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.
Monday, August 15, 2011
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!
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