My Career Story - Part 19
A view of Mangalore Refinery (MRPL)
In early 1993, Mangaluru was still a quiet and sleepy city. India was on the threshold of opening up to big-ticket corporate investment in the core sectors.
Telecom, Banking and Petroleum & Chemicals were three critical sectors where the nation desperately needed to scale up investment, roll out greenfield projects, leverage economies of scale and bring in state-of-the-art technologies.
Rajiv Gandhi, as the Prime Minister from 1984 to 1989, had taken a few tentative baby steps in liberalisation. Taking computerisation out of the closet was one such reform. Coming from the stables of the Congress Party, traditionally inclined to tactical socialism, Rajiv’s approach was a mild, refreshing breeze of fresh air. It portended a likely trajectory of selective liberalisation in many sectors of the economy that were short of capital, capacity buildup, customer service and quality consciousness.
The Grand Old Party of India was ever in a shadow war with itself struggling to figure out how far it could go in welcoming private capital and business investments without being seen to be diluting its socialist veneer. It demonstrated a perennial paranoia of being labelled pro-business. Congress had always acted as though being business-friendly would be akin to hara-kiri.
Though he made many blunders, mostly coming from his political naivety, Rajiv Gandhi at least tried to pierce the hypocritic shell of superficial socialism the party preserved for decades.
Rajiv’s political authority and electoral winnability were severely dented by two tactical mistakes he made in governance.
The first was bringing in legislation to nullify and overrule a progressive judgement by the Allahabad High Court to grant maintenance to an elderly Muslim woman, Shah Bano, whom her husband divorced after decades of marriage, without ensuring adequate financial support to fall back upon. Afraid of losing Muslim votes, which was a traditional electoral bedrock for the Congress Party, Rajiv took the immature decision to back traditionists over the modern and liberal approach to social justice and equity, which demanded he support the deprived lady.
Secondly, as if to counter the allegations of leaning visibly to the minority vote bank and to guard against possible alienation of the majority voters, Rajiv took the even more grievous political misstep of opening the locks of the controversial makeshift Ram Temple in the precincts of Babri Masjid. He just meekly followed the Allahabad High Court order confirming an earlier lower court verdict in favour of throwing open the disputed temple, rather than appeal against the same. The issue was already at the centre of a long-running legal battle between the Hindu and Muslim communities.
If only Rajiv Gandhi had shown the grit to appeal against the judgement, much bad blood, violence and communal toxicity between two of the major segments of our society could have been avoided.
The summer of 1991 was an inflection point in India’s political governance. The vacillations, tentativeness and looming uncertainties of the period 1989-1991 had led the nation to impaired self-confidence and heightened hopelessness.
The General Elections had been announced in the background of a widespread antipathy nationwide for the botched-up anti-Congress coalition experimentation. While electioneering was nearing the end of the cycle, Rajiv Gandhi fell to a human bomb by the LTTE’s terror modules on 21 May 1991.
By July, we had a Congress-led Government in place under PV Narasimha Rao, the veteran leader from Andhra Pradesh who was catapulted to power, unexpectedly.
The Congress, with its obsession with the first family's interests, would have rooted for an insider to be the PM. The children of Rajiv were too young, and the widowed Sonia Gandhi was not unanimously endorsed by the party for many reasons, the chief among them possibly being her foreign origin. She had opted for Indian citizenship only a few years before the assassination of her husband.
To quote Shakespeare in ‘As You Like It’, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them”. Many Indians thought of PV Narasimha Rao as belonging to the third category, though a minuscule would have considered him as having worked through the grinding mill of political maturing to gain the leadership role. The matter is even today a subject of divided perspectives.
VP Singh’s years of retrograde social engineering experiments had stalled the liberalisation journey right at the start. The much-needed impetus to policy rejigs to welcome private capital investments in big-ticket strategic projects came under Rao and his Finance Minister, the suave and soft-spoken Dr. Manmohan Singh.
Rao Government was on oxygen from the first day, with a tenuous and fragile majority that the Congress Party could cobble up with broad-based support from a clutch of disparate political outfits. It was to the credit of Rao that he managed to roll out a slew of much-needed economic liberalisation measures even when burdened with a heterogenous mix of parties with divergent ideologies, conflicting convictions and their own hidden and not-so-subtle agenda of cementing their voter base back in their home states and constituencies.
Once back from my overseas training sprint and having fallen for my newfound infatuation with the private sector as the driver of possible fast-tracked growth of our economy, I was busy during the 1990-91 months in my effort to pursue a shift to the private corporate sector. In the meanwhile, my country’s political and economic policies were undergoing a refreshing refocus to allow a critical role for private capital, investment and generating employment opportunities.
It was with a lot of expectations and enthusiasm that I travelled to Mangaluru, the city by the side of the quiet and majestic Netravati river, just a few kilometres from my native state of Kerala. I was to take charge of administrative responsibilities for the smooth launch of a massive industrial project in the South of India, a breakthrough refinery in scale, structure and techno-commercial parameters. This context heightened my energies and resolve.
I joined MRPL in March 1993. The project was in the preparatory stage of implementation. The refinery, with an initial capacity to process 3 MMT of multiple varieties of crude, was to bring in the latest technologies. The ownership structure was as a joint sector company with equal stockholding by HPCL and Aditya Birla Group. Both joint venture partners were to hold 26% shares each and the remaining 48% was to come from public investors at large. It was the first time that a petroleum project of such a massive scale was being thrown open to strategic private investors and public shareholders at a scale not seen before.
The mega IPO of MRPL in 1992 was a big hit. On my way by road from Mumbai to Kochi, I saw serpentine queues by prospective investors not just in Mumbai or Pune, but in many mofussil towns as well. At that time, I never knew that a year down the line I would be joining the MRPL project in Managaluru as a senior executive.
I reported to MRPL at its corporate office in Nariman Point, Mumbai on 6 March 1993. I was accommodated in the Company Guest House at Prabhadevi, near Dadar as a transit employee on my way to the plant site near Mangaluru. During the lunch recess, I walked across to the Nariman Point sidewalk to have a quick lunch. I got used to my daily routines, which would hold for the duration of my stay in the corporate office for onboarding and orientation. On 10th March 1993 around noon break, I was about to rush out for my lunch, but some urgent task, possibly a brief report on the site status to the MD, held me back. I engaged myself in quickly getting the report out and then rushed out for my bite.
There was a deafening sound, akin to a massive cracker-burst and soon it was followed by such sounds from more locations. People rushed out as security staff alerted everyone to take the stairs and get out as early as possible. Rushing down the stairs of the skyscrapers in the Manhattan-like high-rise towers created commotion, confusion and hair-rising uncertainties. It took a couple of hours and more to grasp the extent of the crisis on hand.
There were multiple blasts at key traffic intersections in Mumbai. Suburban trains were shut down and road traffic was submerged in utter chaos. People scrambled to get their toehold on taxis, buses or any mode of transport available. Most of us had to walk to the place of stay. I remember walking from Nariman Point to Prabhadevi amidst war-like suspense all around. It took nearly three hours for me to reach the guest house.
Terrorists both homegrown and possibly from across the border had started playing truant and disturbing public peace across India for some time. The demolition of Babri Masjid, a historic mosque of the Mughal era which, Hindu zeolites alleged, was built atop ruins of an ancient temple of Ram vitiated the communal peace and tore apart the inter-faith sensitivities.
Mumbai being the most commercially important urban centre became the focus of those who wanted to attack and weaken India as a polity and economy. In a diverse land with a near lack of civic sensibilities, homegrown mercenaries to fan any trouble would be available by the dozens. The aftermath of the Babri demolition has reverberated across India for months and years. It changed the domestic politics in India forever and increased divisions and sectarianism.
As I walked to Prabhadevi, I shuddered to think what would have happened if I had been at my usual lunch joint adjacent to the basement of Air India Building at the midday hour on 10 March 1993. I would have been another shredded body lying around amid the desolate and gloomy skyscrapers of Nariman Point!
Mumbai had to endure more such mayhem and mindless violence in subsequent years as the Government at the Centre looked weak and lacked the will or nerves to fight the terror and hate around.
The Mumbai serial blasts of March 1993 were a precursor to the most humiliating and devastating assault on Mumbai, including on the iconic Taj Mahal Hotel that took place fifteen years later, on 26 November 2008, which came to be known as the ‘26/11’ Blasts. 9/11 of the US and 26/11 of India stand as stark reminders of the horror called global terrorism.
I will never forget the March 1993 bomb blasts during which I saw terror and death spree in front of my eyes. Without a doubt, homeland security was hardly recognized and confronted head-on by the federal government in India before 2014. This statement might attract protestations and denials by many. But facts cannot be wished away, and Himalayan Blunders can't be brushed under the carpets.
Thankfully, India as a nation today is more prepared and resilient in our internal security.
I spent over a month in Mumbai, interacting with the Group and company executives to understand the operational priorities and challenges that awaited me when I moved to the project site. By the beginning of April 1993, ahead of the Kannada New Year of Ugadi, I braced myself for the agenda to be addressed in Mangaluru.
I landed at the tabletop airport and walked into the old, no-frills and lack-lustre airport terminal on a calm Sunday morning. I was met by Santhosh Kumar Kadri, the Liaison and Administration Manager at the local office. Santhosh was an interesting person with a rich professional background in Administration, with an extensive network of contacts and dexterity in dealing with government agencies to sort out things. He was to be my close confidant and troubleshooter for the next couple of years and more.
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