31 October 1984 - When India came to the brink of survival
The greatest contribution that my Mumbai stint made to shaping my perspectives on business, career and governance was to drill into my mind the urge to look around and learn.
What pushed me to the new trajectory of critical thinking and interdisciplinary interests was a combination of my academic studies and broader interactions with peer groups, faculty and industry experts. I also took to reading, writing and participating in lectures, training sessions and workshops at professional gatherings.
I became a voracious reader. Apart from buying books I also took them from the British Council and USIS Libraries to read. My reading interest was significantly focused on management and economics, though I also liked to read the thrillers of Frederick Forsyth and Arthur Haily varieties. Though my work routines were confined to mundane activities, I felt an urge to keep reading, expanding my horizon of knowledge and cultivating multidimensional interests.
In my Organization and Methods days, I developed the habit of asking questions, gaining a comprehensive understanding and appreciating the inter-functional interfaces. This habit stayed with me over the years. As part of my Master’s Program, I got the opportunity to visit many factories and offices in the Private Sector. I took up projects involving the study of Appraisal systems, Leadership Development and organizational transformation. My keenness to seek a detailed understanding of processes, procedures and strategies enabled me to gain a generic understanding of varied businesses.
My inquisitiveness and eye for detail spurred me to go out to the grassroots and learn the processes and procedures of functional areas and to appreciate the cross-functional interfaces and impacts. This habit has stayed with me till today.
Whenever I get a chance, I like visiting the shop floor and interacting with the frontline staff. The best teachers who can help us understand how a process or a function works are the people who dirty their hands, get involved in the nitty-gritty and face the heat of unexpected issues and concerns.
I became convinced even at that early stage of my career that the fundamental purpose of management was to ensure organisational effectiveness. To be a manager you need to feel ownership of your immediate function, and the behavioural dynamics of the team you work with. Ownership and alignment must be understood in the larger context of the organization, industry and the economy at large. Your ability to see the big picture of what you do at the micro level helps you to grow your general management perspectives.
My experience of doing a part-time management program helped me to relate what I was learning to what I was doing at the workplace. Had I gone for a Management Program immediately after college, I would not have grasped the nuances of professional life as much as I did with my exposure to the ground realities of business.
I am convinced that an MBA is a course that is best done after working for a couple of years. Going straight from college to a post-graduate management program is like trying to learn to swim or drive by reading theoretical guides. Often industry experts talk about the employability gap of raw graduates. Even a management graduate has key functional gaps that will be filled in later years at work. The best outcome of a management program would likely be for the participants who pursue the course after working for some time.
I also took to handling sessions as a part-time faculty in a few prominent academic institutions when my course of study was completed. I was happy to have passed out with high credits in my program. Also, the networking opportunity I got to develop professional and academic connections stood me in good stead much later when the bug of corporate mobility bit me.
BY 1984, I had completed my management education and had spent nearly a decade on my job. India was precariously perched as an economy. Having ploughed back from the nadir she touched as a political leader, Mrs. Gandhi was back in power. The emergency was all but forgotten by people at large and Madam G was presiding over the government run by the same old loyal, seasoned and highly subservient set of ministers.
The Indian economy had regressed to the legacy rate of mediocre growth; lethargy, inefficiency and lack of accountability returned to haunt the large public sector corporations. India then was at the mercy of the IMF, whose bailout strategies put a strain on the policy-making dexterity of the Government. I remember the 1983-84 Union Budget being referred to as one prepared under the diktat of the IMF.
As for SAIL, one of the largest Public sector companies, it had the ignominy of incurring more than one crore loss per day! On customer service, work discipline, cost efficiency and overall operational results, SAIL was ridiculed, pilloried and outrightly dubbed as a villain of the bleeding public investments in the country. “A case study in PSU malfunctioning”, is what most pundits on economy dubbed SAIL.
As an employee, I felt depressed and directionless, though financially the salary came into the bank without fail every month, a possibility that would not be the case in a private business in similar circumstances.
In September 1984, I was transferred to our regional office in Chennai, then Madras, to carry out the same regional administrative function for the South that I was doing for the Western Region.
At that time, it appeared just a reshuffle of sorts. There was hardly anything to be optimistic as to what was in store. By then I was reconciled to being just a ‘babu’ in the wonderland of PSUs.
My experience over the next five years was unbelievably refreshing and positive providing plenty of learning opportunities. In retrospect, I can say that my tenure in Chennai from 1984 to 1989 was among the best periods of my career with SAIL. It was eventful and transformational to the hilt.
Chennai was quite different from the other two cities I had lived. Kolkata was chaotic but there was a delicate charm that appealed to me. Mumbai was lively, smart, full of variety and outright dominating. The cosmopolitanism of Mumbai was mind-blowing. Here I was, checking into the Southern metropolis that prided itself in distinct customs, tradition, and conservatism. For the first time in over a decade, I was in a city where Hindi was not in vogue and where a visible varnish of Dravidianism proclaimed the cultural exclusivity vis-à-vis the northern heartland. The last time I was here briefly was when I witnessed a virulent anti-Hindi agitation which I have already talked about in a previous chapter.
At the office, the atmosphere was a bit too formal and remote as against the comradery that existed in Mumbai. I found a rental accommodation in the quiet suburb of Adyar, not far from the IIT. The place that I rented was on the first floor of an old bungalow in Kasturba Nagar. While I was on my house hunt, I came across a house in Gandhi Nagar, just opposite Kasturba Nagar where Rajmohan Gandhi, the grandson of Gandhiji and Rajaji lived. I went to the house, which was just next to a vacant accommodation I was inspecting. When I heard about Rajmohan Gandhi living there, I felt a curiosity and urge to meet him. I had read his articles and found the straightforwardness, sincerity and dispassionate objectivity of his writing.
When I went in, I was taken aback by the utter simplicity of the place, a barely furnished house. The warmth with which Rajmohan treated me, a total stranger who came unannounced, was an eye-opener. There was no air of superiority, no exclusiveness, no highbrow feeling of being a writer, scholar and legacy bearer of two stalwarts of our freedom movement. I told him how happy and fortunate I was to meet him and he offered me coffee and told me to drop in in future too.
October 31, 1984, started like any other day. Our office was getting warmed up for the day ahead. Miles away from us, in the fortified Prime Ministerial bungalow at 1, Safdarjung Road, New Delhi, PM Indira Gandhi was on her way to be interviewed by British actor Peter Ustinov, who was filming a documentary on her for TV. She was walking through the garden of the Prime Minister's Residence towards her home office at the neighbouring 1, Akbar Road. As she passed a wicket gate guarded by Constable Satwant and Sub-Inspector Beant Singh, the two men opened fire on her.
The country was shell-shocked. Though she was rushed to the hospital immediately, she succumbed to the injuries. Those days we had no private news channels and surely there was no Internet, let alone the now ubiquitous social media galore. The only source of disseminating news was the All India Radio and Door Darshan, both tightly controlled by the Government. Though the days of emergency were long past, the iron-clad, tight-lipped governmental machinery of information and broadcasting moved ever cautiously and with hesitancy. Never since the assassination of Gandhiji in the immediate aftermath of the partition, rioting and Independence, did we have a situation close to what the nation confronted on that fateful day.
Since I oversaw Personnel and Administration, I started receiving frantic calls from our branches and offices across South India. Worried employees, in hushed and trembling voices, were enquiring whether the PM had indeed been assassinated and whether the country would plunge into chaos, violence and mayhem at any moment. Some inquirers wanted to know whether they could leave the office immediately to take care of their families who might be worried like hell in the wake of fast-spreading panic. Thank God, there was no social media then!
I told them that we had no official information and that as soon as we got any authentic news, we would let them know. For the moment they were advised to stay put. A few of them got annoyed at me and asked in typical public sector arrogance, “Will you ensure the safety of us and our families if something untoward happens”? I just followed the safe official line, “Let us advice from the Head Office”.
A smart executive from our Bangalore Office rang me up and said, “The BBC has announced the death of Mrs G. And you must inform everyone to leave the offices to safety”. I told politely but a bit curtly, “Unfortunately my orders have to come from our HO and not from the BBC”.
Finally, we got the call from New Delhi and Kolkata that all offices were to be closed and people should be told to await further orders from the TV and Radio as to when to return to the office.
In about half an hour, Chennai streets became virtual war zones. Hooligans were out in full force. They were beating up two-wheeler riders rushing home and many cars were stoned, buses torched, and shops forcibly shut. There was rampant stone-pelting. I failed to understand how creating a ruckus and intimidating passers-by on the streets of our cities would provide any succour to the national grief that had befallen the country.
Reports seeping in through ham radio sets and foreign channels said that New Delhi was witnessing scenes resembling the pre and post-partition riots. Instead of Hindu-Muslim clashes, this time Sikh families were at the receiving end of the mob fury. Inhuman and utterly cruel scenes were enacted on the streets of much of North India, but the New Delhi situation was nothing short of outright riots.
By the evening the Door Darshan News reported that Rajiv Gandhi, the older son of Mrs. Gandhi was sworn in as the new PM by Giani Zail Sigh, the President. Rajiv, a serving pilot in Air India, was contacted while on duty, brought down, rushed to the Presidential Palace and sworn in as the PM, all in a few hours.
Nobody asked questions on the propriety of the procedures at that hour of grief. A few hours later, Rajiv was asked by a reporter, about widespread attacks on the Sikhs in Delhi streets many of them orchestrated by the ruling party's big guns and their storm-troopers. Rajiv replied curtly, “When a big tree is felled, it is but natural that the earth trembles”. Even to this day, the brutality and insensitivity of the public responses to the assassination of Mr. Gandhi remain a black spot on our democratic credibility.
Rajeev Gandhi’s first tenure as PM was promising. He was fresh and professional, and he had a big emotional mandate, riding on the sympathy wave of being the son of the Iron Lady martyred by anti-national forces. Rajiv, to be fair, did try sincerely to usher in changes. But his lack of political experience and the absence of sane and mature guidance and mentoring by elders resulted in many a bungling by him.
However, for SAIL his rule as the PM brought in an opportunity for genuine and big-time transformation.
The man whom Rajiv Gandhi chose to spearhead the makeover of SAIL was V Krishnamurthy, a veteran manager of PSUs who had scripted successive success stories in sectors such as Heavy Engineering and Automobiles. Krishnamurthy was a legend, by the time he took over SAIL as Chairman on 17th May 1985. He was earlier handpicked by Mrs. Gandhi to give life to the unfulfilled entrepreneurial dream of her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi who started a fledgling automaker based in Gurgaon, just outside Delhi.
It was to the credit of Krishnamurthy that as if by a Midas touch, he brought to life an automobile company that literally changed the vehicular landscape of India. Today with a nearly 50% market share of the passenger vehicles market, Maruti is a household name in India. Those who write the history of passenger vehicles in the country would, without doubt, divide the transformation of personal car mobility in India into two distinct parts – pre-Maruti and post-Maruti. Krishnamurthy presided over the upgrade of the automobile industry in India in collaboration with the Japanese giant, Suzuki, who was brought in as the technology partner.
No wonder then that Krishnamurthy taking over the helms of the Public Sector Steel industry was expected to ring in big-time changes in work culture, commercial performance and customer service.
I joined many of my colleagues in SAIL to have been pitchforked to play an active role in the transformation story of the company. There are plenty of highlights of the makeover of SAIL to talk about which we shall do in the next chapter.
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