What Went Wrong with the 8/11/16 Indian Money (Mis)management?

My apologies for not publishing any blogs after the last one some time in April 2016.

In fact this year has been much eventful for me. It was the last year of my long professional career extending over 36 years in a government owned company. It is the Steel Authority of India Limited or SAIL in short. Unlike most engineers and professionals in the current IT-era, my generation belonged to an era when engineers and jobs were both scarce and when most of us never ever seriously thought of switching jobs once we got in to one with luck being at our side! Only those rare very ambitious ones from our lot tried switching jobs for betterment! I too remained honestly loyal to the one and only employer which made me sustain so long! It is not true to say that I never tried to leave my original governmental employer. Yes, I too got in to current of exodus to mushrooming private sector of the Nineteen nineties, but could not muster enough courage to do the final act, somehow.

That way fortunately or otherwise, I remained with SAIL all these years from 1980 to 2016. The company gave me opportunity to work in the Bhilai Steel Plant for over three decades and another half decade at Ranchi. I said goodbye to the professional career and shifted to my ancestral home place back in south India in the now urbanized village, Elanthoor, in Kerala.

Shifting residences is not anything easy in India. It is really painful and frustrating in many ways in this country due to several reasons. They are all unavoidable pains in a budding democracy and I do not wish to elaborate on those in this blog. Not continuing with my writing too was due to some of those frustrating obstacles!

Being a citizen who was compelled to shift residences quite frequently in the recent past, I have not been able to exercise my voting power as an adult Indian citizen. I had written about those in some of my blogs earlier. As is the case with several others, I haven't been a blind follower of any political party so far. I liked the government for doing good to the people and disliked when they did foolish things regardless of the political party lines of the government.

The proxy government under the leadership of Dr.Manmohan Singh as the PM in the past ten years has been more of a dislike than any like due to its inability to explain its honesty rightly to the people. Many, including me obviously found lack of leadership, honesty and guts to act when governmental actions were commonly thought as essential.

And that caused many unbiased citizens like me to look for hopeful alternatives and that was how we started developing a liking with the leadership of Narendra Modi, even while we disliked many ideologies and personalities that his political organization embraced.

And that tilt in the minds of the people catapulted Modi to the top seat of power and we expected miracles. But nothing spectacular never happened except the spectacular international diplomatic shows and endeavors of the new PM. The people, including me, did not lose patience. We knew that the new government needed time and experience!

And then the most spectacular thing suddenly happened on the 8th November 2016 night. Very dramatically the PM's face and voice beamed in the millions of household TV screens across the length and breadth of India! The PM announced his ambitious and very daring anti-corruption drive- the now infamous 'demonetization' drive! The government of India was withdrawing two largely circulated Indian paper currencies-the 500 and 1000 rupee notes with immediate effect with certain allowances! New 2000 rupee notes and 500 rupee notes would replace these cancelled currencies in a phased manner!

The PM requested the public to be patient for 50 days and to bear the inconveniences that might arise for this big and bold step by the government to wipe out black money and counterfeit currencies from the Indian monitory system. He explained the restrictions for people to withdraw cash from banks and ATMs.

We danced initially with joy as we found this daring PM taking daring action to clean Indian economy from its black labels! He had earlier taken similar steps to clean the Indian streets from its foul smell that had become the obvious characteristic of the Indian winds!

We were ready to face the odds for making this happen though some of us had our doubts deep in our minds. For example we could not digest the logic of withdrawing 1000 rupee notes with 2000 rupee notes! Yet we never doubted the wisdom of the all knowing government.

As the days went, the Indian people were realizing the great administrative blunder or mismanagement. They were witnessing the lack of planning within the governmental systems and the top bank, the Reserve Bank of India. People like me could not digest the fact that the Indian bureaucracy is so ineffective or unprofessional to handle this kind of a situation which is not in any way a herculean task. How could they do such a big administrative action without proper planning?

Withdrawing most of the existing currencies without making any alternative arrangements to replace those genuine cash? They have not undertaken any action for low denomination currencies. They have not thought about the ATMs and making changes in those machines and the systems with the banking system to dispense cash!

Neither they did any thing to make at least the educated and well to do Indian middle class to switch to cashless electronic money transactions! There have been no governmental rules or systems that ensured this.

As of now, the troubles of the people and increasing day by day. The most vulnerable are the citizens at the lower rungs of the society who earned their daily earnings in low denomination paper cash. The retail traders, the rural farmers, the daily wage earners and the like are all miserably affected. The Indian economy has come to a pathetic halt not because of shortage of money, but because of the inability of the government to make financial transactions possible wherever it was needed!

The inability of the government to dispense the worries of the people at this stage is more worrisome now. The news of infighting within the government and the political system have been enhancing the worries.

There are reports of large scale loss of employment especially in the unorganized sector. Whether this will percolate to the organized sector is something the regular employees of India keep watching tense-fully!

The long ques in the banks and ATMs in India are nothing encouraging to the Indian economy. The catch of unaccounted cash in the new currencies and the threat of the government with more penalties and punishments to the economic violators are not any thing that make India an investment friendly nation!

The nature of uncertainty in the economy is not anything good for a nation like India. No doubt, we need to tackle black money, counterfeits and black economy. But it should not be at the cost of the whole economy.

Will any one burn the house for fear of rats?

What could have gone wrong in this big administrative decision of the Indian government?

I think it is one typical case of administrative goof up just as the deeds done by Muhammad-bin-Tugluq a few centuries ago due to lack of well informed planning and unprofessional execution. Historians do admit the good intentions of Tugluq, though!

In the current case, if we observe unbiased, it is not difficult to find an unnecessary and undue encroachment by the political leadership in an administrative act that involved high degree of economic and financial complexities! Though the government is supreme, it was a job of the Reserve Bank of India and the latter should have done it professionally after due homework!

Instead what the people of India witnessed? The PM announcing the decision most dramatically at an awkward time in the news channels! And the man responsible for the final thing- the governor of the RBI was not to be seen anywhere!

And for that matter, the RBI boss was a new one. No doubt, he was an experienced professional in some other field. But he took the reigns of RBI only very recently. That kind of a time period is just not sufficient for any external management expert to master the complexities involved in the management of the central bank! With that short stint, he was obviously not in a position to advise the political and bureaucratic bosses with correct predictions and consequences even if he was consulted prior to the move!

And that explains why the RBI is very poorly equipped to deal with the consequences of the 8/11 demonetization act! Nothing surprising then to learn about the inadequate stock of currency printing paper and security inks with the security presses managed by the RBI! Nothing surprising to find the ATMs of the country cannot be equipped for the new paper currencies! Nor the failure of the Indian banking system to act foolproof post demonetization is also nothing surprising!

No one with the right kind of information would have ever thought that India is fully equipped for digital revolution to such an extent that it can do away with physical currency in just one stroke! No doubt, India has achieved much in the recent years with regard to its internet networks and electronic communication systems. But that is just not enough and can never replace the common money that the poor and ignorant majority Indians are still depended upon in the present times. At the most these are wishful thoughts for India for the future!

Unless the people are reasonably well to do with above poverty incomes and reasonable standards of living it is difficult for any government to honesty remove corruption. Under privileged masses are prone to be the poaching ground for the clever characterless people to perpetuate corruption! With India with its present levels of below poverty line and marginally above poverty line masses, the upper money making lots would keep their exploitation practices in so many ways so long as the latter change their evil mindsets! 

There are better alternatives and that is the need of the hour! Income tax raids and stricter punishments for black money would only make corruption money to change hands! It will not eliminate corruption! Why not the government encourage people to pay taxes honestly and honor the high tax payers with awards instead of threatening all tax payers with draconian punishments? Draconian rules are the first cause for corruption, in my humble opinion! And corruption is the first cause for black money and black economy! 

We may have moved to the 21st century, but with all those who enjoy power and position, the mindset remain as of the dark ages! The moment power and position are achieved, human mind tilts towards evil and begins to explore ways to exploit others instead of being of any good service to others!

Observe any man who occupies a powerful seat of power high or low. Observe his or her ways and manners. Is it not the same like the hawks or the wild hyena? Or may be of the cunning jackal? And watch the same person after he or she is removed from the seat of power!

And character cannot be brought in a man or woman just by education. Without character, there is potential of evil always. Developing good character in the people is a lengthy process that might take generations for full transformation. Yet, it is nothing non-achievable for the individuals! 

In this context some readers might remember what I had written some time ago: An attempt to eradicate corruption in any characterless society would bring about more corruption!

So what the PM should have done in the current situation?

He should have created a situation that encouraged good citizens to do their economic activities without fear or apprehension while making it difficult for those who are more prone to corrupt acts.

He should have eased the income tax rules and laws and created better systems and procedures for people to pay their taxes honestly and removed the draconian or complex return filing procedures for individuals while making it perhaps necessary only for business firms. Let the government tax all incomes at the source, but why should the individual tax payers troubled for keeping all mundane accounts and file the returns error free in a system that no Indian can do without external help? Obviously, such systems and procedures are made by tax officials when they are in power with the intention of enhancing their power! And such enhanced powers obviously become another source of corruption!

Why does the government keep agricultural incomes tax free for all? Is it not a good opportunity to convert big black money? How on earth someone check the validity of any one declaring a million or more income from a few acres of land that he or she holds without doing any farming at all? This one provision compels many to buy cheap farm lands and keep them barren or under utilized for tax evasion. Even if the farms yield big incomes, why such incomes should be tax tree? Small farm incomes should be tax free. But big farms should not be.

Why does the government extent many tax free privileges and perks to the government officials while no such things are available to employees in the private domains? Why does the government keep enhancing the salaries, perks and pensions of the government employees without any due consideration to spend any tax collections for any logical social benefits to the general public including the tax payers?

I remember a youth working in a private company in India asking me this question recently: Why should we pay income tax when the government does nothing for us from the tax so collected? Will the government pay us subsistence allowance if I lose my job tomorrow and become income less from the tax they collected from me earlier? And remember, the several developed nations in the present day world do have such schemes while the government of India does not subscribe to any such ideas.

The youngsters of India do not wish to hear from the government that they take taxes only for fighting wars or defending the borders. Of course, that is important. But concurrently, the government has to prove to the nation that every rupee they collect as taxes are spent wisely for the people! When the people realize, it more and more will honestly come forward to pay taxes!

But no doubt, it is not good for modern governments to function as goonda sarkars of the bygone past when the word sarkar was actually associated with danda or stick!

  

Let us hope the PM and his team recognize the anxiety of the silent and honest masses of India now and take some bold but honest corrective steps that make India and Indians shine! 

Management is an Art:Any Tom, Dick and Harry Can't be a Good Manager!

"The wise and all powerful beings who are responsible for the universe management undoubtedly know exactly what they are all about" 

[The Urantia Book 65:5.3]

First let me make some distinction about the word management. The word when used as a verb means the 'act of managing some work'. Here managing means accomplishment of an objective successfully. Management when used as a noun can have several meanings. It could mean the team of people who manage a business organization or the academic study topic that covers the principles of management.

I consider success in fulfilling the objective is an important aspect of management. Thus, when an act fails to fulfill its objective, I would say it was with no management. Thus success is directly linked to management. No success, then there is no management! It is not required to specifically qualify management as poor or bad or improper. At least that is the way I consider it, though it is now common for people to call some managements in that manner as failed objectives in tasks and businesses are becoming more and more common.

A person who accomplishes a task or a business or a project or a mission successfully is a good manager. His or her management of the task was good. If a team of managers sustain a business successfully, then they form a good management.

So for accomplishing success in our missions or tasks or projects or businesses, we need good managers to manage those. 

But the question is whether all people can be good managers always? Unfortunately, all are not good managers. Good managers seem to be a rare breed in the world today. Otherwise we would not have been encountering failed missions or tasks or businesses or projects very often around us!

I do not consider task masters who accomplish the work or task or business with apparent success for some time as good managers! They are clever pseudo managers with good knowledge and intelligence but with no ethics, character or honesty or compassion to other human beings. The success they seem to achieve are temporary in nature only to become huge failures at a later date! Their success is not sustainable! And non-sustainable success is no success at all!

It is possible to train or educate a person giving him or her some insight in to some qualities and skills that may prove beneficial for a person to become a good manager. But this alone need not make a person a good manager. Even people with no formal education also could be good managers! Management qualities are partially inherent and partially acquired by experience and observations.

Just as any person cannot be a good artist, just any person cannot be good manager. Management is essentially an art! It is the art of getting the resources optimally to accomplish the mission successfully. The resources are the people who do various kinds of works, the money, the materials, etc. Some observers often call the resources as the 3 M's (Men, Money and Materials).

In the resources, the men (and women) who form the work force are the most important factor. That is because the people are the only item that are living and have the ability to act independently with their own intelligence and thoughts.

Therefore, a good manager is the one who knows the art of making others work in unison for making the task a success. With the help of the people, the manager should get the best from the available money and materials.

For finishing the task successfully, it may be necessary to divide the main task in to many sub tasks and assign each of the sub tasks to the people so that each of those tasks are managed well. Thus, the people working for the manager for a particular task become associate or assistant managers for the sub tasks. The manager has to ensure that all the people in the team manage their own shows well towards the overall success of the main objective.

But how does the manager ensure that each of the people turn themselves to become good managers for their own tasks? It becomes a tricky job. The manager needs to delegate the task properly with due diligence! The right man for the right task will make things easy. Otherwise, the management becomes a mess! Indeed, this part is an art. The skill needed is the art of understanding people and the art of delegation of tasks to the right people.

Many people think it is a very simple thing. What is the difficulty in assigning work to the people? I agree, there is not much difficulty for that. The difficulty is in getting the work successfully accomplished. When the work or tasks are assigned the wrong manner, the overall task would never get managed. It will not be a success!

A manager is a person who knows the strengths, weaknesses, character and other personality traits of the people well and possess the leadership and authority to assign work honestly according to his assessments. Not only he knows the art of delegation, but also knows how effectively he communicates with his team.

While he possesses the power to interfere in the sub-tasks as assigned to the individuals in his team, he avoids using that power. A driver can use the control pedals and steering of a car the way he likes. But when he does that too often without any justification, he becomes a bad driver! Similarly, a manager who often interferes with the assigned tasks of his team members is a bad manager! A bad manager can lead the organization to mismanagement accidents that could be fatal to the organization!

There are many more things in management. Only good managers can find and judge other good managers. Someone who assigns the management task to any Tom, Dick and Harry can't be a good manager himself! 

Assigning tasks to the right people is the prime task in management. If this is done, success is at least half accomplished!

People say, India is a country which is poorly managed. If it is so, the reason is very simple. 

The people of India lack managerial abilities. They do not recognize the importance of assigning the right people for the right job! Perhaps they also do not understand the technique of judging and picking the right people or the good managers for the various managerial tasks of the nation!

It is my simple opinion. I am not sure what you might say! 

Great Companies to Work in India:Why There are Only 2 PSUs in the 2014 List of 100?

Today morning, while glancing through the business news, there was a not-so-important news coverage that got my attention. The news was about some organization doing some research to publish the list of 100 odd companies that are found as great places to work in India. 

Google India Pvt Ltd topped the list.[ surprisingly, Google's Indian wing, though registered as a private limited company in India, does not have a website of its own!] As per available information, Google India Pvt Ltd has 1625 satisfied employees, who really feel their company is a great place to work in India. There is no need for any one to doubt that, because it is the satisfied employees of Google who made their company- a small business venture registered by two PhD students of Stanford University almost recently in 1998- to become a 50,000 employee strong multinational entity whose name has become synonymous for internet search. Even this blog that you are reading would not have been possible without the dedicated work of many of these people who work for this great company.

Now the same Google helped me to find more information about the research finding that I was reading in the newspaper in the morning. I have found out the list of those 100 best companies which are declared as great companies in India to work during 2014 and also more information about greatplacetowork.in 

When I observed the list closely, I find most of the companies are either privately held or privately owned public limited companies, except two companies that are government owned. The latter in India are commonly called the Public Sector Undertakings (PSU). 

Having decades of experience in a PSU, it is not any thing surprising for me that many PSUs are not in the list. But as I have guessed rightly, I could find the National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (NTPC) and the Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) in the list, thought not in the first fifty. 

NTPC, though a PSU has been born with a work culture that is much different from other PSUs. Much of this work culture is because of the top leadership of this company right from its incorporation. This company was some how fortunate to get good top management team right from the beginning. For individuals and for corporate entities, good genes make lots of difference! Thus this PSU company was able to develop a good work culture and produce good leaders from within. Its present CMD, Dr Anup Roy Choudhury who has been leading this company for more than a decade now is an eminent technocrat who could maintain that work culture and improve it even under the severely constrained work environments that PSUs generally face. [You may also read: Why Indian Public Sector Undertakings Fail to Perform Now?]

When NTPC was founded way back in 1975 as a government of India owned, central PSU for setting up and managing large scale thermal power plants, the government handed over the small Badarpur thermal power station which was a poor performer and a small power producing utility to the management of NTPC. From less than 100 MW power production at Badarpur in 1975, NTPC now is a company with an installed capacity of over  43000 MW of coal based thermal power. With a workforce mostly drawn from other PSUs, this feat is some thing of a remarkable achievement and a fine example of exemplary work culture that this CPSU has been able to develop and sustain! There were many of my colleagues who preferred to shift to this company way back in the beginning of the 1980's. I do remember a senior colleague who shifted to this company calling me too join them giving due regards to my experience in thermal power chemical control and water treatment! Though I declined that offer due to personal reasons, I was a keen observer of the work culture of this PSU and the outstanding progress this company has been making as compared to other PSUs which could not emulate the NTPC work culture!

Let me narrate one or two examples of that work culture that I have personally experienced. Some time in the late 1990's the PSU where I worked, faced some serious problems with some of its captive thermal power plants. These problems were essentially related to poor management of the power station chemical control including its water management. These captive thermal power plants were my initial work place, but when this incident happened I was no more working in the power plant department. Yet some member in the top management of our company remembered me and called me to get my advice to overcome the problem.

I studied the problem and gave my suggestions. Our company could have gone ahead to implement the suggestions that I gave. But the work culture of our company had become too complex by then that the top management wanted me to undertake an all India tour to other thermal power stations to study those problems in a few other thermal plants and then give my technical study report for further actions.

So I visited a few large and small thermal power plants owned and managed by a few state electricity boards, some other private companies and also one super thermal power station at Ramagundam managed by NTPC. When I reached, Ramagundam by road from Vijayawada, after visiting the thermal power plant there, I was not knowing what to expect as I did not know any one there.

I did not have the opportunity to observe the NTPC culture till then. When I reached, the gate of the power station I found the security forces of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF)- the para military organization of India which is mandated to provide security to most government owned industrial establishments in India. Having experienced the attitudes of CISF jawans in some other places including the PSU where I worked, I was a bit apprehensive. The existing work culture of the place does affect these forces too and many a times people find it not so pleasant!

But to my surprise, I find the officer of CISF at NTPC-Ramagundam  very cordial and cooperative which was not what I was expecting. This officer helped me to get in to contact with the right officer of NTPC and talk to him over phone from the security gate. The response from the NTPC officer too was a pleasant surprise. This officer- who was junior to me by the PSU rank- instructed the CISF officer to make the entry pass for me and the CISF officer did that immediately. (In many other PSUs, this thing could be a harassment even for the company guests!) The NTPC officer told me to wait for a few minutes till he sent one company vehicle to pick me inside. That was another surprise because, the company where I worked, even the top executive might also find it difficult to do such a thing! 

The company vehicle arrived at the gate to pick me within a few minutes and I was taken to the officer whom I knew only just a few minutes, that too over the intercom of NTPC at the security gate. 

For the rest of the day, I had a rewarding professional experience. I got the opportunity to meet almost all the officers of the plant and interact and exchange our professional experiences. I could visit the plant with them and I was greatly impressed to know about their working style, a style that invariably reflected on the upkeep of the plant.

I was impressed by the office ambiance that my contact officer of NTPC had there, some thing many other private and government companies never bothered about. With all that atmosphere and authority that his company provided, I could feel the professional pride and satisfaction of my contact officer of NTPC. Obviously, such employees are going to make their company perform well! How the employee feels that way was obviously the distinct work culture of this CPSU which got developed due to the vision of its top management from the very beginning!

During the professional interactions, I found that NTPC Ramagundam was adopting a technique that was a bit more complex to manage a technical issue pertaining to its cooling water management. It was the same problem of our captive power plant too, for which I was sent by our management for detailed investigations. I gave my suggestions to the NTPC fellows too as I did to our top authorities. 

To cut the story short, within months, I learnt that NTPC Ramagundam implemented my suggestion where as my report eventually went to rest in my own organization with nothing happening. Later the situation in my organization with regard to the captive power production deteriorated further. Later, some of the captive thermal production facilities of our company were handed over to NTPC to be managed by an NTPC controlled joint venture. The power plant where I began my career too went under the management control of this new joint venture.

The first major change for these units under NTPC controlled management has been the drastic changes in the employee benefits and facilities. NTPC began their actual control of operation and management only after all the employee facilities had been created as per their own standards! And that is what makes NTPC different from other PSUs.

But that does not mean that NTPC or any other such organizations which find their name in the list of best companies for employees for 2014 would remain as such in the future too. They may change for better or worse in the future. And that all depend on the attitudes of the top management and the rest of the key authorities in their respective organizations who are responsible for making the people work earnestly, taking pride in their organization. 

If corporate history is any indication, there would be many companies that would compete in the future to find their names in the list that I mentioned above. That is a matter of prestige and some top corporate managers are too willing to do any short cuts for gaining such prestigious positions without honestly making any real cultural change within their organizations.

That is true with all management systems, be it of total quality  management (TQM), corporate social responsibility (CSR), Environment Management, Safety, etc., etc. 

In short, every thing ultimately boils down to people. If the organization is made of people having the 4 C's that I wrote some time ago, things would naturally follow a better path and the company would naturally be a great place to work. The more such people in the organization, the more it would be a better place to work! 

But there is a critical mass in this case too. When the numbers of the  4 C-people go down below a certain limit, the company or organization begins to collapse as it would not be easy for the company to make any positive changes by its own.

It would be an interesting study if any one ventures to study why only 2 PSU's were liked by their own employees! Of course, such studies and their findings would be of any use only when there is some one to examine those for positive actions!

Ten Fundamental and Practical Rules of Management for Chief Management Facilitators !

In today's world, academicians who propagate management research concepts to young aspiring managers in the high end Management Institutes are called Management Gurus (MG). Umpteen hot selling and high priced books written by such MGs not only find their prominence in the academic book stalls, but also in the pull carts of the book vendors of the major railway stations. In my country India, there is a likelihood of a person termed as uncultured and illiterate by the so-called neo-affluent if he or she does not recollect the names of a few MGs and a few Cricketers. 

Because Cricket and Management are the two things where all the money is made, besides the conventional Bollywood. And Indians are very fond of money, apart from being equally fond of spirituality, the latter being the essential  pre-requisite for the former! Even the Martian Spacecraft too would not be allowed to lift off unless the gods are pleased!

In such an environment, all gurus are welcome, so long as they have some magical mantras for money making.

So, there are absolutely no regrets if the Management Institutes raised their fees by ten or twenty fold in just a couple of years. After all that cannot be termed as tuition fees any more. It is some sort of an advance commission to be paid to the facilitators who would make the youngsters equipped with money spinning mantras from their potential future earnings. The higher the fees, the higher the chances of the young boy or girl to get in to a high paying corporate as a talented management team member entrusted with the task of money making. Obviously, for such a recruitment to be effected, the Management Institute has to have a proper placement cell adequately funded and managed by efficient corporate lobbyists. 

Money begets money! That is the first mantra of money making! And also modern management! The more you spend and throw out, the more some one will grab! But this is some thing that the MGs would not tell you openly.

The Management Institute is ranked by the number of students getting placement offers just before they pass out. The term used is campus recruitment. Equally important is the highest annual salary package the fresh manager from the institute is offered by the corporate. If the corporate offer for the fresher is many times more than the annual salary of the top ranking government official of the country, it is news. People have to just sit and wonder about the potential of money making in management!

Many of these young managers would soon become Chief Executive Officers of companies whose sole purpose would be to make money by any means, a good part of that money amassed earmarked for themselves. Some would venture in to the creation of such companies. But interestingly, it would be difficult for the common people to understand what the majority of these companies are doing? It is simply difficult because they make money by manipulation of policies and that is where the big money is, rather than creation of goods and services for the benefit of the people at large. 

Thus Management of the present day has deteriorated as some sort of Manipulation Techniques. Best corporate managers now known as CEOs are best be called Manipulation Technique Experts (MTE)!

Now the fundamental and practical rules of management that I would like to give here are not for the CEOs who are MTEs. 

It is for those CEOs who would prefer to be known as Chief Management Facilitators (CMFs). The abbreviation sounds like EMF, or the Electro Motive Force of applied physics. And in practice, CMFs aka CEOs,  should act like EMFs in a successful organization.

Now, what I would like to give below may not be agreeable fully to the MTE type CEOs. And as I explained, it is not for them. And I am not an MG by any means.

Now let us see what these ten fundamental rules are:

1. The first and foremost importance to any organization should be honest concern for people, both within and outside.[ After all, without people, there is no organization!]

2. The functioning of the organization should be based on a minimum set of objectives which are known to all, but profit making or money making should not be one of those.[If you do things the right way without an intent to exploit or cheat anyone , profit and money would come naturally!]

3. Elaborate written rules and procedures should not be encouraged. Instead, recognize character and competence of every individual honestly. [The more you write and document your rules and procedures, the more you create opportunities for those few who take shelter in those and make holes in your organization! In other words, the more those rule books, the less the chances of you realizing where the rats have started eating those! ]

4. The culture of respecting and honoring other human beings should be encouraged.[But, at the same time, it should not go override to the extent of developing a culture of creating many sycophants who makes the organization's overall atmosphere vicious!]

5. The organization should voluntarily encourage openness and transparency. All essential aspects of its functioning including the details of its people should be available in its website. The organization should consider answering  any public query as important as any other activity.[Replying a question or query politely always is much more than those money draining advertisements!]

6. All managers shall be facilitators and mentors for others. Centralization of authority should be avoided.[If centralization of authority happens, you pay your subordinate managers for nothing!]

7. Delegation of work, authority  and responsibility shall not be imbalanced.[It is human nature to give undue favors to those who show high loyalty , but such favors should not be by delegating more and more authority in the organization regardless of the responsibility and capacity to do work, disregarding others! A chain with weak and strong links would break even with the presence of those strong links!]

8. CMF and all other Management Facilitators should be reasonably conversant with the various functions under their responsibility areas. More importantly they should all know every other person by name and nature with whom they are supposed to work as a team.[ Do not create a situation wherein so many are directly reporting to you that your immediate subordinates have to wait to get an appointment with you. In such a case, you are going to create an organization with weak wings here and there! Those weak wings would cause your failure!]

9. The organization culture shall be slowly built up in such a way that every one feels happy to belong to the organization. A loss of a person should be felt across the organization as a real loss![If you create a frustrated person within your organization and is totally unconcerned with his departure, you are making your organization exposed for the advantage of your future adversaries and competitors!]

10. The culture of honesty should be encouraged.[Dishonest ones might gain unprecedented success sometimes, but would also cause doom and shame sometime later!]

Those organizations which function on the above said principles are found to be in existence healthily for longer duration than those which do not give importance to the above. Such organizations are the successful ones for a longer period. They are the organizations (business or others) which the society and the country could be proud of.

Their CMFs will not pressurize all others down below for quick results. They would not compel their people for achieving their goals by adopting short cuts or at the cost of violation of the laws of the land. In turn, they ensure that they function for the benefit of their clients and the country. They know the law that over pressure would cause bursting!  

They would avoid lobbyists who could manipulate the rules for their own benefits. Greed would not be their driving force of actions.

No doubt, more and more CMF driven companies and organizations would make a country prosperous. Alternatively, MTE driven companies and organizations would drag the nation and its people to disaster.

What do you think?

Corporate Management: It's Time to Make Upper Ceiling to Salaries of CEOs and Managers !

Ever since the advocates of world trade and open business culture became successful in removing the old barriers of salaries and perks paid to the Chief Executive Officers and key management personnel of business entities, the world is witnessing the emergence of a new class of people who draw enormous amounts as their salaries and performance linked pays.

The trend has taken roots in countries like India too, which had followed the socialistic pattern of development in the past many decades.

For example, the ratio of gross remuneration paid to the lowest ranking employee and the highest management personnel in any company never exceeded ten before the Nineties. If the salary of the lowest grade employee was, say Rs. 2500/- per month, the highest salary of say the CEO or Chairman of the company never went more than Rs.25,000/- per month.

But there after the things went almost a free ride for the greedy when the government decided to remove the controls from those corporates which come under the private sector while at the same time such controls remained intact for the public sector and other government controlled sectors.

A typical case is the banking sector. The largest Indian bank which is a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) has its  Chairman-cum-Managing Director getting a gross annual salary in the range of about three million whereas the second positioned bank which is a Private Sector entity has its CEO, who is much lesser experienced in overall banking sector, getting a monthly salary equivalent to the yearly salary of the former. 

Now the question is whether such a thing is justified ? In both cases, the money from which these management personnel draws the salary comes from the public. In the case of the one holding a higher responsibility the salary is just one tenth of the one holding a lower responsibility ! Now, had the government removed its controls in the case of the former, perhaps that salary also would have gone haywire. That is another matter.

In a similar manner the common people are spellbound when the so-called elite management institutions of the country like the IIMs proudly announce the highest salaries that some of their fresh graduates' were offered by some companies whose businesses are either so strange or not so understandable by the common man. In most cases the highest salaries are offered by such business houses who are doing businesses in the financial services sector. That clearly means that they are in the business of playing with the public money !

For example, the largest private sector bank in India pays its fresh managers hired from the IIMs a gross salary in the range of about Rs.150,000/- per month where as their officers drawn from the second rung institutes are paid just one tenth of that amount. I once met two such fresh officers of this bank. One was hired from one of the IIMs and another from a well known engineering college. The IIM fellow was hired as a fresher who would be posted as the branch manager while the engineering graduate was hired for doing the front office work in the same branch. The IIM fellow got a salary many times more than the engineer guy.

My interactions with them showed that the engineer guy was much more knowledgeable and smarter than the IIM fellow. He had acquired the skills required for handling his job already whereas the IIM fellow was just limping behind with no confidence to handle the responsibility that his company had entrusted with him. But anyway, he was drawing much more than the other one !

I am not criticizing the wisdom of the said bank's top management who had decided to segregate their work force on the basis of the institute from which they are hired by clearly making antagonistic classes of managers within their organization. Whether that was wise or not only time would tell.

But this bank's overall reputation is not good. They are somehow slipping away from scams and other kind of adverse publicity by clever manipulations of higher management circuses. Perhaps that could be the reason that they pay extremely high salaries to those who could do such management circuses.

But even then, is it justified ?

I have just elaborated one case. India is now divided in this. One where the corporates pay exorbitant salaries to a few select people at their whims and fancies where as a good majority in their own organizations are paid peanuts.

Obviously they are taking cue from corporate examples of the leading free market economy in the world that is the USA. But even in that country, wise men have started asking questions regarding the insanity of paying exorbitant salaries to their CEOs and some other top ranking executives or managers while the majority are paid even hundred or thousand times lower salaries.

What these people are going to do with such high salaries that they or their children can never utilize in a few generations ? 

This is greed of the highest order. Just because they are clever and intelligent does not make them rightful to grab the share of others. It should be remembered that cleverness to lead their organizations to success at some juncture cannot justify them to siphon out enormous sums from their organizations for whatever services they had rendered for the organization. That too at the cost of depriving the thousands that work for their organizations.

It is high time that those with a clear thinking should consider these and put a stop to such a menace.

Competence, experience, wisdom and expertise need to be remunerated properly and adequately.

But that should not go to the extend that it goes to the level of loot by the mighty.

I would like my readers to react with their opinions.

The Tragic Tale of a Retired PSU Officer of India !

This following is a brief account of what a Retired Chief Engineer of a top public sector engineering construction company narrated to the author. He is now in his late seventies, living with his old wife in a small rented room in the suburbs of a steel city in central India. I am putting the narration in his words:

I was born in a family of well educated people during the pre-independent India and our family was well off as per the standards of that time. My father was a top ranking officer of the British government in India.

All of us five brothers and sisters had good education. Myself and a brother of mine became engineers.

When we passed out as graduate engineers in Mechanical engineering from one of the top engineering colleges of India at that time, India's first prime minister  Jawahar Lal Nehruji's dream of making India self reliant in industry had taken shape in a few locations in North India in the form of large integrated steel plants. These were the steel plants at Bhilai, Rourkela and Durgapur. Three leading industrialized nations, namely, the USSR, West Germany and UK helped the just independent India in these three steel projects.

It was a dream for me to join the steel plant at Bhilai as a fresh engineer way back in the 1950's when the said steel plant had just commenced its production being set up in a green field site in the undeveloped Chhattisgarh region of the Central Province (later Madhya Pradesh) of India.

We all learned the skills from the skilled workmen and engineers from erstwhile USSR who worked with us and taught us the skills that we needed to manage the huge steel plant. Manny of us were trained in the steel plants of USSR too.

We did not have the facilities and the conveniences that the present day steel city of Bhilai has as the place was just getting its basic infrastructure for migrating people from the rest of India who were coming in large numbers to Bhilai due to the huge employment opportunities the new steel plant offered.

None of us, neither the engineers nor the workers had high salaries as it used to be the case with the developed capitalist worlds. But we had a salary good enough for a decent living with minimum luxuries. For example, I drew a monthly salary of less than Rs.500 equivalent to say about $ 50 at that time.

Being an officer of this company was indeed a coveted position having lots of prestige, except the fact that the salary was too meager and not attracting any prestige if disclosed outside. The prestige attached was because there was a hierarchy of about ten cadres of people numbering about three hundred in all for whom I was the boss.

In the Nineteen Sixties, the government of India formed a new steel company called the Hindustan Steel Limited (HSL) with its HQ at Ranchi. The government also made plans for making another integrated steel plant at Bokaro.

For making the heavy steel plant equipments, a company called the Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC) was set up with its establishments in Ranchi. This was a major step towards indigenization of technology and was a vision of Nehru ji. For the specialized works of construction of steel plants and such heavy industrial construction the Hindustan Steel Construction Limited (HSCL) was also formed by the government of India. HSL started its design and engineering wing called the Central Engineering and Design Bureau (CEDB) which was later converted to a separated central public sector undertaking called the Metallurgical and Engineering Consultants Limited, now called MECON with its HQ at Ranchi.

I remember the vision of the government in appointing Mr K T Chandy, a highly learned bureaucrat hailing from Kerala as the first Director Chairman of the largest PSU steel company which was to manage all the integrated steel plants in the public domain, namely the HSL. Incidentally this eminent man was made the founder Director of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kolkata.

 Later, in the Seventies, the government set up the holding company called the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) with HQ at New Delhi as the holding company for the Bokaro Steel Limited (BSL) and HSL.

Thus me and my colleagues had become senior level officers of the largest industrial entity in India at that time called SAIL. But our salaries did not rise much commensurate with our experience or expertise. It was during this time that I took up an assignment with HSCL and moved to Bokaro as a senior construction engineer of that company carrying out the large scale steel plant project construction at Bokaro.

Nearly for another two decades I was with HSCL and I rose to the position of a Chief Engineer, a post with tremendous responsibilities at that time. Later I became the Project head for a large thermal power plant under construction in Uttar Pradesh for which HSCL was entrusted with the task of construction and commissioning. Nearly three thousand people were working under my charge at that time.

Even at that time, apart from my position and high responsibility I had made pretty nothing in my life as my savings for me and my wife. I had a couple of more years to my retirement by the end of the Eighties and my salary was still not much. It was still less than Rs.10,000/- per month.

We had no children to look after us after my retirement, a solace a good majority of my colleagues were having. They had educated their children in the steel city schools in Bhilai or in other steel cities and many of them had migrated to foreign countries like the Gulf or the USA. They realized the folly of their parents working in India for peanuts. They did not want to repeat that mistake !

Any way such children were the hope for their parents who were to retire from the Indian PSU after toiling for a life time. The government coolly cheated them by making the PSU service a non-pensionable service. Instead we were offered contributory provident fund (CPF) where in about 8.33% of our monthly basic salary and dearness allowance went to the provident fund which would be given to us in lump sum when we retire. The company also contributed an equivalent sum.

But with all these, when I would retire in another few years, I would be getting just about Rs.800,000/- or so. Even with my cash savings in hand the total money that I would be having will not go more than Rs.1000,000. I had not made any house for me to live yet because; in my busy work schedule it was not possible to undertake such a thing. Moreover, I did not have enough income to get a decent house purchased or made. Building a house at that time meant an expenditure of at least Rs.500,000/-

The salary was going to come to naught in another couple of years. All I have to do is to deposit all my retirement benefits in some fixed deposits and get the steady interest income for my living. At that time many banks and the government post offices offered an interest of about 12 % per annum. Perhaps all my investments together would get me a monthly interest more or less equivalent to the monthly salary that I was drawing at that time.

So as things stood at that time I should not have worried much ! But there was indeed a worry. By being in the employment my house was owned by the company and I paid just Rs.120 as its rent per month. But the moment I retire, I have to find a rented private accommodation costing nearly twenty times that. And the rents would increase every year while my interest income would not increase.

There were reasons for panic!

It was time to think of alternatives.

Let me clarify one thing here. In those days a good majority of us in influential positions of job never thought of making any money by unfair means, especially those in the senior positions. We had plenty of opportunities for that. But we never thought in those lines. We believed in ethics and integrity, the lessons that we learnt from our parents. We believed in doing our responsibilities honestly.

But the ground realities of life was staring at me. I needed more money if me and my wife had to live decently for another ten or twenty years after my retirement from the PSU service till our death. If I am gone earlier what my wife would do ?

There appeared no chances in the near future that the government of India would thing of hiking the salaries of the PSU people like us. Already there are talks and rumors going on where in the public and the media are maligning the PSUs as inefficient white elephants draining the public exchequer. The politicians of the day are talking of privatization and closing down of the PSUs that had now become spent horses.

While my colleagues who joined the government services are going to lead a good retired life with decent monthly pensions which would rise with rising costs, we are to retire with some lumpsum money, manage it properly till our deaths for a living. Would it be possible for me ?

The public perception about the  PSU officers were that they were making a good fortune.

At least that was also the feeling of those at the helm of affairs in India in those days, because it was the salary of the President of India which used to be the bench mark for all public servants. The rule that prevailed in those days was that no one in India can have a salary more than the President of India ! In those days the salary of  the first citizen of India was fixed at Rs.10,000/- per month. The President lived in a palatial landmark in the national capital and the expenses of his living were all outside the salary and such other things were things that no one preferred to talk in public !

So every salaried person in India whether working for the government or for any private employer had to be satisfied with a salary equal or less than the President of India.

While those in top posts lamented about their poor pay packets, those down in the rungs, especially those who are not classified as executives or officers were quite happy and well off. Many of them had gross pays much more than many of their younger bosses. If a person of this category worked an hour extra than their normal daily working hours, the employer was required to pay an overtime allowance that was equal to twice their normal hourly rate of pay. But those in the officer category could not get this even when some of them are required to work for more than 16 hours a day on many days.

India of those days worked on the principles of socialism. Elitism and aristocracy, though ruled the roost among the rich and the powerful, the government and its political leaders always showed a public face just the opposite. So, common electronic items like the TV, telephone and the tape recorder, which had become ordinary gadgets in the rest of the world, were undesirable and sinful luxury items in India which the leaders consistently advised the common man not to desire.

While many patriotic and helpless Indians within India toiled for peanuts, working hard for the progress of their 'just-got- independent-nation' a good number of their fellows found out ways to enhance their personal wealths by other means.

While within India direct benefits of employment were limited with regard to salary and perks, that was not the case in some other countries. In these countries the salaries were so lucrative and unimaginable in India. The leaders in the Indian government kept on blaming the centuries of slavery and the loot the nation had suffered under the foreigners for the sad state of poverty in India. Whenever other nations with similar backgrounds made fantastic improvements, Indians kept on dreaming helplessly.

While Indian leaders were fully satisfied with their president getting a monthly salary of just Rs.10000/- and projecting it as a great humility, those workers who could not even think of making Rs.500/- per month in India earned at par with their president by taking the challenge of leaving their country and working for the those foreign nations.

The money they send back to India soon was to become the life sustaining economic strength for India, lovingly called the foreign exchange.

Simultaneously another group was emerging in India. They were the people who did not go abroad for earning a livelihood, but remained within India, employed in government departments for providing governmental services. What they earned from their salaries was indeed peanuts. But soon they were to learn their huge potential of earning incomes much more than their non-resident fellows who sent the foreign exchange. This potential came from the statutory power their government job provided. The effect was going to have detrimental effects in the Indian administrative system. The government jobs were to be divided based on reservations in accordance with the democratic number power and not on the basis of merit and competency.

Though the public sector undertakings belonged to the government, the jobs in public sector was slowly becoming non lucrative as the fellows who worked in these PSU's were slowly losing out their statutory powers and status to their counter parts who worked directly in the government departments. The PSU salary scales were the same but they were just impotent working class who were destined to produce in their government run factories according to the rules and regulations made by their real owners-their counterparts who worked in direct government service.

Thus India of the 1980's had its people divided economically as the following:

1. The public servants who earned a salary (peanuts in paper) and also unaccounted income through their power and position (huge unaccounted black money earned through corruption)

2. The political functionaries who extracted a portion of the huge unaccounted income from their serving public servants or external beneficiaries.

3. The business people who made huge money if in league with the first two.

4. The key employees of the private business firms who shared substantial income other than their salary by other means.

5. Salaried class whose income is only what is given as salary (less than the President of India)

7. People who inherited huge property

8. Labor class, small farmers and petty business men who labored for a living with no guarantee of income.

9. People who lived from charity and religious donations or worked for charity or religious organizations

10.  People who brought foreign exchange

I had only few years left before I became too old to work. Then came what appeared as a golden opportunity for me. The government for the first time introduced the 'Golden Handshake Scheme' for the senior employees of the PSUs. Apparently the government thought the problems of the PSUs were due to the huge work force which needed to be reduced. They were offering almost full salary in advance to those who have left only few years for retirement if such an employee opted to voluntarily retire from the company.

Frankly we did not get the logic behind it. What the government was going to get if they kick off people with full salaries of their remaining months of service in their respective PSUs? No work no pay of yester years was logical, but this no- work- full- pay was not understandable!

Any way that is none of our problem. They were giving the money and I was going to take it. I decided that I would take the money and quit. There were opportunities for us outside because we were experts in construction management. We could even venture to do things our own. We could bag some construction contracts and with our expertise would be in a position to make good money. That was my thinking.

I got a colleague also to align with my thinking. So we took the so called benefits of the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) of our PSU Company and left it in the early 1990's. 

We registered a partnership firm and managed to bag a good engineering construction contract from the PSU power company, the National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC). With our money and with borrowed money we completed the project successfully. The work was erection and commissioning of an Ash Handling Piping system at one of the power station sites of NTPC. The payments that would be released by NTPC for the said contract, was enough for us to get back our investments with reasonable profits. We thought that would soon happen.

But our fate went the other way. We being top executives of another reputed PSU earlier and never been tasted the kick of bribes unwittingly underestimated such an eventuality in our new employer. We were determined to pay no bribes to the small time functionaries of NTPC as we were confident of the work that we had been doing, though we were getting small hints here and there.

That was the serious mistake that we did. The company did not release the payments due to us. Our liabilities began to rise.

In contracts disputes are settled through the process of arbitration. In the earlier days I my self had worked in arbitration cases in various roles. I opted for the arbitration route and won my case. But the company was not to agree with the ruling of the arbitrator. It went on appeal in the court.

I fought the case in the court too and spent a good part of my remaining life running after the case and even got favorable rulings from all the courts. But I was fighting with a big establishment whose employees who were holding posts similar to the ones I held earlier were not to show any such regards to me. My partner died during this time as a dejected and defeated man in life.

I worked for small time business men who paid occasionally for keeping me and my wife alive. I had even sold of the ancestral property my father had given me to keep us living.

Almost after fifteen years later, for the first time I watch my juniors get decent salaries in those PSUs which are still continuing to exist, though many of those others have just vanished. 

I am still living and I do not know how and do not know even how far! 

Many of my colleagues had been fortunate that they had gone from the face of this earth already. 

On the whole my life was sweet which went too sour at the end. 

Dear friends, the narrator above is not a lone case in India. There are many such veterans of yester years who are now leading miserable and helpless lives. There is no one to take care of them or plead for them. Can we just ignore them? I am not sure. Do you have any suggestions? 

Enhance Your Awareness Before You Buy Flashy Homes and Flats from Indian Real Estate Developers !

Cities grow in population due to higher job opportunities which causes movement of people from the rural and other areas of lower opportunities. Heavy influx of population further improves business opportunities which in turn propels job opportunities. If the infrastructure also grows rapid urbanization of the the city takes place.

In India such a thing has been happening. India has been witnessing massive urbanization in the recent times.

Personally, I am not in favour of massive urbanization. No doubt, massive urbanization might bring quick money and opportunities to a few for some time. But on the overall, it causes unequal development and inequality. The rural areas are likely to become more and more neglected and vulnerable with regard to law and order and security aspects.

The neglect in the rural areas with regard to law and order and infrastructure has been the sole factor for those affluent class from the villages shift their residences to the cities. More and more rich villagers of India are now are selling off their village properties and buying homes in the cities.

The available space in and around cities are diminishing due to growth of residential and commercial properties in the cities. Peripheral development and suburban growth is slow due to slow pace of growth in suburban infrastructure.

Private developers and colonizers are better placed to acquire land in the towns and cities because they know the process of identifying and buying the land better than the common people. This in turn causes all land to be in the indirect control of such people and their agents. The land prices in India has sky rocketed due to this and it is an all India phenomena now. The state governments of India help them in this process by keeping the land records and transaction processes cumbersome and unaffordable to the common people.

So it is indeed a difficult thing for any one to buy a piece of land and construct a home in any city or its suburbs in India, unless he has abundant patience and time.

The builder and developer come to the rescue of the common man in such a scenario.

They have indeed made the property acquisition process very simple for the common people. Just sign a few papers and documents here and there as advised by the property developer and agree to pay the money, the common man can now own a house or a property in the cities of India. But for this simplicity of process, he has to pay a price through his nose and face some good musics later on !

The property price keep rising geometrically. At least that is the inference you get if you watch and observe the property market. A residential flat that is offered for sale in a multi storied apartment complex at a price of say Rs.3000/- per square feet during its launch would become double or treble in just two three years time by the time the property becomes fully sold out. Whether such a thing actually happens or not, that is the general public impression.

So on the overall population influx to the cities of India is going to continue and there will always be people who want to own a property in the cities by adopting the easy route of acquisitions.

But living in a row house or a flat is different from living in an independent self contained house. Both have its own advantages and disadvantages.

The sole big advantage is the simplicity of becoming the owner of the house with a decent look and finish without taking much physical trouble and efforts. The second advantage is the satisfaction that your property value is rising day after day, regardless of the fact that  you ever encash it or not !

But in this process many people initially forget the hard realities of living in a colony.

If you are deciding to purchase a home from a colonizer or property developer, it is better for you to keep the following things also in mind:

1. Remember that the residential colony or a multi storied building that a developer develops requires constant and efficient maintenance and administration on a long term basis. The colonizer's responsibility expires when all his units are sold out. As per the existing laws, the colonizer cannot maintain the complex for ever. He has to hand over the administration of the complex to an association of the owners and hence forth it will be the sole responsibility of the owners' association to efficiently manage the affairs of the maintenance of the complex as built by the developers. So, it is essential that the owners know in depth about their own responsibilities in this. If they do not have good people who know about managing these affairs voluntarily and efficiently, they are going to face many kinds of problems in the future.

2. The most important functions of management of the property complex are :

a. Managing the security of the complex by appointing reliable and efficient security personnel either appointing their own personnel or hiring from reliable security agencies. Either of these functions are not so easy. It requires good man-management and negotiation skills from the part of the representatives of the owners' association. It is not always necessary that the owners themselves possess these skills or have time to devote for this. 

b. The complex need personnel for cleaning the general areas on a regular basis. There should be some one to check and supervise their activities.

c. The individual residential units generate solid wastes of all kinds and these need to be regularly collected and disposed. One of the biggest issues not addressed by the colony developers is this. It is normally assumed that the ultimate refuse disposal is the responsibility of the municipal authorities. The city governments normally charges hefty development fee from the developers before they give the permission for building their complex. However, it so happens that the system of refuse collection and disposal normally does not come into reliable operation so easily. It is advisable that the owners know about this before they decide to buy the property. They should also discuss this aspect with the colonizer in detail and satisfy themselves.

d. Electricity is an important aspect. It is better that the owner knows about the scheme of electric supply in the complex. It is also important that all the drawings and schemes of the electrical system should be taken over by the owners association from the builder while the builder hands over his responsibility to the owners association. It is better for the association to check the details of all these by some competent professional engineer. Other wise, they might face problems of later day maintenance if some trouble develops. The builders normally declares power back ups through generators. It is better to know how the generators are connected and their safe connection schemes to the main power supply. It is also important to identify the fuel supplies, storage, etc and their location safety and security.

e. Water supply is very important. It is important to know from where the water is sourced for the complex. In the beginning, the water to the complex might be from temporary municipal connections or from bore wells. While the complex is not occupied fully, such water supply may not create any problems to the initial residents. However, when the complex becomes fully occupied, the water supply becomes a big problem if the sources are not properly planned and executed. It is better to know whether the builder has approvals from the municipal authorities for full water supply and how the same would be implemented. It is also better to know the water supply scheme of the complex and get it checked by a competent engineer. In multistory buildings it is necessary to know the number of pumps, tanks, their capacities and the scheme of water supply to the individual units. Remember, if the water supply fails, no one can live in a multi storied apartment !

f. Waste water disposal is equally important. How is the sanitation of the building planned and executed ? What happens if the sanitary pipes get chocked or clogged ? Who will attend the problem ? Are there competent plumbers who know about the scheme and systems available in the vicinity whose services could be sought in case of a problem ? What is the capacity and life of the septic tanks ? Where is the waste waters from the complex connected to for ultimate disposal? What are the sewerage systems for rain water disposal and harvesting ?

g. In multi storied complexes lifts are the life lines. Remember that the lifts are also complex electro-mechanical devices which needs expert supervision and maintenance on a regular basis. While the lifts are taken over from the builder, all their relevant information and safety certification also must be obtained. It is always advisable that the lifts are operated only under the supervision of a lift operator. Automatic lifts are prone to life threatening accidents due to ignorance of the users. It is always better to entrust the lifts to be entrusted with some lift company on annual maintenance contract (AMC) basis.

h. While you live in your own independent house, its maintenance is perhaps fully in your control. But when it is a residential complex, you have to collectively ensure it and incur costs towards it. It is your collective responsibility to earmark a regular monthly sum for the said purpose and pay it to your association.

i. The better and efficient upkeep of your complex ultimately depends on the effectiveness of your representatives of your association who are entrusted with the voluntary task of managing the show. If it goes in to wrong hands, it will be managed wrongly and ineffectively and perhaps it will also costs you more. But this function is a democratic process and it is quite likely that you get bad representatives now and then who could make your life miserable. But that is inevitable. The more you become disassociated from your association, the more such problems you are likely to face.

j. Another thing in the privately developed residential complexes are the movement and parking space constraints. While some of the developers provide ample space, others are not so. Initially when the complexes are not occupied fully, the space appears sufficient. But as the occupancy gets to its full, the parking and movement really become a problem. It is better to check the details of these initially itself.

k. High rise buildings need to be checked with respect to their fire safety and exit arrangements. Some buildings have complex layouts which are difficult for the residents to understand. The free movement areas in the building, common to all, should be carefully studied before taking a decision to buy a unit in it.

l. There should be common facilities like meeting halls, office rooms and staff convenience facilities in the complex, in addition to other welfare and recreation facilities.

m. If recreation facilities like swimming pool etc are provided, it should be known how those will be maintained and the recurring costs for maintaining those.

n. It should be better to know the total recurring costs on a monthly basis for your unit and the likely and the maximum escalation in these. It is also advisable to insist to know the total maintenance costs for the complex as worked out by the developer and the average impact of that for every flat or house owner. Such information could be useful to benchmark the costs of running the complex by the owners association at a later day.

It is better that you are aware of all these before hand and be prepared for such problems.

It is quite possible that in the future our governments may evolve better statutes that would help to resolve these issues.

Governments may amend the present laws for allowing either the builders or other expert professional companies who could be entrusted to carry out the maintenance of the complexes on behalf of the residents and the owners on a long term basis.


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