Back in the mid-1970s, my eyes and ears were yet to open beyond the myopic fallacy of complacency! Frogs in the well hardly show the urge to escape the constraints, rather they feel protected, safe and at ease.
My induction training for about two months at Rourkela was my first taste of corporate culture, work-life routines and career lessons. Of course, we were told that these were tough times and beyond the routine. The Emergency overhang had altered the way people worked and hopefully, a day would come when normalcy would return.
Whether that would be a return to the old ways or to a ‘new normal’ with regimented discipline, higher accountability and tightness of deliverables was the question that weighed on everyone’s mind. However, these were not expressed openly but only shared in subdued and one-to-one conversations among close friends.
The rumour was that there were informers everywhere who could track down dissenters and carry stories, often exaggerated, to higher-ups to settle scores. Under emergency power, anyone perceived as a threat to security, discipline and strategic interests could be jailed without trial and for an extended period, that could go in indefinitely!
The situation looked scary and grotesque images of the concentration camps and torture regimes in communist and socialist countries described in classic novels seemed suddenly like possibilities that could be played out in India too in the not-too-distant future.
On the first day of our training, we were made to feel special. The entire top brass of the plant was there to greet us and cheer us up. There were forty-five of us cherrypicked through a rigorous national selection process comprising written tests (modelled loosely on IIM admission tests, followed by Group discussions and Interviews). The contingent of in-take was split into two, one of the batches that included me, joining in Rourkela for orientation training and the other half joining in Bhilai for a similar function. We were to later swap training locations midway through the four-month training.
At the outset, we were given a tour of the entire plant. An Integrated Steel Plant was a world by itself! For a novice like me, everything was of mindboggling size and complexity.
We also spent a day in the remote open-cast iron ore mines in Kalta, deep in the tribal heartland of Orissa. Later when we moved to the Bhilai Plant, we visited the Rajhara mines. I heard stories of the resistance movement and protests by the tribals, who felt marginalised and threatened by the influx of workers from outside, not just the skilled ones but also in semi and unskilled categories.
There was the nascent rebel politics, leaning to the left, that bolstered the tribal resistance. Much as I was overawed by the scale of industrialisation, I also had to battle my sympathies for the Dalit insecurities. I felt that painting the activists and trade union leaders as forces obstructing the march of modern India was a skewed narrative and loaded in favour of the privileged and entitled class.
In the Steel Plant complex at Rourkela, the Blast Furnaces, the Steel Melting Shop and the Hot and Cold Rolling Mills all presented an impressive array of massive and modern technology and brisk-paced activities. The Coke Oven Batteries ever fuming with red-hot metallurgical coal were awe-inspiring. Along with the township, infrastructure facilities and the behemoth Administrative Block, the entire complex, teeming with activities, looked like an oasis in the desert of empty serenity. Here was the sign of my nation changing for the better and I was destined to be part of the transition.
You can imagine the conflicts and mix of utopian and pessimistic images flashing in the mind of a just-out-of-the-college youth on being transitioned into an unknown context with multiple shades of emotional play. While optimism about change and progress was tempting and tantalising, the fear of the unknown future that could morph into textbook totalitarianism was indeed scary. This confusing mindset was an unnerving setting for the start of my career. With the massive steel plant and the array of company-owned civic facilities, I already felt like I was in some sort of a soviet commune and industrial town, of which I had sketchy ideas from my readings.
At the end of the training at Rourkela, we were assessed and rated and were told that the results would be compounded with the second phase outcome later at Bhilai to determine our placement postings.
When we moved to Bhilai for the next phase of training, there was a familiarity and comfort level with the new settings, but everything had morphed into a larger and even more massive scale. Bhilai was a magnified and brisker setting than Rourkela. Even for a newcomer to the industry, Rourkela's plant and work practices seemed more modern and organized than the Bhiali scenario.
My final training phase, the placement formalities and postings to Bhilai Plant opened the next, tentatively settled phase of my career to move on.
Back then, north of Vindhyas was another nation of sorts! The pedestrian way for ordinary folks in the North to refer to those of us from the South was by calling us “Madrasis”, a term that sounded offensive to me and my Southern friends. Many times, I had to struggle in broken Hindi to convey my displeasure at being lumped into a common categorisation, loaded with cultural squint. Madras was just the prime city of the South and there were multiple regions, cultures and heritage like Malayali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and many more dialects and sub-cultures in the South of India.
Odisha at that time was quite low on human development. It was a highly fragmented, entitled-driven and caste-dominated society. Has much changed now, in Odisha or most parts of North and East India?
In Odisha and Bihar, as I understood from my cohort members, civil services were the most sought-after jobs, especially for those from the higher and more educated social strata. With little industrialisation, but for the prestigious Tata Steel and Tata Engineering and Locomotives along with the largely private mining industry, which was still in a consolidation phase.
There was massive Public Sector investment after the Coal Nationalization Policy of the Govt. The steel industry, with giant-sized public sector plants coming up across the key Eastern Indian states, was the source of safe and secure jobs for aspiring youth. The parents of young girls, burgeoning to marriageable age, looked upon the fresh arrival of trainees and interns with the eagerness of thirsty crows looking for drops of water to drink!
We had a truly diverse mix of trainee intake in our batch and there was a fair share of trainees from the Tribal and backward communities, especially in the East Indian hinterland states.
One of the earliest cultural shifts that I was exposed to was the feeling of a pan-national identity, one that was inclusive and went beyond the narrow religious and linguistic divide.
However, I also witnessed the early signs of parochialism and regional identity trends taking shape. The tribals in the mines and steel plant belt were restless about their opportunities being usurped by the migrants from other states, mainly the south Indian ones where education and migration proneness were high. Neel Chakra was one such regional outfit espousing sons of soil recruitment in lower operational jobs in Odisha.
Today, Odisha, the backward state of yesteryear with below-par basic infrastructure, has blossomed into an attractive investment destination. Odisha has transformed over the decades into a vibrant and inviting economy, which appeals to global firms to put in money to build world-class facilities. How far Odisha has come today from the early days of the Rourkela Steel plant’s establishment!
Naveen Patnaik, the no-nonsense leader with a firm grip on governance and with a visionary zeal has played a key role in turning the mineral-rich Odisha into a growth powerhouse, mainly for the metallurgical industry including Steel and aluminum.
I remember the legendary stories of valour and nationalism that flourished in Odisha's contemporary political folklore about Biju Patnaik, the father of Naveen. Biju’s dare-devil accomplishment in the beleaguered Jakarta in 1947 during the days of the resistance movement against the Dutch colonisers to fly out Sukarno and his top team to safety is even today remembered and retold with pride and patriotism by people.
Worthy son of a legendary father, Naveen is today a role model of positive political leadership in the Indian states.
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