the aircraft (sometimes involving a bus trip, between check-in to security check (sometimes involving a sky train trip) and between arrival gate and immigration check. Immigration takes longer time. The aircrafts have to wait in the queue for long before they can speed to take off or wait in the air in the queue for landing. And, more often than not the airlines staff would express regret for delays in departure on account of delayed arrival of the incoming aircraft (as if that makes the delay acceptable and legitimate.
But air travel is limited for most people: highly frequent fliers on flight every other day/ night are a small percentage of people on travel. All have to spend more time moving through the city roads. And, some cities grow and expand to make a bus/car kilometer consume more time rather less time despite widening of roads, construction of flyovers and introduction of metro rails that moves along the surface, above the ground and through the tubes underground. The population of vehicles has been growing at a faster rate than the capacity to deal with their movement over the same distances. My city Kolkata has been struggling with this since my childhood. Travel time does not seem to be capable of reducing: it just expands notwithstanding technological developments for quick transportation. One speeds faster on a tube rail but once has still to walk or ride an automobile to reach the tube stations and get out of them to reach destinations.
A significantly large part of life goes on travel to and from work place in cities. My sons drive for 100 to 150 minutes at an average speed of 100 -120 kms. per hour to and fro work place. This is about 3% to 5% of the total time available in a full year and 20%-30% of the time they spend at the work place. So, now many work a day or two every week from home with their computers and cell phones connected to their colleague network. But my father used to spend about 70 minutes to and fro work place in the 1950s in Kolkata (Calcutta) to cover a distance of about 45 kilometers by bus and electric trams. In the 1970s, the same distance took me initially 105 minutes by bus. It would soon increase to 135 minutes in overcrowded buses negotiating congestion in the peak office time. When the Calcutta tube rail project was under construction, the time taken to cover the same distance increased further. On the onward journey, it took about an hour but the return journey would take more than 100 minutes including standing in the queue to board the more-expensive Minibuses at the Dalhousie Square (now called the BBD Bagh). Thus to & fro office travel would take around 4% of the available hours in a year or about 25%-30% of the time spent in the office.
What a colossal waste of time just for traveling to and fro work! Besides, such journeys would take away a considerable part of the energy and sap the enthusiasm and productivity at the work place.
When I joined Coal India in 1977, another mode of travel became available: chartered buses. I became a member of chartered bus that would not stop anywhere except at three places in the office district unlike public buses and mini-buses would stop at about at 19-20 places for passengers to board and alight on the 22 km route. My cost of travel between office and home more than doubled as a result to give a time savings of 25% in travel time. The chartered us travel was comfortable: you could take a refreshing morning nap (that children usually take) and also have some gossip with the passengers sitting nearby. Also, smoking was not yet banned on privately operated chartered buses. In contrast the travel by bus made it almost difficult to have a nap, especially as a few would get to seat with almost 60% of the passengers standing although the journeys with very little elbow space to do anything other than standing: smoking was banned.
I would leave Kolkata for about two decades in 1982. City would have grown in all dimensions: human population, daily commuting population, population of vehicles, and number of flyovers, new by-passes and new roads. But congestion would continue with peak time travel by any kind of vehicles one would travel (except for those who walk to metro-stations for five minutes) travel for 120 minutes. The congestions seem to be never ending. The City planners have done a wonderful job by ensuring that people continue to spend more or less the same long time interval time in unproductive use and return home from office completely exhausted physically and mentally. More on that later. Before that I have to return to my second commercial organization employer, Coal India's wonder world of management.
But air travel is limited for most people: highly frequent fliers on flight every other day/ night are a small percentage of people on travel. All have to spend more time moving through the city roads. And, some cities grow and expand to make a bus/car kilometer consume more time rather less time despite widening of roads, construction of flyovers and introduction of metro rails that moves along the surface, above the ground and through the tubes underground. The population of vehicles has been growing at a faster rate than the capacity to deal with their movement over the same distances. My city Kolkata has been struggling with this since my childhood. Travel time does not seem to be capable of reducing: it just expands notwithstanding technological developments for quick transportation. One speeds faster on a tube rail but once has still to walk or ride an automobile to reach the tube stations and get out of them to reach destinations.
A significantly large part of life goes on travel to and from work place in cities. My sons drive for 100 to 150 minutes at an average speed of 100 -120 kms. per hour to and fro work place. This is about 3% to 5% of the total time available in a full year and 20%-30% of the time they spend at the work place. So, now many work a day or two every week from home with their computers and cell phones connected to their colleague network. But my father used to spend about 70 minutes to and fro work place in the 1950s in Kolkata (Calcutta) to cover a distance of about 45 kilometers by bus and electric trams. In the 1970s, the same distance took me initially 105 minutes by bus. It would soon increase to 135 minutes in overcrowded buses negotiating congestion in the peak office time. When the Calcutta tube rail project was under construction, the time taken to cover the same distance increased further. On the onward journey, it took about an hour but the return journey would take more than 100 minutes including standing in the queue to board the more-expensive Minibuses at the Dalhousie Square (now called the BBD Bagh). Thus to & fro office travel would take around 4% of the available hours in a year or about 25%-30% of the time spent in the office.
What a colossal waste of time just for traveling to and fro work! Besides, such journeys would take away a considerable part of the energy and sap the enthusiasm and productivity at the work place.
When I joined Coal India in 1977, another mode of travel became available: chartered buses. I became a member of chartered bus that would not stop anywhere except at three places in the office district unlike public buses and mini-buses would stop at about at 19-20 places for passengers to board and alight on the 22 km route. My cost of travel between office and home more than doubled as a result to give a time savings of 25% in travel time. The chartered us travel was comfortable: you could take a refreshing morning nap (that children usually take) and also have some gossip with the passengers sitting nearby. Also, smoking was not yet banned on privately operated chartered buses. In contrast the travel by bus made it almost difficult to have a nap, especially as a few would get to seat with almost 60% of the passengers standing although the journeys with very little elbow space to do anything other than standing: smoking was banned.
I would leave Kolkata for about two decades in 1982. City would have grown in all dimensions: human population, daily commuting population, population of vehicles, and number of flyovers, new by-passes and new roads. But congestion would continue with peak time travel by any kind of vehicles one would travel (except for those who walk to metro-stations for five minutes) travel for 120 minutes. The congestions seem to be never ending. The City planners have done a wonderful job by ensuring that people continue to spend more or less the same long time interval time in unproductive use and return home from office completely exhausted physically and mentally. More on that later. Before that I have to return to my second commercial organization employer, Coal India's wonder world of management.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Project Black Diamond: My Unfolding Voyage 071
It was the April Fools Day that I met Mr. Asa Singh, a very soft-spoken, rather reserved, yet smiling gentlemen, somewhat short by the Punjabi Sardarji standards, at his office. I was required to meet Mr. Singh, the Chief of Corporate Planning with my appointment letter. I liked him from the very first meeting and felt a feeling of affection flowing from him. We discussed about us, the work ahead and the responsibilities for a while, before he rang up the Chief of Personnel, who would soon send down an officer from his department to enable me to complete the documentation formalities related to my joining as the Econometrician of the Corporate Planning Department of Coal India Ltd., my new employer.
As per the organization chart, my code was C-3 (most departments were denoted by X followed bu a number like 1, 2, 3, etc: in the case of Corporate Planning the symbol was C and my division was 3 and therefore my code was C-3). Mr. Asa Singh told me that Coal India had already prepared a 10 year plan code named as Project Black Diamond. He gave me a copy of that document to read and re-read as much of our work in Corporate Planning would be centered around and related to updating, revising, elaborating, projecting, estimating, reviewing the various aspects covered in this document. He also said that C-1 and C-2 would join the Department to had the other two divisions of technology and finance (till the time I had been with Coal India, no X-1 or X-2 would join).
I was assigned a big room which was earlier used by the visiting consultants from the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad. They would be visiting again and again from time to time and would be sitting and discussing with me. One of my tasks therefore was to coordinate the work of the Consultants and follow-up with the implementation of their reports. Eventually, I would happen to be transformed into an in-house consultant.
Soon we would be having a meeting with Mr RC Shekhar, Director Finance of the company and Mr. Asa Singh told me that I have to associate myself with the study on cost of mining coal under Mr. Shekhar supervision. We were about five/ six officers who would be associated with the study. Mr. Sengupta, a chartered accountant and third in command in the finance department was the team leader (Mr. Sengupta would after 25-18 years become the Chairman of Coal India): two of his colleagues, an elderly Cost Accountant and newly appointed MBA (Finance) from IIM Ahmedabad, Mr. Bhowmik would be in the team besides me.
Even as I was trying to settle down to this new environment and trying ti figure out how to productively spend the eight hours in the office, I received a shocking telephone call from the Chief of Staff one morning 20 days after I had joined that the Coal India Chairman has desired to interview me at 3 PM in the afternoon. I was not very clear why the Chairman would interview me after I have joined and not before. I was rather very uncomfortable when I entered his room that afternoon. I was with him for an hour. When I came out of the room I was filled with joy and enthusiasm: I got the impression that the Chairman rated me so high as an asset of the organization and how he has planned my utilization with care and affection. I was completely sold to him. We were three in his room. He, his Executive Secretary, Mr. Mathur, a mining engineer and I. The chairman just asked me questions about me, my family, my education, my previous work experience and so on.
Every answer that I gave to the Chairman's questions was received by him with appreciation, affection and encouragement. His Executive Secretary, Mr. Nagar, had already done some research on me and was telling the Chairman about some articles that were published in the previous one or two months in The Business Standard: he even showed the clippings of my article on Management Information System and Research in Banks. The only question my answer did not receive immediate positive reaction was that I hadn't earlier worked outside Calcutta. That day, I wished that I my next job takes me outside Kolkata: little that I could imagine that this would happen and I would land myself in Mumbai a few years later.
Chairman finally told me that he was instructing the Executive Secretary for my 7-day visit to each of Coal India's (then five) subsidiaries, the Easter Coalfields, the Bharat Coking Coal Ltd, the Central Coalfields Ltd, the Western Coalfield Ltd and the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute. The program of visit would be spread over 10 weeks and would cover besides each company headquarters and Area Managers' offices, six underground mines and 2 open cast mines.
When I came out of the Chairman's room, I felt that I have joined an organization that really values my worth and has real interest in utilizing my skills and potential. I understood for the first time that the army generals really knew how to win hearts of the people they would work with and keep their motivation and morale high. In a few months, I would learn more about managing people from Lt. General Grewal, the Coal India Chairman.
As per the organization chart, my code was C-3 (most departments were denoted by X followed bu a number like 1, 2, 3, etc: in the case of Corporate Planning the symbol was C and my division was 3 and therefore my code was C-3). Mr. Asa Singh told me that Coal India had already prepared a 10 year plan code named as Project Black Diamond. He gave me a copy of that document to read and re-read as much of our work in Corporate Planning would be centered around and related to updating, revising, elaborating, projecting, estimating, reviewing the various aspects covered in this document. He also said that C-1 and C-2 would join the Department to had the other two divisions of technology and finance (till the time I had been with Coal India, no X-1 or X-2 would join).
I was assigned a big room which was earlier used by the visiting consultants from the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad. They would be visiting again and again from time to time and would be sitting and discussing with me. One of my tasks therefore was to coordinate the work of the Consultants and follow-up with the implementation of their reports. Eventually, I would happen to be transformed into an in-house consultant.
Soon we would be having a meeting with Mr RC Shekhar, Director Finance of the company and Mr. Asa Singh told me that I have to associate myself with the study on cost of mining coal under Mr. Shekhar supervision. We were about five/ six officers who would be associated with the study. Mr. Sengupta, a chartered accountant and third in command in the finance department was the team leader (Mr. Sengupta would after 25-18 years become the Chairman of Coal India): two of his colleagues, an elderly Cost Accountant and newly appointed MBA (Finance) from IIM Ahmedabad, Mr. Bhowmik would be in the team besides me.
Even as I was trying to settle down to this new environment and trying ti figure out how to productively spend the eight hours in the office, I received a shocking telephone call from the Chief of Staff one morning 20 days after I had joined that the Coal India Chairman has desired to interview me at 3 PM in the afternoon. I was not very clear why the Chairman would interview me after I have joined and not before. I was rather very uncomfortable when I entered his room that afternoon. I was with him for an hour. When I came out of the room I was filled with joy and enthusiasm: I got the impression that the Chairman rated me so high as an asset of the organization and how he has planned my utilization with care and affection. I was completely sold to him. We were three in his room. He, his Executive Secretary, Mr. Mathur, a mining engineer and I. The chairman just asked me questions about me, my family, my education, my previous work experience and so on.
Every answer that I gave to the Chairman's questions was received by him with appreciation, affection and encouragement. His Executive Secretary, Mr. Nagar, had already done some research on me and was telling the Chairman about some articles that were published in the previous one or two months in The Business Standard: he even showed the clippings of my article on Management Information System and Research in Banks. The only question my answer did not receive immediate positive reaction was that I hadn't earlier worked outside Calcutta. That day, I wished that I my next job takes me outside Kolkata: little that I could imagine that this would happen and I would land myself in Mumbai a few years later.
Chairman finally told me that he was instructing the Executive Secretary for my 7-day visit to each of Coal India's (then five) subsidiaries, the Easter Coalfields, the Bharat Coking Coal Ltd, the Central Coalfields Ltd, the Western Coalfield Ltd and the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute. The program of visit would be spread over 10 weeks and would cover besides each company headquarters and Area Managers' offices, six underground mines and 2 open cast mines.
When I came out of the Chairman's room, I felt that I have joined an organization that really values my worth and has real interest in utilizing my skills and potential. I understood for the first time that the army generals really knew how to win hearts of the people they would work with and keep their motivation and morale high. In a few months, I would learn more about managing people from Lt. General Grewal, the Coal India Chairman.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Managing First Exit: My Unfolding Voyage 070
Around early December, I picked up a casual conversation with a junior colleague from the Management Development Department and mentioned to him that I would be soon leaving the services of the United Bank as I might get some offers from the private sector. This was deliberate planting of information: I knew that he would soon carry this information to his boss Captain Ghosh, a retired army officer, who has been looking after development of managerial personnel but not a part of the usual personnel administration department. I loved United Bank as my first employer and did not really leave but was seriously afflicted by a perception in my mind that the Bank was not taking care to reward me in tune with my capabilities and aspirations. Sometime back, my boss' boss had remarked in a closed group dinner party in response to a suggestion by one of his close friends that it was high time that I had been given the second promotion: 'Sen is getting his PhD soon and then we will kick him up'. It was good English from a B.Sc in economics from London but I was rather annoyed by his rather middle class sentiment and reluctance to think what I could have been thinking about myself and the Bank. So, I did not want my boss and boss' boss to know that I was seriously consider leaving. But I wanted that this information travels up to the top management through a different route. And, it did as I would find out later.
I did not have any job offer yet. Earlier in August, a public sector firm had advertised for the post of Econometrics. I knew I could not apply except through proper channel: public sector employees were obligated to route their applications for jobs in other public sector companies only through their existing public sector employers (a kind of Communist-Socialist State oppression on employees to distort the market for human resources : something I strongly deplored as State mafia-ism). I did not want to use this route because the the personnel department would take a long time and the Bank may use its influence to ensure that I was not recruited by the other public sector company. So, what could I have done. Try my luck: my wife forwarded my resume to the company Something else would happen. I would receive a telephone call from my professor, head of economic research unit at the Indian Statistical Institute: he said that the Institute had received a request from the very same public sector company to recommend candidates from its past and current students and that he considered me as the most appropriate candidate to be recommended if I were interested. I immediately agreed with him that the Institute could recommend my name. In early November the company called me for interview. Before I could meet the interview board, the usual public sector company personnel department staff there would ask me for a no objection certificate from my current employer United Bank of India. I told them that they had not mentioned this in their letter advising me to to turn up for interview and I could get such No objection certificate in the event of my selection after the interview. They let me go in to meet the Selection Board. There were three persons on the Board: the Director Finance of the company. He asked me all the questions and I found him taking lot of interest. The second person on the Board was my teacher of econometrics at the University. When he was requested to ask me questions, he observed that he knew me well as his students and that I had got the highest marks in Econometrics at the University. So, he would not ask me any further questions. Then, there was the Director Personnel: he inquired why I had not routed my application through my current employer. I would reply to him with a question:"Did I apply?" The smart Finance Director immediately quipped: " Sean's name and resume was received in response to our request to the Indian Statistical Institute". Finally, I was asked when could I join if I were selected. I told them my current employer would require me to give three months' notice.
In the middle of December, Captain Ghosh telephoned and asked me to meet him as soon as possible. I knew that my colleague in his Department would have informed him about the conversation we had about 19 days back. I met him in his office room. He said that he had learnt that I was thinking of leaving United Bank of India but wondered why. I replied that I was happy with my job but felt that I was constrained by opportunity to shoulder higher responsibilty challange as a reward my performance. He told me that I should not worry because I was one among the blue-eyed officers of the Bank whose career in the Bank would be bright. Some thing would be done for me soon. And finally he said, "Don't jump on the next bus." I thanked him and came back to my desk and did not share this interaction with Capt Ghosh with anyone else.
I got the job offer from the company that interviwed in early January and I replied them I would join by early April. But I did not immediately resign because I would really require to give one month's notice to United Bank of India to leave them. By mid- January 1977 I received the letter of promotion to Staff Officer Grade II with immediate effect and they designated me as Assistant Economist, the position held by my boss who had been recently promoted to the position of the Economist in Staff Officer Grade I. I happily accepted the promotion. Everyone would congratulate me, especially as the promtion came suddenly. I worked in my new position for 10 days and went on leave for a month with cash back for another one month's leave. Colleagues thought that I went on leave to celebrate my promotion. I had then two little son's to play with.
I resumed office towards the end of February and soon thereafter submitted my resignation. Colleagues were surprised and wanted to know where I would be joining next. I told them that's a secret. Bosses were unhappy especially because the resignation soon after a promotion was viewed as insulting. My boss's boss was so angry that when I visted the Bank after a month of my quitting the Bank, he virtually asked me leave the Bank's premises immediately. I knew that his reluctance to promote me earlier must have earned him some comments from his bosses when I had quit immediately after a promotion. I learned that a manager must know how not to lose a useful resource on which investment had been made. I bade good-bye to United Bank of India as my employer in March 1977 after serving them for 75 months.
I did not have any job offer yet. Earlier in August, a public sector firm had advertised for the post of Econometrics. I knew I could not apply except through proper channel: public sector employees were obligated to route their applications for jobs in other public sector companies only through their existing public sector employers (a kind of Communist-Socialist State oppression on employees to distort the market for human resources : something I strongly deplored as State mafia-ism). I did not want to use this route because the the personnel department would take a long time and the Bank may use its influence to ensure that I was not recruited by the other public sector company. So, what could I have done. Try my luck: my wife forwarded my resume to the company Something else would happen. I would receive a telephone call from my professor, head of economic research unit at the Indian Statistical Institute: he said that the Institute had received a request from the very same public sector company to recommend candidates from its past and current students and that he considered me as the most appropriate candidate to be recommended if I were interested. I immediately agreed with him that the Institute could recommend my name. In early November the company called me for interview. Before I could meet the interview board, the usual public sector company personnel department staff there would ask me for a no objection certificate from my current employer United Bank of India. I told them that they had not mentioned this in their letter advising me to to turn up for interview and I could get such No objection certificate in the event of my selection after the interview. They let me go in to meet the Selection Board. There were three persons on the Board: the Director Finance of the company. He asked me all the questions and I found him taking lot of interest. The second person on the Board was my teacher of econometrics at the University. When he was requested to ask me questions, he observed that he knew me well as his students and that I had got the highest marks in Econometrics at the University. So, he would not ask me any further questions. Then, there was the Director Personnel: he inquired why I had not routed my application through my current employer. I would reply to him with a question:"Did I apply?" The smart Finance Director immediately quipped: " Sean's name and resume was received in response to our request to the Indian Statistical Institute". Finally, I was asked when could I join if I were selected. I told them my current employer would require me to give three months' notice.
In the middle of December, Captain Ghosh telephoned and asked me to meet him as soon as possible. I knew that my colleague in his Department would have informed him about the conversation we had about 19 days back. I met him in his office room. He said that he had learnt that I was thinking of leaving United Bank of India but wondered why. I replied that I was happy with my job but felt that I was constrained by opportunity to shoulder higher responsibilty challange as a reward my performance. He told me that I should not worry because I was one among the blue-eyed officers of the Bank whose career in the Bank would be bright. Some thing would be done for me soon. And finally he said, "Don't jump on the next bus." I thanked him and came back to my desk and did not share this interaction with Capt Ghosh with anyone else.
I got the job offer from the company that interviwed in early January and I replied them I would join by early April. But I did not immediately resign because I would really require to give one month's notice to United Bank of India to leave them. By mid- January 1977 I received the letter of promotion to Staff Officer Grade II with immediate effect and they designated me as Assistant Economist, the position held by my boss who had been recently promoted to the position of the Economist in Staff Officer Grade I. I happily accepted the promotion. Everyone would congratulate me, especially as the promtion came suddenly. I worked in my new position for 10 days and went on leave for a month with cash back for another one month's leave. Colleagues thought that I went on leave to celebrate my promotion. I had then two little son's to play with.
I resumed office towards the end of February and soon thereafter submitted my resignation. Colleagues were surprised and wanted to know where I would be joining next. I told them that's a secret. Bosses were unhappy especially because the resignation soon after a promotion was viewed as insulting. My boss's boss was so angry that when I visted the Bank after a month of my quitting the Bank, he virtually asked me leave the Bank's premises immediately. I knew that his reluctance to promote me earlier must have earned him some comments from his bosses when I had quit immediately after a promotion. I learned that a manager must know how not to lose a useful resource on which investment had been made. I bade good-bye to United Bank of India as my employer in March 1977 after serving them for 75 months.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Jubilee Pains & Resolve: My unfolding Voyage 069
My employer United Bank of India celebrated its Silver Jubilee in 1975. In the same year, I had both Golden (50) and Diamond (60) Jubilee of my employment with the Bank in terms of months of pay-checks received. I had not been with any school or college or university for so many months. I had developed some degree of endurance with the increasingly old environment at the Bank. But Jubilees led me to review my achievements: I had a decent job with reasonably comfortable earnings, I had good romance and got married to the girl I chose, I had a little son to play with. I had already submitted my PhD dissertation submitted and two technical articles published in the National Institute of Bank Management's journal. By bosses were pleased with me and I had got a promotion. I received admiration from colleagues and come to gather a fairly good overview of banking and bank management in India as also an insight into various aspects of my employers strengths and weaknesses.
Yet, something would bug me. I had lot of time to take up new projects both at office and outside. The Bank was not prepared to let young officers to get into diversified areas of management responsibility with any fast track movement upward in hierarchy: rather would require me to continue doing whatever I had so far demonstrated that I was capable of doing efficiently and effectively.
All this was generating a sense of urge for getting over the constraints to a movement towards a more varied and higher level exposure. By this time, I had picked up, from an article in Harvard Business Review, a hypothesis that power does not lie in the position you enjoy but in the ability to influence colleagues, peers, bosses and other minds through your depth of knowledge,innovative ideas and communication. I needed to enhance that power for in India in the foreseeable future public sector would only generate opportunities for growth and that would accrue to anyone with seniority irrespective of your capability, potential or performance.
So, I was in search of new challenges in 1976. How do I make my old parents happier? How do my wife get more happiness? How do I get into an office environment that would make me learn more things at a fast pace as had happened in the first 36 months of my service in the United Bank? And, of course, what else could I do?
I tried behavioral management tools to develop transparent, "u r OK, i am OK" sessions with my wife for better mutual understanding and failed: she would suspect that I was trying to brain-wash her further. My parents were happy that we were staying again with them with our baby son. My wife had been on long leave, beyond the three months' maternity leave she was entitled to. Now she would need to resume office and my son would be taken adequate care at home by my mother and sister-in law during her absence of eight/ nine hours a day. So, one fine morning, she reported back to office. In the evening she announced to me that she would never go back to office as she was unable to bear the few hours of separation with the five-month old child. So, she would immediately resign. And, we got a new challenge cropping up: she desired another kid.
Since my wife wanted to resign from office, we went back to our rented apartment. Jhupa was growing up fast. The landlady who lived on the second-story of the same building, Maya-di and her daughter were very affectionate to all of us. So, was Jyotirmoyee-di, who lived in the adjacent apartment ed. This short, beautiful lady had moved in to this flat recently after she had retired as a Professor of History in a college in Patna in Bihar. She had lost her husband when she was just 13 and then went on to study in school, college, university and had gone to London for higher studies. She was also a guest teacher in the Sarada Mission Women's College nearby. Through her we cam in touch with the College's Principal, Saradaji (Prabrajika ...Prana), a very affectionate Sanyasin of the mission. Jyotirmoyee-di was very fond of Jhupa and she enjoyed see him crawling and then learning to walk, dance and speak. The next door neighbor were also very affectionate to us. One of their relatives, a professor in the university at Gauhati, had come on a visit. Jhupa would try to talk to him from the small balcony that we had opposite the neighbors backyard. One day this professor told my wife that when Jhupa would grow up he would be a mathematician. My wife was very happy.
We would be visiting our parent's residence, 20 minutes away from our apartment, every week. That would make them happy. But I thought I could make my parents happier if we could go for a trip[ together. I was by now entitled to get reimbursement of another family trip to anywhere in India by train. This time I chose Guwahati (formerly Gauhati) in Assam because the 50 minutes air trip from Kolkata to Guwahati was admissible for reimbursement because the train journey involved two nights over an unusually log stretch. So, in August-September 1976, five of us (my wife, mother, father, one-year old son Jhupa and I)flew off to Guwahati, and then straight from the Airport went in taxi to Kamakshya Temple on the top of a hill about 45 minutes away from the airport. At the temple, my parents would offer a special puja worship ceremony that would take about two hours. Then we went in a taxi to the city center and took a bus that would carry us along the sloping and winding roads up the hills to Shillong, the beautiful capital of the State of Meghalaya (Residence in the Clouds). We stayed in a hotel at Shillong for three nights. It was so exhilarating and romantic roaming around the hilly terrain with clouds touching you. It was a romantic environment as well. My father told me the name of a relative whom he knew lived in Shillong. I searched out from the telephone directory (there were not many people who had a telephone in the sparsely populated town those days and the Bengali's among them would have very few) probable Bengali candidates with the surname my father had said and ultimately got in touch with the person's daughter in law and wife: the person concerned was no more but his son and the family were still in Shillong. We visited them one afternoon. Shillong was cold and we had to use blankets at night. One evening when Jhupa was with my mother and she was taking her dinner of mutton-rice, my wife inquired about what Jhupa was doing? My mother replied that he was sleeping under the blanket beside her. Soon, my wife would ask about from where some peculiar sound was coming from and then find Jhupa was enjoying mutton juice from my mothers fingers while enjoying the warmth under the blanket. We would down from Shillong on the fourth day to stay at a hotel in Guwahati for three days. Here Topu had a relative. Again, I tried with the Telephone Directory to find out her cousin's husbands telephone number, contacted them and visited them one evening for an hour or two.
Back to work after 10 days vacation and I started exploring for an opportunity somewhere. I have to get out of United Bank. But before I could do that in November, Chupa, our second child arrived 15 months after
Jhupa, his elder brother. In the case of Jhupa, when the gynecologist had confirmed and I shared the information with my mother, she was so happy. Then, on a Monday morning, as I was getting ready to go to office, Topu said that the arrival date seems to have arrive. I took her to my parents' place and deposited her there. By the time I had come back from office in the evening, mother had already got her admitted to the hospital five minutes walk from the residence and late at night the nurses rang up so that we can walk to the hospital to welcome Jhupa. In the case of Chupa, Topu felt uncomfortable at around 10 PM on a Saturday night as we were just about retiring to bed. We left Jhupa under the care of the neighbor, rushed Topu to another hospital near Shyambazar Five Point Crossing, half an hour away by taxi from my rented apartment, admitted her to the hospital, returned home by mid-night, took back Jhupa from the neighbors and passed the night with Jhupa sleeping for the first time without his mother beside him. In the early morning got up to feed Jhupa, gave him a bath, dressed him up first. Then I also had a bath, took some breakfast and both of us went to my parents' residence. They had already received the telephone call from the hospital about Chupa's arrival in the early hours of Sunday. I left Jhupa with my sister in law, informed my in laws walking down to their residence three minutes away and then proceeded to see Chupa and Topu at the hospital. On Tuesday, I would bring them straight to my parents' residence where we would be staying for the next seek weeks. When Topu arrived home with Chupa, Jhupa received some kind of a shock: as she approached Jhupa to take him in her lap after a hug and kisses, Jhupa suddenly felt shy and jumped on my lap loo kin asking at the infant baby in the cot! That is the beginning of a new journey for the two brother growing up together.
I resumed office on Wednesday and explained my absence for the previous two days sharing the good news with the colleagues. Malay Babu quipped. " Basudeb, you had just been back from the hills a few weeks back and we never imagined that your wife could have been already pregnant! How do you keep secrets?". It was really amazing that my wife's movements and appearance would not give any perceptible signals of pregnancy to visitors or passers-by during the relevant two periods.
But now an opportunity would come for a new work experience, besides a new family experience.
Yet, something would bug me. I had lot of time to take up new projects both at office and outside. The Bank was not prepared to let young officers to get into diversified areas of management responsibility with any fast track movement upward in hierarchy: rather would require me to continue doing whatever I had so far demonstrated that I was capable of doing efficiently and effectively.
All this was generating a sense of urge for getting over the constraints to a movement towards a more varied and higher level exposure. By this time, I had picked up, from an article in Harvard Business Review, a hypothesis that power does not lie in the position you enjoy but in the ability to influence colleagues, peers, bosses and other minds through your depth of knowledge,innovative ideas and communication. I needed to enhance that power for in India in the foreseeable future public sector would only generate opportunities for growth and that would accrue to anyone with seniority irrespective of your capability, potential or performance.
So, I was in search of new challenges in 1976. How do I make my old parents happier? How do my wife get more happiness? How do I get into an office environment that would make me learn more things at a fast pace as had happened in the first 36 months of my service in the United Bank? And, of course, what else could I do?
I tried behavioral management tools to develop transparent, "u r OK, i am OK" sessions with my wife for better mutual understanding and failed: she would suspect that I was trying to brain-wash her further. My parents were happy that we were staying again with them with our baby son. My wife had been on long leave, beyond the three months' maternity leave she was entitled to. Now she would need to resume office and my son would be taken adequate care at home by my mother and sister-in law during her absence of eight/ nine hours a day. So, one fine morning, she reported back to office. In the evening she announced to me that she would never go back to office as she was unable to bear the few hours of separation with the five-month old child. So, she would immediately resign. And, we got a new challenge cropping up: she desired another kid.
Since my wife wanted to resign from office, we went back to our rented apartment. Jhupa was growing up fast. The landlady who lived on the second-story of the same building, Maya-di and her daughter were very affectionate to all of us. So, was Jyotirmoyee-di, who lived in the adjacent apartment ed. This short, beautiful lady had moved in to this flat recently after she had retired as a Professor of History in a college in Patna in Bihar. She had lost her husband when she was just 13 and then went on to study in school, college, university and had gone to London for higher studies. She was also a guest teacher in the Sarada Mission Women's College nearby. Through her we cam in touch with the College's Principal, Saradaji (Prabrajika ...Prana), a very affectionate Sanyasin of the mission. Jyotirmoyee-di was very fond of Jhupa and she enjoyed see him crawling and then learning to walk, dance and speak. The next door neighbor were also very affectionate to us. One of their relatives, a professor in the university at Gauhati, had come on a visit. Jhupa would try to talk to him from the small balcony that we had opposite the neighbors backyard. One day this professor told my wife that when Jhupa would grow up he would be a mathematician. My wife was very happy.
We would be visiting our parent's residence, 20 minutes away from our apartment, every week. That would make them happy. But I thought I could make my parents happier if we could go for a trip[ together. I was by now entitled to get reimbursement of another family trip to anywhere in India by train. This time I chose Guwahati (formerly Gauhati) in Assam because the 50 minutes air trip from Kolkata to Guwahati was admissible for reimbursement because the train journey involved two nights over an unusually log stretch. So, in August-September 1976, five of us (my wife, mother, father, one-year old son Jhupa and I)flew off to Guwahati, and then straight from the Airport went in taxi to Kamakshya Temple on the top of a hill about 45 minutes away from the airport. At the temple, my parents would offer a special puja worship ceremony that would take about two hours. Then we went in a taxi to the city center and took a bus that would carry us along the sloping and winding roads up the hills to Shillong, the beautiful capital of the State of Meghalaya (Residence in the Clouds). We stayed in a hotel at Shillong for three nights. It was so exhilarating and romantic roaming around the hilly terrain with clouds touching you. It was a romantic environment as well. My father told me the name of a relative whom he knew lived in Shillong. I searched out from the telephone directory (there were not many people who had a telephone in the sparsely populated town those days and the Bengali's among them would have very few) probable Bengali candidates with the surname my father had said and ultimately got in touch with the person's daughter in law and wife: the person concerned was no more but his son and the family were still in Shillong. We visited them one afternoon. Shillong was cold and we had to use blankets at night. One evening when Jhupa was with my mother and she was taking her dinner of mutton-rice, my wife inquired about what Jhupa was doing? My mother replied that he was sleeping under the blanket beside her. Soon, my wife would ask about from where some peculiar sound was coming from and then find Jhupa was enjoying mutton juice from my mothers fingers while enjoying the warmth under the blanket. We would down from Shillong on the fourth day to stay at a hotel in Guwahati for three days. Here Topu had a relative. Again, I tried with the Telephone Directory to find out her cousin's husbands telephone number, contacted them and visited them one evening for an hour or two.
Back to work after 10 days vacation and I started exploring for an opportunity somewhere. I have to get out of United Bank. But before I could do that in November, Chupa, our second child arrived 15 months after
Jhupa, his elder brother. In the case of Jhupa, when the gynecologist had confirmed and I shared the information with my mother, she was so happy. Then, on a Monday morning, as I was getting ready to go to office, Topu said that the arrival date seems to have arrive. I took her to my parents' place and deposited her there. By the time I had come back from office in the evening, mother had already got her admitted to the hospital five minutes walk from the residence and late at night the nurses rang up so that we can walk to the hospital to welcome Jhupa. In the case of Chupa, Topu felt uncomfortable at around 10 PM on a Saturday night as we were just about retiring to bed. We left Jhupa under the care of the neighbor, rushed Topu to another hospital near Shyambazar Five Point Crossing, half an hour away by taxi from my rented apartment, admitted her to the hospital, returned home by mid-night, took back Jhupa from the neighbors and passed the night with Jhupa sleeping for the first time without his mother beside him. In the early morning got up to feed Jhupa, gave him a bath, dressed him up first. Then I also had a bath, took some breakfast and both of us went to my parents' residence. They had already received the telephone call from the hospital about Chupa's arrival in the early hours of Sunday. I left Jhupa with my sister in law, informed my in laws walking down to their residence three minutes away and then proceeded to see Chupa and Topu at the hospital. On Tuesday, I would bring them straight to my parents' residence where we would be staying for the next seek weeks. When Topu arrived home with Chupa, Jhupa received some kind of a shock: as she approached Jhupa to take him in her lap after a hug and kisses, Jhupa suddenly felt shy and jumped on my lap loo kin asking at the infant baby in the cot! That is the beginning of a new journey for the two brother growing up together.
I resumed office on Wednesday and explained my absence for the previous two days sharing the good news with the colleagues. Malay Babu quipped. " Basudeb, you had just been back from the hills a few weeks back and we never imagined that your wife could have been already pregnant! How do you keep secrets?". It was really amazing that my wife's movements and appearance would not give any perceptible signals of pregnancy to visitors or passers-by during the relevant two periods.
But now an opportunity would come for a new work experience, besides a new family experience.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Playing with Analytic Rigor & Terminology: My Unfolding Vogage 068
On an invitation from the Entrepreneur Development Cell of the Indian Institute of Kharagpur, I along with my wife, travel led about 3 hours in a car to reach the IIT campus a few years ago. The organizing students extended a very warm reception and looked after us with care. I was scheduled to address them on the subject of 'Rise of the Knowledge Entrepreneurs' on the following day after lunch. The students took us around the sprawling old campus. We also visited a students' hostel and also the Management School building. Then, it struck me and I requested the students to find out if there was a professor of economics named Partha Basu in the economics department of the Institute and in case he is in station whether I could meet him after my address was over. Partho came to meet us at the IIT Guest House where we were put up, took us to his residence and we had nice time together. He was my colleague at United Bank of India and we were meeting after a gap of 30 years. Parto was two years junior to me in the University and joined the bank probably three years after I did. He was a serious researcher and had lot of problems satisfying himself with the adequacy and representativeness of stratified sampling for a survey he was conducting for an office note. He would accept and write only on the conclusions that come out after satisfying all statistical tests: he could discuss and even have a conviction on a particular hypotheses being true, but would not justify the hypothesis being true unless it has passed the r. rigorous statistical tests of inference. The problem of office communication is that the readers and users of these communication cannot tolerate pleading ignorance. One cannot just say that I did not get support for any of the alternative hypotheses I had tried to test with statistical rig our. One needs to make a personal judgment based on whatever statistical tests one has conducted and whatever theoretical arguments one could marshal for and against all alternative hypothesis, and say this is the most likely Truth and the cost of not accepting this Truth in case if it is really True while formulating policy / making a decision is such and such. Office communications cannot say that one is unable to arrive at a conclusion. The art of drafting an office communication lies in taking the reader through the notes in such a logical sequence that the reader gets increasingly convinced at every stage without any question occurring in the reader's mind so that by the time the person finishes reading the note , the person starts believing that he/ she himself has discovered the Truth contained in the Note and takes responsibility for agreeing with the office Note. Unfortunately, very few researchers would combine their expertise in statistical inference testing and expertise in building a case for a particular hypothesis being true on the basis of knowledge and analysis other than inconclusive statistical tests of inference. Businesses decisions and policies cannot wait for conclusive Truth to arrive,: they are continuously made and revised based on new knowledge and past mistakes identified. Academically, this may look like playing with scientific rigor. I learned that the hard way in the United Bank and later: but serious researchers would interpret that as compromising with scientific rigor. Partho, a very nice gentleman,strongly against male domination over women in families, and with lot of flair for argumentation, would soon leave United Bank and join the Indian Institute of Technology as a economic teacher and would have enjoyed his life thoroughly thereafter.
There was however more things to learn about playing with scientific rigor and terminology. My boss and his boss drew my attention to a two line paragraph from the minutes of a meeting at the Ministry: I do not exactly recall those few sentences but they had recorded that the Secretary or Additional Secretary had advised the banks to formulate models of business plans covering matrix of parameters for rural branches so that these branches turn viable in a shortest possible time. The bosses wanted to know what did the word 'matrix' signify in this context and whether I can build such models. I told them although these sentences conveyed very little extra meaning than they would have if the words 'matrix' and 'parameters' were not used. But I could draw up such a model where I could safely use the terms 'matrix' and 'parameters' and yet these terms would really be insignificant in the essence of building of the model. I also, told them probably the Secretary / Additional Secretary had picked up these terms while visiting the World Bank on an assignment or he must have faintly recalled some terms he had learned while studying mathematics at the undergraduate level. But I could use the terms matrix in the general sense of an array of numbers and parameters as various elements of costs and income rates that along with business activity variables determine bank branches profitability. The bosses relied on my knowledge of undergraduate linear algebra and theory of equations and crossed check if my definitions of matrix and parameter made sense by looking up at the dictionaries. Then, they told me to go ahead and quickly prepare a Note as the Chairman of the Bank had expressed the desire the our Bank should be first to respond on having taken action on this part of the minutes of meeting at the ministry attended by all nationalized bank chairmen and representative of the National Institute of Bank Management. I started my work and also sought their permission to visit a few rural branches so that I could make my model empirically realistic.
I chose the Kolaghat Branch for a five-day visit. It was then a rural / semi-urban location with rural command area. I used to take a daily trip first by bus and by a local train from Howrah station to reach Kolaghat in about 75 minutes. The daily trips cost me in terms of getting an attack of 'conjunctivitis' eye sore that would also pass on my fiance resulting in one of her eyes appearing smaller in size than the other for a weeks before we got married. However, all the five days of my association with the Kolghat branch meant a two hour visit to some parts of the branch's business hinterland for finding prospects of business growth over the next few years, examining the branches past record of performance in these areas and discussing a complete five year business plan for the branch covering deposits of different categories, advances under different categories, staff productivity and manpower deployment, variable and fixed costs and profits. Back to the office, I would access information on all these variables for a sample of relatively new rural branches to mind out the mean and variation in the business activity level and composition, manpower deployment and cost elements for the first three/ four of their operation. Once this information was analyzed, it was easy to develop .internally consistent, feasible and yet challenging time paths of the growth in different business activity levels and the costs, the net interest margins and the profits. The idea was to generate three four alternative time paths of these variables for the first 3 to 5 years of their operations that would be consistent with their reaching the break-even point within that time frame. Thus, I would now have only to present these time profiles, of variable with underlying parameters relating to staff deployment, staff productivity and interest rate margins and etc in the form of an array of numbers that I could call as Matrix 1, Matrix 2 and Matrix 3 as business development plan models to guide the new branch managers to pursue the objectives of meeting priority sector targets as well as reaching break-even point at the earliest. I wrote out the Note and after the bosses were satisfied they sent copies of the Note to the Ministry bureaucrats and to the representative of the National Institute of Bank Management. The latter responded quickly appreciating the work but pointing out that the concept of matrix had not been really applied: he was right, he knew his undergraduate linear algebra well. I was given the task of replying to him, which I did in a language that would close the issue and yet bosses would be satisfied. The bureaucrats would not respond. And, the funny episode of playing with scientific terminology would end with my bosses satisfied.
There was however more things to learn about playing with scientific rigor and terminology. My boss and his boss drew my attention to a two line paragraph from the minutes of a meeting at the Ministry: I do not exactly recall those few sentences but they had recorded that the Secretary or Additional Secretary had advised the banks to formulate models of business plans covering matrix of parameters for rural branches so that these branches turn viable in a shortest possible time. The bosses wanted to know what did the word 'matrix' signify in this context and whether I can build such models. I told them although these sentences conveyed very little extra meaning than they would have if the words 'matrix' and 'parameters' were not used. But I could draw up such a model where I could safely use the terms 'matrix' and 'parameters' and yet these terms would really be insignificant in the essence of building of the model. I also, told them probably the Secretary / Additional Secretary had picked up these terms while visiting the World Bank on an assignment or he must have faintly recalled some terms he had learned while studying mathematics at the undergraduate level. But I could use the terms matrix in the general sense of an array of numbers and parameters as various elements of costs and income rates that along with business activity variables determine bank branches profitability. The bosses relied on my knowledge of undergraduate linear algebra and theory of equations and crossed check if my definitions of matrix and parameter made sense by looking up at the dictionaries. Then, they told me to go ahead and quickly prepare a Note as the Chairman of the Bank had expressed the desire the our Bank should be first to respond on having taken action on this part of the minutes of meeting at the ministry attended by all nationalized bank chairmen and representative of the National Institute of Bank Management. I started my work and also sought their permission to visit a few rural branches so that I could make my model empirically realistic.
I chose the Kolaghat Branch for a five-day visit. It was then a rural / semi-urban location with rural command area. I used to take a daily trip first by bus and by a local train from Howrah station to reach Kolaghat in about 75 minutes. The daily trips cost me in terms of getting an attack of 'conjunctivitis' eye sore that would also pass on my fiance resulting in one of her eyes appearing smaller in size than the other for a weeks before we got married. However, all the five days of my association with the Kolghat branch meant a two hour visit to some parts of the branch's business hinterland for finding prospects of business growth over the next few years, examining the branches past record of performance in these areas and discussing a complete five year business plan for the branch covering deposits of different categories, advances under different categories, staff productivity and manpower deployment, variable and fixed costs and profits. Back to the office, I would access information on all these variables for a sample of relatively new rural branches to mind out the mean and variation in the business activity level and composition, manpower deployment and cost elements for the first three/ four of their operation. Once this information was analyzed, it was easy to develop .internally consistent, feasible and yet challenging time paths of the growth in different business activity levels and the costs, the net interest margins and the profits. The idea was to generate three four alternative time paths of these variables for the first 3 to 5 years of their operations that would be consistent with their reaching the break-even point within that time frame. Thus, I would now have only to present these time profiles, of variable with underlying parameters relating to staff deployment, staff productivity and interest rate margins and etc in the form of an array of numbers that I could call as Matrix 1, Matrix 2 and Matrix 3 as business development plan models to guide the new branch managers to pursue the objectives of meeting priority sector targets as well as reaching break-even point at the earliest. I wrote out the Note and after the bosses were satisfied they sent copies of the Note to the Ministry bureaucrats and to the representative of the National Institute of Bank Management. The latter responded quickly appreciating the work but pointing out that the concept of matrix had not been really applied: he was right, he knew his undergraduate linear algebra well. I was given the task of replying to him, which I did in a language that would close the issue and yet bosses would be satisfied. The bureaucrats would not respond. And, the funny episode of playing with scientific terminology would end with my bosses satisfied.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Researcher-conducive Environment: My Unfloding Voyage 077
In the academic research environment, there maybe more serious interactions among research colleagues- both in their offices / seminar rooms and in the cafetaria. In the Indian Statistical Institute I was therefore a disturbing element, debating issues other than the areas of reserch and leg-pulling gossips. In the area of in-house business research and planning, work went hand-in-hand with gossips and leg-pulling across the work desks and cabins. MaloyBabu would not spare Dr. Chatterjee's claim that his Kasba residence would fall under the Calcutta district once the fly-over connecting Gariahat to the areas to the east across the Railawy line gets over. Those days smoking was freely allowed inside the office and storms over the tea cups was regular part of daily research routine. Mrinal Vaishya would always have a smiling face even if leg-puuling attacks were turned towards him and occasionally make an interesting observation to fuel a laughter among others. He has always been a nice guy. Once both of us went to Gauhati on an official program to conduct training. Being a local person he took me to his paternal residence, got an invitation for me to attend a wedding party at his relative's residence and took me on a tour to various places like Panbazar, Fancybazar, etc. Thirty-years' later he would be at the Bank's headquarters at Kolkata as Chief General Manager and would with great affection help my wife to get the best of services at the Bank's Old Court House Street Branch. He would also introduce her to his colleague Mohanty who continues tio provide her with help in conducting her mother's pension-related banking transactions.
Dr. SC Chatterjee had got his doctorate, probably in Urban Economics, from Warsaw, Poland and before joining the Bank was working for the Calcutta Metropolita Development Authority. He used to narrate to us about his special adventures in Poland. Pratul Mukherjee, a Statistician, also shifted to the Bank for the same organisation that Dr. Chatterjee had served: he was another person who was always smiling and was very affectionate to colleagues. Once he had invited some of us to his residence for an evening party. After three decades I had the opportunity to meet Pratul Babu again at a private music party. As a retired person, he would be enjoying his freedom as a singer - with fame that would help us see him in TV shows.
Maloy Gupta, senior to me in the university by a few years, had been teaching in a college before he joined the Bank, six months later than me. His special 'u' and 'ee' touches to commn Bengali words like 'bheeshon', 'ekhon' still rings in my ears. He specialised in determining the origin of a Bengali by observing the words used in conversation: between 'Manriye' and 'Pariye', he identified my origin in East Bengal (now Bangladesh). As a Ghati, he supported Mohan Soccer team, and my support to East Bengal Soccer Club was linked to my being of Bangal origin. MaloBabu was very particular about treating women as flowers and was highly romantic picking up a flower from the college where he taught economics. Thirty eight years later, I would receive a phone call from him: he had retired from the Bank by then and was the Director of a management school. He had picked up his doctorate degree while he was still working in the Bank.
Every year, before candidates were interviewed for recruitment, boss would tell us this time he would ensure that real good economists and statisticians were selected. What he probably meant was that he would be able to find freshers who would be more quick in adapting to his high standards of drafting office research notes and other written communication than those the Bank had hired in previous years. Every year he failed in his mission. Those who were recruited earlier would feel offended for being categorised as inferior stuff and murmur behind bosses back. Some of us who had experienced this for long would console them and smile away knowing that boss would continue doing this.
I would take this chance to get some brilliant economists to the Bank. I had to pursue a lot with Dipankar Coondoo and Pradeep Maity, seniors at the University and reserach scholars at that time at the Indian Statistical Instiute. Both of them applied for the Bank's job and got selected. Dipankar-da joined. Pradip-da hesitated and then declined after he got a faculty position assurance at the Institute. Dipankar-da worked for a year, got bored and then returned to the Instiute as facaulty member.
Dr. SC Chatterjee had got his doctorate, probably in Urban Economics, from Warsaw, Poland and before joining the Bank was working for the Calcutta Metropolita Development Authority. He used to narrate to us about his special adventures in Poland. Pratul Mukherjee, a Statistician, also shifted to the Bank for the same organisation that Dr. Chatterjee had served: he was another person who was always smiling and was very affectionate to colleagues. Once he had invited some of us to his residence for an evening party. After three decades I had the opportunity to meet Pratul Babu again at a private music party. As a retired person, he would be enjoying his freedom as a singer - with fame that would help us see him in TV shows.
Maloy Gupta, senior to me in the university by a few years, had been teaching in a college before he joined the Bank, six months later than me. His special 'u' and 'ee' touches to commn Bengali words like 'bheeshon', 'ekhon' still rings in my ears. He specialised in determining the origin of a Bengali by observing the words used in conversation: between 'Manriye' and 'Pariye', he identified my origin in East Bengal (now Bangladesh). As a Ghati, he supported Mohan Soccer team, and my support to East Bengal Soccer Club was linked to my being of Bangal origin. MaloBabu was very particular about treating women as flowers and was highly romantic picking up a flower from the college where he taught economics. Thirty eight years later, I would receive a phone call from him: he had retired from the Bank by then and was the Director of a management school. He had picked up his doctorate degree while he was still working in the Bank.
Every year, before candidates were interviewed for recruitment, boss would tell us this time he would ensure that real good economists and statisticians were selected. What he probably meant was that he would be able to find freshers who would be more quick in adapting to his high standards of drafting office research notes and other written communication than those the Bank had hired in previous years. Every year he failed in his mission. Those who were recruited earlier would feel offended for being categorised as inferior stuff and murmur behind bosses back. Some of us who had experienced this for long would console them and smile away knowing that boss would continue doing this.
I would take this chance to get some brilliant economists to the Bank. I had to pursue a lot with Dipankar Coondoo and Pradeep Maity, seniors at the University and reserach scholars at that time at the Indian Statistical Instiute. Both of them applied for the Bank's job and got selected. Dipankar-da joined. Pradip-da hesitated and then declined after he got a faculty position assurance at the Institute. Dipankar-da worked for a year, got bored and then returned to the Instiute as facaulty member.
A Silver Coin: My Unfloding Voyage 066
Socialist banking in India would slowly develop a new Indian economic theory and practice of banking - some kind of a mixture or khitcuhri of banking as it had developed by the British rulers and political and bureaucratic ideas of populist gimmickry and wastage. Nationalisation of 14 major Indian banks in 1969 paved the way for completion of socialistic, state monopoly banking edifice in the country. The nationalised banks became the hotbed of trade unionism that would push up banking costs, declining customer service on the one hand and politically directed lending on the other hand. The statutory liquidity ratio would soon make banks transfer one third of their deposits resources to the State and state-controlled financing agencies as banks were obligated to invest in securities issued by the Government and its approved agencies to the extent of 35% of their incremental deposits every year. In the name of controlling inflation the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, would progressively raise the cash reserve ratio to the 10% region. Of the remaining, 55% of the banks' deposit resources, as much as 40% would be required to be deployed in what was termed as priority sector at concessional rates. Thus the banks' would have freedom to invest at their will only to the extent of Rs 33 out of every Rs 100 raised in the form of deposits. Banks would be permitted to lend some amount by borrowing from the Reserve Bank of India or other refinancing agencies of the Government. The interest rates on deposits and bank loans were fixed by the Reserve Bank of India and that ensured adequate spread to cover high labor costs in banking. There was little to apply mind for formulating an independent monetary policy for inflation control and macro-economic stabilisation in this banking regime.
The banks' continued the practice of understating income to create hidden reserves against probable loan losses and there was no way of knowing whether such secret reserves were adequate (the prudential provisioning norms were introduced only after the reforms in the 1990s when most banks took a heavy burden of loan loss provisioning and write-offs along with income de-recognition against impaired , non-performing assets to an extent that would erode their capital significantly). In 25 years of the Indian economic planning regime, banking had become an instrument of both economic development in accordance with politically dictated priorities as well as a conduit for hiding lost / wasted financial wealth of progressively rising amounts. It is only in the 1990s that the requirements of prudential loan provisioning and income recognition norms caused these huge, accumulated hidden losses to surface as high percentage of non-performing assets in banks.
United Bank of India (UBI) created through the merger in 1950 of four Bengali banks: Comilla Banking Corporation (founded in 1914 in what is now Bangladesh), Bengal Central Bank (founded in 1918), Comilla Union Bank (founded in 1922) and Hooghly Bank (founded in 1932) also completed 25 years of its existence in 1975. As an employee, I received a silver coin commemorating the Silver Jubilee year and there was a grand celebration event at the Bank's headquarters. We were all happy to be part of a Bank that originated in Bengal and survived competition for 25 years - merging into itself or acquiring, Cuttack Bank and Tezpur Industrial Bank in 1961, before getting nationalized with its 17 branches, along with 13 other major Indian commercial banks in July 1969 and then in 1973 acquiring Hindusthan Mercantile Bank and in1976 UBI Narang Bank of India.
Another 25 years later, the Bank would celebrate its Golden Jubilee: I would be so happy to be present at the celebration event at the same building in 2001 as the Chairman of a public sector development bank - thanks to UBI Chairman Biswajit Chowdhury's affectionate invitation.
The banks' continued the practice of understating income to create hidden reserves against probable loan losses and there was no way of knowing whether such secret reserves were adequate (the prudential provisioning norms were introduced only after the reforms in the 1990s when most banks took a heavy burden of loan loss provisioning and write-offs along with income de-recognition against impaired , non-performing assets to an extent that would erode their capital significantly). In 25 years of the Indian economic planning regime, banking had become an instrument of both economic development in accordance with politically dictated priorities as well as a conduit for hiding lost / wasted financial wealth of progressively rising amounts. It is only in the 1990s that the requirements of prudential loan provisioning and income recognition norms caused these huge, accumulated hidden losses to surface as high percentage of non-performing assets in banks.
United Bank of India (UBI) created through the merger in 1950 of four Bengali banks: Comilla Banking Corporation (founded in 1914 in what is now Bangladesh), Bengal Central Bank (founded in 1918), Comilla Union Bank (founded in 1922) and Hooghly Bank (founded in 1932) also completed 25 years of its existence in 1975. As an employee, I received a silver coin commemorating the Silver Jubilee year and there was a grand celebration event at the Bank's headquarters. We were all happy to be part of a Bank that originated in Bengal and survived competition for 25 years - merging into itself or acquiring, Cuttack Bank and Tezpur Industrial Bank in 1961, before getting nationalized with its 17 branches, along with 13 other major Indian commercial banks in July 1969 and then in 1973 acquiring Hindusthan Mercantile Bank and in1976 UBI Narang Bank of India.
Another 25 years later, the Bank would celebrate its Golden Jubilee: I would be so happy to be present at the celebration event at the same building in 2001 as the Chairman of a public sector development bank - thanks to UBI Chairman Biswajit Chowdhury's affectionate invitation.
Monday, April 18, 2011
First Whirlwinds of Expectations & Perceptions: My Unfolding Voyage 065
As a student or as a bachelor, it did not matter much to me as to what others expected of me or perceived of me, so long as I knew clearly about own goals and remained honest to myself. But as I became a part of a family of senior and junior colleagues and peers in the office or as I brought over a girl from elsewhere as part of my own existence in the family at home, I slowly started realising that I are now a suspect in the eyes of all. Without my knowledge, someone so close to me turned envious, jealous or even rebellious against my evolving existence. A few seemed not to be as happy with me as they had been before. Nearly all appeared to start thinking about me in a completely different perspective, treating me as an unfair competitor, a manipulator or attracted to an undesirable camp within the broader family. I seemed to be not fulfilling their (unknown) expectations on me. Some showed up their feeling of being hurt by me, some were explicitly angry with me and I failed to fathom why? I was suddenly in the midst constant whirlwinds of conflicting expectations and perceptions altering my simple, straight-forward relationships with each member of the family into a cobweb of complex and incomprehensible relationships. Three years before I could got exposed to concepts of theory X or theory Y or "I am OK. you are OK", through the middle management executive development training program of United Bank of India, I got caught into those whirlwinds, responding as a novice rational element in what people call family and office politics.
In the process, I got hurt, became more constrained in living freely and started picking up elements of managing the family environment to protect myself from falling into traps laid down by members of the family, especially those who tended to live in their imagination about others.
First about the family in the office. I had left some few pages of manuscript with a steno-typists( stenographer-cum-typists) assistant to type those out and indicated some urgency that the boss may like to look at that Note before I return from a guest-speaker lecture at the Bank's training school that would take me about three hours. When I returned from the school, my assistant colleague complained to me that another colleague of mine who had joined a few months back had demanded that the typing job he had given earlier should be completed first. As a result they had some verbal interaction that was not pleasant. I told him that he need not worry about this incident and he his decision to complete my assignment a little later than what he had planned for did not cause any difficulty to me. I knew that the stenographer colleagues had developed an idea of what assignments flowing to them from different officers had what kind of priority. I kept quiet on the subject and did not raise the issue with anyone or the boss. A few days later, the new entrant officer colleague, two years' junior to me in the University, came to me and told me that he regretted his behavior motivated by his understanding that since I was not his boss, he had interpreted that we were all equal in terms of priority for the stenographers assisting us. He explained that his 'I-am-a-rookie-so are you' was wrong as the priorities arise from the bank's requirements and boss's specifications which were not as clear to him as they were with the stenographer assistant who has been in our department for long. He also said I must be a good man for not having raised the issue of his behaviour among the office colleagues. He would soon become a kind of my fan and younger brother.
Another colleague who had joined the Bank at the same time with the colleague I had just mentioned was also very close to me. Both them used to visit my residence, share food with my wife and me and occasionally stayed overnight with us. He was indeed an intelligent guy but probably slower in picking up the office communication skills. He had also taught me a few yogic aasanaas (exercises). While the Calcutta boy was more demanding in drawing on my affection, the Delhi boy was somewhat reserved in this. We loved them equally. But he probably felt that we were being more affectionate to the Calcutta boy and gradually started distancing from me, though remaining still warm.
A senior colleague who was very affectionate to me used to spend about 40 minutes a day discussing various things. We had gone to restaurants and pictures together. Suddenly, one day he was so cool when I visited him at his desk. He was explicit and curt in communicating to him that I had been using the clues I had been picking up discussing with him against him and in favour of our boss. I was almost in tears. I had lost an affectionate elder because of his sudden change of perception about me though I had not done anything that could hurt his interest. It was just a possibility that our boss would get transferred with higher responsibility and both of us would be sharing the charge of the present boss.That did not happen either: my boss did not go out to become the managing directors of the regional rural bank that our bank was setting up.
At home, the mis-perceptions and misunderstandings created stress on relationships with the parents and they preferred that we shift to a separate residence. I resisted but ultimately shifted to a small flat in Bangur Avenue. It was indeed a boon in disguise: my wife would resume her work, taking the trip to her office accompanying me in the same bus, waiting at the bus stop where we got down till I waived my hand from the 10th floor f our office and then she would take another 7 minute bus trip to reach her office. She would return home earlier than me on most days: otherwise we would return together. We had all the time to go wherever we liked: cinema shows, restaurants, friends places, parents' residences, shopping. Most evening would be so enjoyable and some times we would fall asleep to get awake around 11 PM and then I had rush out to buy some dinner from a nearby eating house. My Mom would visit our flat over lunch one day. She seemed very impressed over our living and felt happy. A few months later we would return to her house, Gurudham, for a four/ five months' stay there.
At office, I would continue to enjoy the affection of most of the seniors. A special friendship would develop with Mr. D. K Bose, the Librarian at the office. It is through interactions with him, I would get to really appreciate how valuable a Librarian could be to a researcher or a seeker of information or knowledge. It was much easier to search books/ documents with the help of a competent and user-friendly librarian. Those days Internet search engines were not available but Mr. Bose will be always helpful in trying to understand what I was looking for and guide me to the accessing the relevant material if these were available in the office library or other libraries he had contact with. It is through him I got to get an idea of the work flow in the library and the essentials of library management. Decade later this would help me in contributing to the efforts of librarians in other offices. By observing his motherly relationships with the books and other resources of his library, I could sense what responses ticks the librarians and get the most out of them: most office library users however tend to ignore the mental make up of librarians, perceive librarians' work as unskilled work and in the process failed to get the best out of the potential services of librarians. The very nature of the work of a librarian, Mr. Bose, had to deal with large number of library users, from the most senior officials of the bank to the most junior and treat them as his valued customers, who would not normally regard an office librarian as a productivity raising agent in the office. And, yet Mr. Bose treated all of them as his valued customers in need of help. Mr. Bose through his own behavior with the library users showed how one could deal with whirlwinds of complex perceptional and expectational relationships in groups in the office and home. For, when a library user did get what he wanted in the library seldom perceived that as a contribution of the librarian and when he failed to get something he wanted perceived the Librarian as useless or unhelpful or inadequately responsive to office colleagues needs.
In the process, I got hurt, became more constrained in living freely and started picking up elements of managing the family environment to protect myself from falling into traps laid down by members of the family, especially those who tended to live in their imagination about others.
First about the family in the office. I had left some few pages of manuscript with a steno-typists( stenographer-cum-typists) assistant to type those out and indicated some urgency that the boss may like to look at that Note before I return from a guest-speaker lecture at the Bank's training school that would take me about three hours. When I returned from the school, my assistant colleague complained to me that another colleague of mine who had joined a few months back had demanded that the typing job he had given earlier should be completed first. As a result they had some verbal interaction that was not pleasant. I told him that he need not worry about this incident and he his decision to complete my assignment a little later than what he had planned for did not cause any difficulty to me. I knew that the stenographer colleagues had developed an idea of what assignments flowing to them from different officers had what kind of priority. I kept quiet on the subject and did not raise the issue with anyone or the boss. A few days later, the new entrant officer colleague, two years' junior to me in the University, came to me and told me that he regretted his behavior motivated by his understanding that since I was not his boss, he had interpreted that we were all equal in terms of priority for the stenographers assisting us. He explained that his 'I-am-a-rookie-so are you' was wrong as the priorities arise from the bank's requirements and boss's specifications which were not as clear to him as they were with the stenographer assistant who has been in our department for long. He also said I must be a good man for not having raised the issue of his behaviour among the office colleagues. He would soon become a kind of my fan and younger brother.
Another colleague who had joined the Bank at the same time with the colleague I had just mentioned was also very close to me. Both them used to visit my residence, share food with my wife and me and occasionally stayed overnight with us. He was indeed an intelligent guy but probably slower in picking up the office communication skills. He had also taught me a few yogic aasanaas (exercises). While the Calcutta boy was more demanding in drawing on my affection, the Delhi boy was somewhat reserved in this. We loved them equally. But he probably felt that we were being more affectionate to the Calcutta boy and gradually started distancing from me, though remaining still warm.
A senior colleague who was very affectionate to me used to spend about 40 minutes a day discussing various things. We had gone to restaurants and pictures together. Suddenly, one day he was so cool when I visited him at his desk. He was explicit and curt in communicating to him that I had been using the clues I had been picking up discussing with him against him and in favour of our boss. I was almost in tears. I had lost an affectionate elder because of his sudden change of perception about me though I had not done anything that could hurt his interest. It was just a possibility that our boss would get transferred with higher responsibility and both of us would be sharing the charge of the present boss.That did not happen either: my boss did not go out to become the managing directors of the regional rural bank that our bank was setting up.
At home, the mis-perceptions and misunderstandings created stress on relationships with the parents and they preferred that we shift to a separate residence. I resisted but ultimately shifted to a small flat in Bangur Avenue. It was indeed a boon in disguise: my wife would resume her work, taking the trip to her office accompanying me in the same bus, waiting at the bus stop where we got down till I waived my hand from the 10th floor f our office and then she would take another 7 minute bus trip to reach her office. She would return home earlier than me on most days: otherwise we would return together. We had all the time to go wherever we liked: cinema shows, restaurants, friends places, parents' residences, shopping. Most evening would be so enjoyable and some times we would fall asleep to get awake around 11 PM and then I had rush out to buy some dinner from a nearby eating house. My Mom would visit our flat over lunch one day. She seemed very impressed over our living and felt happy. A few months later we would return to her house, Gurudham, for a four/ five months' stay there.
At office, I would continue to enjoy the affection of most of the seniors. A special friendship would develop with Mr. D. K Bose, the Librarian at the office. It is through interactions with him, I would get to really appreciate how valuable a Librarian could be to a researcher or a seeker of information or knowledge. It was much easier to search books/ documents with the help of a competent and user-friendly librarian. Those days Internet search engines were not available but Mr. Bose will be always helpful in trying to understand what I was looking for and guide me to the accessing the relevant material if these were available in the office library or other libraries he had contact with. It is through him I got to get an idea of the work flow in the library and the essentials of library management. Decade later this would help me in contributing to the efforts of librarians in other offices. By observing his motherly relationships with the books and other resources of his library, I could sense what responses ticks the librarians and get the most out of them: most office library users however tend to ignore the mental make up of librarians, perceive librarians' work as unskilled work and in the process failed to get the best out of the potential services of librarians. The very nature of the work of a librarian, Mr. Bose, had to deal with large number of library users, from the most senior officials of the bank to the most junior and treat them as his valued customers, who would not normally regard an office librarian as a productivity raising agent in the office. And, yet Mr. Bose treated all of them as his valued customers in need of help. Mr. Bose through his own behavior with the library users showed how one could deal with whirlwinds of complex perceptional and expectational relationships in groups in the office and home. For, when a library user did get what he wanted in the library seldom perceived that as a contribution of the librarian and when he failed to get something he wanted perceived the Librarian as useless or unhelpful or inadequately responsive to office colleagues needs.
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