Yearend Holiday Trips

My son's were in Classes 2 and 1 in Kolkata, It was a private School sponsored by a Christian set up. The school had a long winter holidays. My wife and the two boys came by train (Geetanjali Express). I received them late one early December night of 1982 at Dadar station. We were together after a long time. We utilised the weekends as best we could. We tool the children to all the different tourist sight seeing spots in Mumbai that my wife and I had visited in 1973. These included Gate of India, Marine Drive, Nariman Point to Chowpatty, Zaveri Bazar, Nehru Park, Malabar Hills, Temple, Masjid, Siddhi Vinayak Temple, Rabindra Natya Mandir, AC Market near Pravhadevi, Juhu beach and all that. For a break I could get back to regular Bengali dinner at home. Time was spent on shopping, buying fish, mutton and vegetables. Trying out sea fish selectively was another interesting exercise. Sweet water fish was still at that time not available in Andheri: we had to get them from Santacruz/ Bandra or Pravadevi. After a few days, Dada (my eldest borther) along with Boudi (sister-n law), Joy (my nephew) and Munni (my niece) would come from Kolkata to visit us. Just before the Christmas, eight of us would take a trip to Goa by bus. It was a trip during the night and we reached Goa in the early morning and checked into a two-room accomodation. Then, we went out to enjoy the closest beach and shopping. We took two guided bus tours one for south Goa and another for north Goa. Interesting sight seeing over and good Goan dishes, we took the trip back yo Mubai by ship. It was about 12 hurs journey. We rolled on the deck and reached Mumbai around mid-day. It was a holiday afternoon and we took a horse-drwn carriage to go to Nariman Point. After some sight seeing,around, we returned by train from Churchgate to Andheri. In the building where we were staying in IDBI's leased flat, there was a little Marathi boy. He was about a year older than my first son, Jhupa. He knew Marathi and Hindi but my sons could converse only in Bengali and English. He was obviously very pleased to find two young neighbous to play with. But my sons became reluctant as they did know Marathi or Hindi. I told them that if they play with him, they will soon pick up both Hindi and Marathi. But they were initially a little hesitant. One day when the boy came to our flat to look for them, my sons wanted to hide. My elder bother observed that one of them would tell the other, " Let us hide in the shooar ka ghar'. They messed uplanguages. English part was ok. Then they turned the Bengali word Shobar meanibg sleeping into Shooar into Hindi meaning Pig, ka in Hindi means of . Ghar means room in both Hindi and Bengali. They wanted to hide in the sleeping room, but said that would hide in the pig's room. In a year's time they would become comfortable in both Hindi and English. For now, it was time to go back to Kolkata.There was some more sightseeing and as the year came to a close, Dada's family and my family returned by train to Kolkata for our DumDum residence.

Sweet Moments of Failure

Managing Few Minutes To Failure Experiencing failures could be as interesting and sweet as managing successes.In the second half of 1982, I enjoyed a few of them. One of the first few friends I had picked up in IDBI was a person who had taught for about two years after obtaining a PhD, had worked in the economists group of one of India's large industrial houses, headquartered in Mumbai. He would call me '30 Minute Manager' (at that time a short book entitled 'Five Minute Manager' was a popular air flight reading material for executives) because he felt that I had managed to get the position in IDBI through a 30/ 40 minute selection interview while he was offered a junior position after his thirty minute selection interview, though he had applied for the same position that I had applied for. He accepted the IDBI's job but was deeply aggrieved. I failed to impress him: in his evaluation, I was not a better candidate than him in the post I had held in IDBI. We used to return home from office in the same train from Churchgate station to Andheri, where he had his own flat and I lived in IDBI's rented flat. On some saturdays, we would spent some time over beer in a pub before we took the train. He shared his agony and disappointment with IDBI and his boss. He was a strict brahmin vegetarian, at home at least. Once I had to invite him to dinner while on the way back home. I told him that I generally eat out and eat only boiled things at home but he insisted in coming over to my flat and share dinner. We talked as we tried my cooking experience for probably the tenth time in my life (all in Mumbai): I put rice, a small cloth bag of pulses, a few potato half slices and two eggs in water in some sequence in the pressure cooker being heated by an electric oven. I missed the signals of the cooker and at some point some thing flew out from the top of the closed cooking vessel to the roof of the kitchen. Apparently something went wrong. I put the oven off, got the material out from the vessel, peeled of the potatoe and the eggs before turning them into a paste using the boiled pulses, some butter and pressure of my palm and fingers. Then we shared the rice and the paste. My friend found the food delicious. And, I knew that I had failed not only to cook the way my wife had advised but also inflicted a defect on the new pressure cooker my wife had brought in Kolkata for my use till she joins me in Mumbai. My friend told me that I was lucky for the opportunity to get a selection interview from the Asian Development Bank (I had applied in response to an advertisement the ADB released before I had joined IDBI. The telegram for interview to be held in Delhi was redirected to IDBI office in Mumbai by my wife, still in Kolkata. Thus, even before I received the telegram, some in the IDBI office came to know of this. My friend suggested that I talk to my IDBI bosses regarding this as that could be helpfull, as IDBI top bosses had close association with ADB. I did not accept his advice. On the day of the interview I flew stright to New Delhi. The interview was slated in a suite in a five-star hotel. I reached the hotel about 30 minutes before the interview scheduled at 2 PM. I went to the room 15 munites before two and pressed the bell. After five minutes of waiting, a person opened the door and welcomed me inside after showing his displeasure over reaching the room 15 minutes before time. He of course quickly got himself properly dressed and settled down to normal stance. We had a some discussion on ADB, my work experiece and Indian economy that did not seem to be interesting. After 30-35 minutes he told me that I would be intimated if required to attend another selection interview at Manilal. He gaveme a form for getting the reimbursement of the two-way air fare and other conveyance expenditure incurred by me to meet him. I took the evening flight back to Mumbai. I sensed that the person who interviewd me was not impressed and conducted a routine discussion to kill some time. In two weeks' time I got the cheque for reimbursement. A nice experience in failing to impress a person from Manila! Working abroad was not on my voyage - proved for the third time. Meanwhile, one of my cousins who ran some construction business in Mumbai searched me out and became a week end visitor. A friend from Kolkata sent me a young couple with a small child to live in my flat for a few days before they could find an independent accomodation of their own in Mumbai following their transfer from Kolkata. For a few weeks the problem of dinner got solved as the lady would cook for the host and his cousin as well. Since I was looking forward to the forthcoming visit of my family to Mumbai in December 1982, they had to quickly find out their independent accomodation. My wife was already upset that her kitchen was being used by another lady even before she could enter the house. The lady was under tension as the day of my family's arrival approached near. Two days before my wife's arrival, they shifted to a rented accomodation near Chembur. My cousin and I helped them in their shifting process. I failed to give more time to the couple for finding their own accomodation.

86 Frightening bells of a kind heart

General Manager, Mr Philip Thomas used an electronic alarm bell to call his attendance outside his cabin : the bell would produce a loud shrill noice that would pearce through the years of practically all the managers and dy manager in the cabin and all other employees in their work stations in the entire floor of the department. On many occasion after the bell has rung, the toll and hafty young attendant of Mr Thomas would knock my cabin door and inform me that your boss wants to meet me. Some work would flow directly from him to me and some other work flow through Dr S.H. Patil to me. On the first few days one of the assignments he gave to me was preparing a reply to the government on a subject that was earlier handled by Mr Srinivasan, Dy Manager. I discussed with him the subject based on the papers in the file. He gave me a draft reply. I worked on that reply with lot of care and then sent the draft reply to Mr Thomas. After three days the papers along with the file came back to me. Mr Thomas commented on the top of my draft “a very good draft” what I found, however, was that except for about 25% of the content of my draft, he had deleted rest. I was little confused but later realized after going through his modification that he was happy that my draft contained all that he needed to be satisfied. I have observed that in general Mr Philip Thomas would call a Manager to his cabin for discussion about any work once in five days. Sometime he call a meeting of Managers and Dy Managers. In such meetings he would be blunt for failure of anyone in meeting the dead-lines on completion of assignments. Those days office ends by 5 P.M. but Mr Thomas would be in the office at least upto 6.30 P.M. One evening I was in the office late until 6.30 P.M. because of some personal work and I was not in a hurry because I live about twenty minutes distance from office. Suddenly I noticed somebody in the front of my cabin, shadow falling on the glass door. I looked up and then Mr Philip Thomas opened the door with a very satisfied smile. He observed “Oh you are busy you are working… ok…ok … fine” and he left. I understood that he was very satisfied that at least one Manager was working on that evening. In October the Durga Puja was scheduled, I wanted to go to Kolkata and visit my family. But I was entitled to only five days casual leave because I have worked only for five months. So I applied for leave for five days compining with a Sunday to make a Kolkata trip : almost sixty hours of which would be in the train journey. Three days after I submitted my application, Mr Thomas called me to his cabin. He asked why I wanted to take all my casual leave and go to Kolkata. I explained to him my position. He immediately called Mr Venkat Saralu , the Manager for Market Research and told him “Dr Sen will be going to Kolkata. There is some information to be collected from the Industry Association in Kolkata with regard to our market study – one glass, ceramics, and other items. Please tell Dr Sen what are the information required. He will visit the concerned industry association in Kolkata and interview their officials and give us his report.” Three days before the Pujas I went an official trip to Kolkata on a Tuesday and came back next Monday morning to resume office. My journey time was five hours by Indian Airlines flight. I spent all the four days of the puja holidays in Kolkata as also did my official business during my trip. Mr Thomas was such a kind hearted leader.

To Muubai For Development Banking: My Unfolding Voage 082

It was difficult to leave Kolkata. At a much younger age, I had told myself and my sister in law that I would be the only brother to stay back in Gurudham Residence. But now I have to go to Mumbai and start living there. Additional problem is that shifting of my family would take another nine months when the school session in Mumbai would begin and I would be alone in Mumbai missing my small kinds and wife. I would have to leave behind my mother, practically bed-ridden and helpless with the inability to speak. Yet I was looking forward to Mumbai.

April 28th was a Friday, the last day I worked for Coal India. I took the train to Mumbai on April 29th evening that would reach me Mumbai on May 1, the day I wanted to join IDBI. I had developed the pain in the back before I left and took the pain-killer tablets, Zolandin Alka to see me through. The train journey would take about 32 hours. The only companions during the trip were my cigarettes: smoking on the train was not yet banned in India.

When the train arrived at the Victoria Terminus in Mumbai, I noticed that my shoes, left under my seat while I was asleep, were stolen. I had to depend only on my slippers now. I checked into a nearby, inexpensive lodge that I had stayed in my previous trips when I visited Mumbai for interviews a few months earlier. The first thing that I had to do was to buy a pair of shoes. Then, I took a cab that dropped me at the Nariman Bhavan at Nariman point, near Oberoi Towers (a 7 star hotel) within five minutes with hardly any traffic on the road. I found the IDBI office closed. I gathered from the security guards that April 1 was Maharashtra Day (the State of Maharshtra was formed on this Day) and therefore it was a holiday in Mumbai, the capital and the entire State. I walked back to the lodge for the next twenty minutes laughing at myself about my decision to join IDBI on May 1. I had joined Coal India on April 1: later I thought that it was not a good idea to begin office on April Fools Day. So, I though May 1 for joining IDBI and experienced a self-inflicted May Fool event.

I joined IDBI on May 2. The office at Nariman Bhavan where the top executives and major functional departments were housed, directed me to go Mittal Court, a two minutes walk. It was the same building where I was interviewed and the personnel department was located. The same lady officer who had asked me for the ‘no objection’ certificate from Coal India before the interview, greeted me and took the relevant papers from me including the letter of acceptance of my resignation and my release from the services of Coal India, a proof that I was, as on that day unemployed and not a public sector employee. Soon however she would come back and ask me a low and hesitant voice, “Dr. Sen., you are supposed to be a PhD in Economics or Statistics, but your certificate from the Indian Statistical Institute mentions that you were awarded a doctorate in Philosophy!” I understood her doubt and explained to her that ‘PhD’ means doctorate in philosophy but my area of PhD dissertation was in the area of applied mathematics/ statistics. I could not guess what she understood of my answer, but she nodded her head and went back again. After sometime, she came back made me to sign some papers. Later, her senior colleague escorted me to the office of Mr. Philip Thomas, the General Manager (later this same position would be re-designated as Chief General Manager), just on the opposite half on the same floor of the office. Mr. Thomas welcomed me, offered a cup of tea, called Mr. SK Ganguly to come over to his cabin, and told him to take me along to my office cabin and arrange for my introduction to the colleagues in the Department. Mr. Ganguly did all that and also took me to lunch at IDBI officers’ dinning room at the Nariman Bhavan. There I met some other officers including a Bengali gentleman, Mr. Bhola Nath Bhattacharya, who had recently been transferred from the Kolkata office to the head office at Mumbai’s Loan Accounts department. There were exchange of greetings and efforts at building cordial collegial relations, though Mr. Bhattacharyya, an officers’ association leader, also whispered to me that normally the association is against new recruits at such senior level but he welcomed me because I am a Bengali and offered all help and assistance.

Later, Mr. Thomas would call me to his cabin and explained the responsibilities that I have to deal with. My immediate assignments included IDBI’s Management Information System, preparation of Annual Report and Development Banking Report, Parliamentary Questions. The officers who would assist me included three Deputy Manager, Messer, SK Ganguly, Harpal Singh and S Srinivasan – all deputy managers, Mr. Venkataraman, Industrial Finance Officer (IFO), and two very young Staff Officers (SOs) in Mr. Pradip Godble and Mr Manohar Iyer with a few assistants with them. He said some new IFOs and SOs would join soon and my sections would be further strengthened. Mr. Ganguly however would continue to look after Administration directing reporting for this function to Dr. RH Patil, Deputy General Manager, through whom all the four Managers including me would report to Mr. Thomas. The other managers in the Department were Mr. PV Narasimham and Dr SK Sharma both of whom worked on special assignments with virtually no manpower support except their Secretaries, and Mr. Venkanteshwrlu who headed the Market Research Section with two IFOs and a secretary. I got a lady secretary. The allocation clearly signaled that the new recruit manager in me was meant to be tested with as much chore as possible right at the beginning and test my manpower management skills. Besides, placing all the three Deputy Managers with me was kind of an arrangement to keep this new guy Dr. Sen under close observation. But soon I would also realize that the Department functioned at a very relaxed pace.

I returned to the lodge that evening both satisfaction and relaxed.

Letting Black Diamond Express Go: My Unfolding Voyage 081

India’s Independence cost our family the touch with our roots in the Khulna district (now in Bangladesh) – a district which was reportedly part of India on 15th August morning but traded off with the Murshidabad district by the evening. Fortunately for us my father had already set up his own business in Kolkata and built a house in the suburbs in Dum Dum in the late 1920s and early 1930s: the entire family including my grand-father could live together in Kolkata after 1947 permanently: the property in Khulna had been declared as enemy property by the then Pakistan Government. Nearly three decades later my father received a meager compensation against a part of his property he had lost as a result of partition of India into India and Pakistan (the ancestral property was in East Pakistan, now called Bangladesh). The parents gave us the money to renovate their 1930s’ building, named Gurudham, so that we brothers could have separate apartments for use. In 1981, the renovation was completed and my mother had allocated half of the second story for my use, while my parents and the younger brother lived in the other half of the same floor. My eldest brother lived in the ground floor and there was enough room to accommodate my other elder brother when he would return to Kolkata. I was in the process of shifting from the rented apartment opposite to the renovated Gurudham, things had suddenly started changing in many ways for me.

In Bengali there is a saying “Sukhe thaktay, bhute kiloy’: in a happy phase of life, a person is driven by some invisible force to get into trouble”. Coal India’s job was becoming increasingly stereo-typed with very little challenge. To reduce the stress, I had taken the full correspondence course of the three parts of the intermediate examination of the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants over a period of mandatory 18 months in 1980-81. In early 1981, two of my junior colleagues in Corporate Planning Department brought a copy of an advertisement for the post of a Manager Economist of Industrial Development Bank of India head quartered in Bombay (now called Mumbai). I had to apply first for getting the form in which I would be required to formally apply. Around the same time, advertisements were released by the National Insurance Academy, Bombay for faculty and by the Kolkata-based Industrial Reconstruction Bank of India (IRBI), later converted to Industrial Investment Bank of India (IIBI), for an Economist. I sent my resume to these two companies. The IRBI never responded. The application form from IDBI did not reach me. My young colleagues inquired about IDBI and suggested that I send a resume to IDBI mentioning that I had not received the application form. After a few months, I received a call for interview at Mumbai from the National Insurance Academy. I was interviewed on the same day in three locations by three persons: the director of the Academy, the Chairman of the General Insurance Corporation and the Managing Director of the Life Insurance Corporation. I was told during the interviews that they liked me and that after the initial one year or so at the temporary campus at Mumbai, the faculty will have to shift to Pune where the Academy’s building and facilities including faculty apartments are being constructed. So, I had to request them to provide me an accommodation at Mumbai which they said they are unable to provide but are willing to pay whatever reasonable rent that I may have to pay for hiring an apartment on my own initiative. I knew nothing of Mumbai then and so was reluctant to get into the job of searching out a rental accommodation on my own. The MD of the Life Insurance Company suggested that I should consider in buying a small flat in Mumbai because that would be good investment and make me wealthier soon. He was right but I did not have enough money to buy a flat and was unwilling to borrow money for that purpose. I wanted to the employer to take the complete responsibility for my residence. So, I had turn their offer and come back to Kolkata.

Within a week, I received a telegram from Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) asking me to appear for interview scheduled a seven days later at their headquarters. So, I went to Mumbai. Before the interview, the personnel department officer said that I had not submitted the ‘no objection’ certificate from Coal India for releasing me: this was a peculiar socialistic requirement imposed by Government on the public sector employers, probably copying the idea from Soviet Russia – utterly undemocratic and draconian rule to exploit public sector employees. I told the officer that I had not been called for interview by IDBI notwithstanding the absence of the no objection certificate nor had I been told in the telegram to bring such a certificate. And, I did not apply in the prescribed application form because I had not been supplied one despite my request. So, she reluctantly allowed me to go in for the scheduled interview. I told myself that for the second time, I succeeded in bypassed the obnoxious rule of the public sector treating employees as their slaves rather as citizens of a free country.

I was interviewed for about 40 minutes as scheduled at IDBI. I got the impression that these people liked me and may give me an offer. They told me that they would let me know soon. And, I told them that I would be able to join only after three months of the receipt of their offer as I have to give three months’ notice to my current employer (actually, I needed to give only a month’s notice). I came back to Kolkata. There was no response from the Industrial Reconstruction Bank of India (IRBI) where I had sent my application of candidature against their advertisement. I gathered that IRBI has probably changed minds whether to recruit an economist or not. Little did I expect IRBI to recruit an economist some years later and still would be searching for a senior economist in the late 1990s? At that time I did not expect to ever have some relationship with IRBI much later in the new century.

Back to work and started preparing for all the papers in three groups of ICWA Intermediate examination. The examinations went of fine.

Meanwhile, there was a sudden set back in the family. My parents had gone for a two-month visit to my elder brother Mejda who lived and worked at Birmitrapur (near Rourkella in Oriya). After a few days of stay there, my mother had a cerebral attack. My younger brother and I rushed there to see her. She had come out of danger but the attack had that paralysed her left side and damaged her power to converse. By the time, she was brought back to Gurudham residence; I had already got the offer from IDBI.

I was so comfortable with the Coal India job with most colleagues accepting me as one of their own, yet I had been feeling the urge to change for nothing else but to learn different things and to get rid of the stigma of having worked only in Kolkata environment that Chairman Grewal during his interview did not appear to like. An elderly co-passenger in the chartered bus in which I used to go to Coal India’s office in the morning worked at the Kolkata office of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and was very affectionate to me. He commented that the IDBI offer was very attractive: normally one would take 18 years in RBI or IDBI to reach to the position that I was offered by IDBI. The compensation was about 20% higher than what I was getting in Coal India and subsidized accommodation in a decent large apartment in Mumbai was assured by IDBI within a few months of my joining. I was little hesitant because my mother was in paralysed condition and my in-laws would be missing us, my wife being their only child. But my elder brother Dada with his family and my younger brother was living at Gurudham to take full care of my ailing mother and aged father. I therefore decided to accept the offer of IDBI.

I sent my acceptance letter to IDBI and indicated to them that I would join them in the first week of May 1982. I took about a month’s leave from Coal India and completed the shifting to Gurudham residence. I could spend more time with my wife, children and my mother. She was under physio-therapy and was making some progress in moving the limbs on the left side affected by the cerebral attack. But there was no opportunity of full-scale conversation with her. We could not make out what she was telling us except through her gestures. She was able to understand what we were telling her. It was so sad that a lady who not only devoted all her mind and efforts to not only her own family, but also of relatives and friends and was so generous in extending her support to the weak and the poor even at the cost of sacrificing her own needs, was at this state at an old age. And, I would no more get a chance to enjoy the lively conversation with her.

After resuming work at Coal India, I submitted my resignation letter to the Personnel Department through my boss, Mr. Mishra, the Chief of Corporate Planning. Everyone wanted to know where I was going but I did not disclose the name of my future employer for fear of someone trying to create problems if they knew that I was joining another public sector company. Mr. Mishra might have told the Coal India Chairman to retain me by offering a promotion. Soon, the Chief of Personnel (the same bearded IAS officer whom I had spotted attending the Seminar on Incomes and Wages Policy at Delhi some time back) would call me to meet him. When I met him, he told me that Chairman wanted to talk to me regarding my decision to leave the service of Coal India. I replied to him that since I have already made up my mind, I would not like to meet Chairman and disappoint him even after he assures me of an immediate promotion to the next higher grade. I knew that with a promotion, the compensation would increase and I would not have to shift from the City I had lived till my birth to a distant city in a different province that I knew little about. But something inside me was compelling me to get out of Coal India and try my luck in Mumbai with a new organization about which I had little knowledge. Within a week Coal India sent the acceptance of my resignation: the three months’ notice requirement could not be imposed on me because the Personnel Department had erred in not sending me a confirmation letter after I had completed one year’s of service with them. But they insisted that I talk to my new employer so that they would transfer my balances in the Provident Fund Account to the new employer Provident Fund Trusts Account. That would be in my best interest. They settled all other bills and claims promptly.

After a few days, I bade adieu to my colleagues and friends individually. Only my dear friend, Sourav Mukherjee, informally gave a farewell party: he took me to sweetmeat shop cum restaurant where we had spent an hour together. Within a few days, towards the end of April I finally signalled out of Coal India and the Black Diamond Express go without me.

Waning Interest in Coal: My unfolding Voyage 080

Coal helped power the Industrial Revolution and was the dominant industrial fuel till petroleum oil was discovered and began to be exploited. The 1971-73 oil crisis resulting from OPEC cartel decision to raise oil prices substantially and control oil production and supplies. This in turn led to a resurgence of the coal industry even while researchers, scientists and technologists gave a thrust on energy conservation, energy use efficiency and development of commercial ways to exploit non-conventional energy as well as new ways of exploiting coal for energy generation. By that late 1970s considerable progress has been made, especially in the advanced western countries. The subject of energy had by then become a hot subject of discussion among corporate managers. My teacher had written an article on the economics of nuclear power in the Economic & Political Weekly, which published my comments a few weeks later.

For a while I tended to become an energy economist with emphasis on Coal. The opportunity to give a lecture on Coal Industry’s future at a seminar organized by the Tata Training Orgagnisation at Jamshedpur brought me in touch with the US Information Service local director, one Mr. Dasgupta, a former Professor of economics or political science. I used to get regular invitation to lecture and discussion programs organized by him at Kolkata and even got gifts of books on economics and got into the mailing list of Span, a US publicity magazine. Mr Dasupta would one day invite me to his residence to share coffee with him. His wife had arranged delicious snacks. While we were discussing various things, the couple took some interest in my parents and family. It seemed to me that they were surprised to know that I had already married and have two sons. But I did mention that I have a younger brother who was still a bachelor. Probably, the Dasguptas had thought me as an interesting bachelor to be explored for matrimony!

But besides economics of energy, I was getting interested in the discipline of business management and the attitude and behaviour of people within organizations. I recall that at the Seminar at the Tata Training centre at Jamshedpur, the West Bengal industries secretary or director participated in a panel discussion. I had asked him question when the discussions centered on industrial relations and production loss. My question was how his department and offices in the districts of West Bengal monitored the incipient worsening of industrial relations situation in individual factories or industrial belts and took proactive steps to nip a strike or lockout in the bud. His reply was astonishing but revealed the difference between professional corporate managers and bureaucrats. He mentioned that his department can only act after the news of an industrial strike, lockout or violence has already occurred. The perspective of government bureaucrats perhaps continues to be the same even now in West Bengal.

The interactions with the US Information Service were open and transparent and the lady economic attaché who participated in the seminar was cordial. But I had also an opportunity to meet people at the Russian consular office. A letter from a Russian company had landed in Coal India. My engineer colleagues thought that they could pass on at least one running about task to my corporate planning department: the job of getting a translation of the letter from Russian language to English. I contacted the local consular office for help. They asked me to visit their office. And, that was an interesting experience. From the gate, I had started sensing an air of suspicion as I was being led from one vacant room and corridor to another. It was probably after half an hour of long walking and waiting in the sofa in a room, I could meet someone who would try to know the purpose of my coming there and examine the documents we wanted to be translated from Russian to English. He kept a copy of the document, said that his office did not have the facility of such translation and assured me that they would get back to us if they could provide and translation help over phone. I was then escorted out through the same process of walking through corridors and rooms one after the other. I do not remember of ultimately getting any help. Te reception at the Russian consular office and the little interaction gave me the impression that the people there looked at me with considerable suspicion and they were reluctant to help. But I continued my subscription to Soviet Land, the Russian promotional magazine. I also used to get the monthly promotional magazine of the communist eastern Democratic Republic of Germany. These foreign country image promotion magazines, despite their covert brainwashing literature, did contain interesting knowledge about the people and their life styles as also about their technology, culture and socio-economic environment. Those days Indians had very little access to information on what was happening in foreign countries. It was not the globalised world that we see today four decades later.

Whether for the Chairman, or for the Corporate Planning documents or for my own articles for the newspaper, my quota of handwriting and dictation to stenographer-secretary (a category of office employees along with the category of typists have been under the phase of extinction with almost everyone now keying in their compositions on the desk-top or lap-top computers) had tremendously increased during the Coal India days. I must have composed equivalent in magnitude to the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana combined. The speed of writing had also increased. I was getting increasingly bored. I tried to get back into academics. I applied for a post-doctoral fellowship at the Economics Department of the Presidency College (now University) and met my teacher for a discussion. But I had to regret his kind offer as the scholarship was hardly 40% of my earnings from Coal India and with no medical benefits. After all, I had to manage a family of four now. I tried a US Foundation scholarship for young managers, got selected from the eastern region but was unsuccessful at the all-India selection stage as I had not yet arranged any tie-up with an American University. I tried directly with one American University with a proposal on what I intended to work on in the area of managerial economics. The Professor there asked me to come and join but said he cannot upfront provide any funding. Meanwhile however, I completed my compulsory correspondence course study for all the papers for the intermediate examination of the Institute of Cost & Works Accountants, learning in the process some elements of financial accounting, cost accounting, commercials laws. This would help me in future.

Even as I was serving Coal India my direct relations with coal in life was coming to an end. From our childhood days we were used to food cooked on portable clay-tin- steel rod ovens that used coal (I came to know in Coal India, that this was called soft-coke) as the main fuel with cow-dung cakes that would help the initial lighting of fire. When I had joined Coal India, soft-coke coal was still the dominant cooking fuel in the city of Calcutta though the use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) was being supplied by Oil companies bt it was difficult to get a connection and regular supplies, besides being costly. For my own small family, soft-coke oven was not suitable, apart from being messy. So, we used the coal-based oven once or twice a week but largely depended on kerosene fueled burners (stove) for cooking. But kerosene itself was scarce and often sod in the black market at high prices. So, we were looking for a solution to this cooking fuel problem. An elderly mining engineer colleague, a bachelor, suggested me that I use the electric –powered oven. I purchased a Kathlene electric oven though I knew the electricity (being energy converted from coal) would be costlier and there was this additional problem of safety. I was already using a small electric dip heater my younger brother brought from Poland (he married a Polish lady he picked up while on a training programme there) for us to warm up water for tea and bath (we were still not using electric water geysers). But as it turned out this was just the transition period before we had to move over to LPG as domestic cooking fuel. My direct association with coal was in the last phase.

Amidst People Missing Powers & Status: My Unfolding Voyage 079

One of the tasks at Coal India was to attend external training programs and workshops and seminars as a delegate from Coal India: they needed someone with no link to emergency work available to represent Coal India in these programs and workshops. Some of the interesting programs that I had attended during my five year stint at Coal India included a workshop on Managing Restructuring of Sick Units organized by Indian Institute of Management Calcata, a workshop on Systems Management by some professors of IIM Bangalore, and a seminar on National Incomes Policy in Delhi, a course in Cost Benefit Analysis by a Calcutta-based Research Institute and a seminar organized by the US Information Service, Kolkata in collaboration with the Tata Training centre at Jamshedpur. In Delhi, I found a short, bearded and quiet gentleman, an IAS officer of West Bengal cadre, attending the three day seminar on Incomes Policy: he was although out keeping quiet and did not appear to be interested in participating in discussions. A few years later, I found him in Coal India in charge of Personnel Department. I could not fathom what this gentleman was doing but later I found him heading a Govt. of India enterprise in West Bengal. Some IAS officers seem to enjoy doing nothing except managing to get into positions that demands very little but earns you better compensation.
In the course on Cost Benefit Analysis, I found my former economic teacher at the undergraduate college giving us a series of lectures: by that time I had already earned my Phd with a thesis on social cost benefit analysis. I had asked him a question at that time and is yet to find a satisfactory reply: my question was: ‘if a project was set up based on shadow price-based viability while the project was down right commercially unviable based on market price based economics, how would the company with such a project survive?’ I myself had later given lectures to bankers on social cost benefit analysis: my plea was that in a controlled economic regime of India then (prior to 1991), bankers must first reject those that did not have an internal rate of return higher than the cost of capital on a market price economic calculus as well as based on shadow price calculus and then accord priority to those among the projects found commercially viable on market price calculus that have with higher positive social rate of return net of social cost of capital. My guideline may not be strictly in accordance with welfare economics but may help protect the banks’ interest of getting their loans back while being socially responsible in financing. Economic practice is sometimes a confused art in planned, government controlled economies.

Towards the end of a session in the evening a professor of IIM Bangalore gave us a problem and asked to come up with the solution next morning. A person traveled along a straight road for twelve hours between 7AM to 7PM from point X to Y at varying unknown speeds and he returned back the next day starting from Y at 7AM and reaching X at 7 PM trotting at unknown variable speeds. Could there be a point W where he would have been at the same time of the clock on both the days? I thought over the problem during my sleep at night and came to conclusion that this problem could be solved through the Bower’s fixed point theorem in Mathematics. But when we met in the class next morning I said the answer to the question was yes. He asked me to prove. It struck me then what was so simple: imagine the person’s twin brother traveling from Y to X on the same road at varying unknown speed on the same day during the same twelve hours period. Of course, the twins will meet at some point W on the road at some point of time. The whole class got the idea as to how academicians make simple things look complex and fool the business executives.
One of the tasks of the Corporate Planning Department was to coordinate management studies assigned by the company to external consultants. The interactions with the consultants provided an insight into how the company’s management at different levels functioned. Some assignments were carried out by Administrative Staff College of India, which I would happen to visit after I had left Coal India.

Another source of learning was the interaction with a few young management trainees at Coal India headquarters. All of them were in the marketing department and appeared to be inadequately utilized except for brain storming sessions. Two of them would go back to the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta as Research fellow to obtain PhD degrees. One would (Raghunathan) later become a Professor of Finance Indian Institiute of Management Ahmedabad while the other (Sudip Chatterjee) would return to Coal India at a senior position. Another trainee would shift to a private sector firm headquartered in Mumbai (Devadasann). Two others (Roy and G) continue in Coal India. I had chance meeting with Devdasan and Chatterjee later in life.
Ms. Anjali Sen, the Public Relations Officer, was an interesting person and would often interact with me regarding press communications and in-house magazine. This sophisticated elderly lady would call me over inter-com to announce that Mrs Sen was on the line and once I could not resist the temptation to say that Mr. Sen was responding.
Sulav Mukerjee, the Statistician was the closes friend I had in Coal India. We were in the same age group and visited each others residence with family. His boss RN Sinha would sometimes spend time with me: he would never hide the importance he enjoyed as the Chief Information Officer of the company. His bosses, both mining engineers, Mr. Chatterjee and Mr. Balachandran were intelligent persons but did not seem to be busy beyond monitoring the daily/ monthly coal production and dispatches. The six/ seven mining engineers in the Proudction Department at Coal India headquarters were a great source of learning some basics of the mining operations life. All these officials seem to be busy but I found them completely relaxed: they seem to be fish out of the water of mining life. The engineers (mostly electrical/ mechanical) in the Engineering Department were monitoring the performance of heavy equipments at the hundreds of coal mines. Interaction with them suggested that they were also relaxed and had time to explain to me the issues of productivity and idling of costly mining machinery. Most of the engineers seemed to be missing real operational activities and reluctantly adapting to corporate staff function requiring continuous updating of technology knowledge and interpreting MIS data. The power and status enjoyed by an engineer of any rank seemed to decline as the distance from the mining activity location increases.

With the departure of Chairman Lt. General Grewal, the corporate planning activities lost much of their glamour. But we could do virtually whatever we like in undertaking studies and connecting ideas. My boss being a mining engineer, the Chief of Corporate Planning virtually worked as another of Chairman’s technical adviser cum executive assistant, while I worked with the help of two junior officers, Kalyan Sen and Dulal Goswami. My colleagues were very affectionate and co-operative. My secretary, Mr. Sensarma, a very reserved kind of person with hardly any intimacy with office colleagues, had an initial trouble with his perception of his work being that of taking dictations and typing them out rather than also typing out large statistical / analytical tabular statement with numbers, became a very helpful and affectionate. He had given up his initial resistance as soon as I started dictating from manually prepared statistical tables for him to convert into stenographic notes for typing on typewriters: he would always deliver his output in the quickest possible time and virtually without errors.