Indigo Airline Staff Manhandling Passenger: How to Avoid Such Shameful Acts?

Violence of all kinds, except for exceptional law enforcement, is deplorable and needs to be deplored by modern civilized society. And therefore such violence and violation of human dignity of similar kinds need to be taken seriously with an earnest objective for avoidance of such things in the future.

And my immediate provocation for writing this blog today is this  Youtube Video which is getting viral from yesterday onward in the social media.

The video shows a decently dressed man in his early late fifties or early sixties, apparently an airline passenger, visibly agitated by some thing, near an Indigo Airline Airport Transit Bus getting surrounded, isolated and mercilessly beaten in the most humiliating manner by some fellows in airline ground staff uniform.

I felt too bad and I felt as if my dignity getting violated by these young men who were otherwise supposed to be helping hands to people like me at the airports!

I couldn't believe such a thing, that too from the employees of an Indian airline I have all reasons to admire so far. Obviously I wanted to know more and got much from the following:

Times of India Online declared it as 'shocking'.

There were some coverage in other media as well.

The following is the gist of things I learnt:

The incident took place in New Delhi Airport apparently on 15th October 2017.

The manhandled passenger was travelling from Chennai to Delhi by Indigo flight.

The passenger was agitated by some kind of poor service (reason either not investigated fully and not yet made public!) The demanding passenger irked the wrath of some of the concerned airline ground staff who went berserk to teach the passenger a lesson! Obviously that was not something airline employees are supposed to be trained or briefed. No is taught to put a cockroach in the bread and butter they are supposed to eat! But here they preferred that way for reasons known to them.

Airline business is deemed  to be a polished and polite service to ladies and gentlemen. Their customers are generally not 'cattle class' though some may think otherwise sometimes.

Airlines which tolerate arrogance from the part of their employees are bound to get grounded very quickly. Airline business is indeed a delicate one with much issues affectin its survival and sustainability.

Indigo Airlines of India is one most Indians like me admired. They had a tremendous growth from inception. It has been a low cost carrier and even then, it proved to be a successful business model by appealing things like discipline, punctuality and the like.

It was employee indiscipline and arrogance coupled with corruption, incompetence and inefficiency that almost killed the national public sector airline. The management and staff of Indian airlines and Air India developed their self defeating culture from the days of airline monopoly.

But privatization paved the way for competition and opportunities for improvement.

Sustaining competence in management and leadership is a vital factor for sustaining competition and sustaining business success.

Often business success brings in complacency. And when that happens, both employees and management teams develop arrogance and a tendency to close eyes towards initial signs of future destruction.

In the news above, some things are obvious signs for Indigo for their future sustenance:

They can punish an employee or two for their unruly behavior or cover up the incident by some meaningless apologies in the public.

But if they are serious to sustain, they should honestly investigate to find out the reasons for the following:

1. What caused the passenger to lose his cool in the airport at his arrival?

2. What caused the ground staff to lose their cool when a passenger gets agitated?

3. Why did the higher supervisory management of the airline encouraged a cover up action initially by suspending their employee who took the viral video? In fact they should have encouraged free flow of information from within that exposed aberrations for self corrections!

4. Was it a minor issue or sign of something seriously fuming inside?  

There could be more.

I personally do not like any business to disintegrate for whatever reason. In the free trade capitalism, we may justify business ventures getting ruined due to overall incompetency. But any legally acceptable and successful business getting ruined is not a good thing for the country. It affects not only the shareholders, the employees the management, but others like the customers, the suppliers and all. And somewhere in the links me and you too exist.

And it pains.

Let us hope Indigo Airlines would not be a reason for that!

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!

Modern Time Wasting Quality Management Systems !

Way back in the Nineteen Seventies, when I was an engineering student, computers had been making a big appearance in the world, emerging from their secret production sites located mainly in the United States of America.

The majority of people knew nothing of computers. But many of them had heard about this magic machine of the 20th century. But those who knew a bit more had apprehensions too. That is why some of them kept warning those top optimists about the dangers of  the 'rubbish- in- rubbish- out' (RIRO) kind of situation that is likely with the computer dominated world.

In my life time I have seen this transformation taking place. I have also seen the riro situation also that got developed in the world in most of the work areas. The computer helps in reducing work loads of some and simultaneously enhances the load in other areas !

Anyway, that is what I wanted to write in this blog. It is some thing else which got developed in the 20th century in a big way for giving benefits to the society. Here too I find it as a coin having two sides !

I refer to the modern Quality Management Systems generally now known as the ISO 9000 series.

Before starting what I am going to say, let me apologize sincerely to all the modern management consultants , consulting companies and a host of their institutions and organizations worldwide who keep producing massive documentations and presentations so vigorously and painfully that have helped immensely to make the Art of Management of the past to the Management Science of the present !

I honour their dedicated works. Because they who do it are doing it sincerely with full devotion. If I say some thing without much knowledge about their great works that might appear as foolish criticism to any thing coming under the domain of  management experts and gurus, even inadvertently, I should make the apology in advance.

During the initial years of my professional career, for a couple of years  I was a first line manager of a chemical process plant which operated on a semi-continuous manner. The plant operating staff who manned the various operations of the plant were required to maintain the quality and quantity of production in the desired levels. As the chemical processes kept happening inside the process vessels and pipes, for an outsider who visited the plant at any time could only see the plant personnel in the plant sitting here and there without doing anything. Apparently they appeared to others without any work ! Their actual works were all momentary that it was difficult for outsiders to know more about their jobs by watching them for some time. During those days I found it as one of the difficult task for me to make the top management of the company and the management systems departments such as the Industrial Engineering Department (IED in short not to be confused with the present popular IED which stands for Improvised Explosive Device which is of prime attraction to the mass media!) to understand the nature of the jobs of my people and the justifying the need of those plant operating personnel. The work of justifying the work often hindered the efficacy of the actual work ! This Industrial Engineering in itself was a great fad in those days in India that many industries had powerful IEDs which decided how many people were required in other works departments. Good or bad, the IEDs have almost become a non-existent thing in 21st century India. I do not know much about other countries !

The practice those days was something like this. If I needed a person to be recruited for doing a work in my department, I make a projection for 5 people, get it studied by the IED who eventually cut it to three based on their 'scientific work-time studies' and the two got further bargained at higher levels and ultimately I getting a minimum two instead of the one I really needed. A win-win situation for all concerned ! Had the management trusted the actual man concerned they never would have needed all those management time wasting carried out for months to decide 100 percent extra man-power !

But trust is a word which does not exist in the management dictionary !

Modern management and management systems are devised on the presumption that people cannot be trusted ! If you say that a wild lion cannot be trusted it is understandable. But if you say that a human being of the 21st century cannot be trusted then what is being said ultimately would equate man and beast on the same level.

The IED of the 20th century has reappeared now as various systems of management now emerging under one umbrella called the ISO 9000 series .

Is it doing any good ?

Of course! But that is perhaps for its practitioners and advocates !

Recently, a customer asked an expert opinion from an engineer working in an ISO 9001 certified engineering consultancy company.

Our engineer knows how to satisfy his customer by giving his expert advice in a moment.

In earlier years he had done that many times.

But now his organisation follows approved systems and procedures in accordance with the ISO certification. Unfortunately this kind of an advice is not listed now in the approved procedures .

Our engineer explained in detail his helplessness to the customer.

Poor customer ! He is slowly understanding what ISO means !

It is time for all those companies who pay through their nose and keep spending their time and efforts to get and maintain this ISO certification to do a rethinking.

I am just initiating a thought process !


[A special note added on 20-11-12: Mr Gunnar Rundgren, former CEO Grolink AB and the present President of IFOAM has authored a blog ' Quality management is a management fad elevated to divinity' in support of what I have written above. He has made a comment below giving the link to his article which I am providing here, conveniently clickable.

The major problem why the QMS under ISO 9001 would eventually bring about disasters for the organization is because of the luke warm or half hearted approach of the top management. QMS under ISO 9001 is envisaged as a management system standard where top management commitment, honesty and competence is of prime importance. I would like my readers, who are interested, to read this article : The Rise and Fall of ISO9001 written by Mr Ashok M Thakkar, President & CEO of ITTI Llc Roswell, Georgia.]

Air India : Sad Story of A Great Legacy of India !

It was the Indian business group of the Tatas who brought India to the aviation map of the world by starting the Tata Airlines way back in 1932 during the pre-independence era of the British Raj. Though this was started as a air mail service initially, it got transformed in to a full fledged public limited company named Air India way back in 1946.

Post independence, the political leaders with the socialistic mindset propagating the mixed economy culture went on with their agenda of nationalising large private enterprises such as aviation, banking etc. Thus the national carriers known as the Air India and the Indian Airlines came into existence some time in 1953 with the Government of India gradually taking control of the Tata owned Air India and bifurcating its international and domestic air services. These two carriers remained as the leading air service operators in the Indian sub continent ever since for nearly half a century thereafter as a government owned monopoly.

This long period made tremendous changes in the attitudes of the thousands of employees of the company. They had all the privileges and authority and they never considered themselves as service providers to the millions of travelling customers. Most of them acted as bull dozing government representatives enjoying too many perks and privileges. They considered their job as a kind of favor that they are doing for the underprivileged citizens rather  than courteously treating the latter as their bread providers !

This government owned aviation group  in the recent years has undergone cosmetic name changes and changes in their logos due to managerial compulsions on account of competition and cuts in budgetary supports.  They are no more the market leaders. Private airlines who are capable of offering better customer service at much lower costs have become a reality in India. For these private airline companies, the threat was only the unpredictable government policies. But they had the advantage of flexible internal management which offered dynamic and faster decision making in a fluctuating economy as compared to their government owned aviation company.

The government of India, in the past few years, seems to be confused. It is not clear whether they actually want their own airline company to operate efficiently together with the new private airlines or they want to use one against the other for short term settlement of whimsical agendas ! 

In the Nineties, the Indian government under Dr Manmohan Singh as the Finance Minister accepted the economic liberalisation policies of WTO and decided to forgo the socialistic frame work of policies that determined governmental actions previously. However, unlike in the earlier years, the Indian government no longer enjoyed absolute majority to push through major policy decisions the way they liked.

The effect was a half hearted approach which caused India to proceed as if rudderless creating confusions and complexities in the minds of all.

The present day India is in that situation.

This confusion is making India appear as a nation of corrupt people and leaders. The law enforcing agencies , the bureaucrats, the courts, the media and the public  are all confused.

No one seems to know what is right or what is wrong.

Some thing that is thought as the rightful thing is turning out to be the most sinful thing. Allegations of graft, favoritism and ill gotten wealth are causing the present day India stink !

Public sector undertaking are now manned by people with no proper briefing or policy directions. Are they there to destroy their organizations cunningly or manage them properly for the benefit of the common citizen ? They are not sure ! There are no clear cut laws, guidelines or policies.

One administrative order contradicts scores of other such orders.

What way the government companies are different from the private companies ?

How to know ? Who is there to guide ?

In this kind of a situation, those in India are bound to experience harsh experiences some time or the other. If they ever land into such problems due to their bad luck, it may not be easy for them to get out of the mess so easily. It can happen to both Indians or foreigners in the Indian soil !

Like what has happened yesterday (19th October 2012) with the Air India Express passengers travelling from Abu Dhabi to Thiruvananthapuram ! Expressing their anger over the extremely poor service the government owned air service company provided caused some of them to be branded as hijacking terrorists ! If a case is ever registered in the Indian courts, those who find their names included in the FIR are going face what is known as the ' Indian music ' for the rest of their lives ! It is the music with no composers !

Let me narrate some of my personal experiences with this airline company [I do not know which name I should use to refer to this company!] some time ago.

Once me and my family reached Delhi from Raipur for our onward travel by the same airline. At Delhi, we were in the long Q in front of the check in counters of this airline. A lady in her late forties with a grave face was managing the counter. She took my ticket and like an ever suspicious police officer quickly found out a spelling mistake in the ticket and my ID card. It was a harmless spelling error their own office made. She made it an issue and declared that we cannot travel. I showed our boarding pass counterfoils that they issued for our travel in the previous segment of our travel with the same silly typographical error. But she was not budging ! The travellers behind us were becoming impatient and the line length was increasing ! Imagine our situation by taking tickets in this airline by paying through our noses! The growing crowd caused some senior fellow from the company to the counter. He declared that there was no problem with that spelling error and she should issue the boarding passes. But the lady did not obey his decision. She kept on arguing and finally her superior himself issued the boarding passes. Imagine the commotion this one lower level employee created !

Yet on another occasion I was on a flight from Delhi to Raipur via Nagpur. At Nagpur, the pilot refused to fly us to Raipur citing some silly technical reasons. A well known politician and an ex Chief Minister of the Madhya Pradesh state too was a passenger who got stranded at Nagpur. After 5 long hours of arguments and counter arguments the airline finally arranged a shabby bus for taking the stranded passengers to Raipur by road.

This kind of experiences from this airline have been a very normal thing for this airline. The ground staff of this company many times behave like ruffian police officers in white uniform. At times I have observed them too liberal to entertain the passengers in some hotels of their choice incurring huge expenditure.

When some of the private airline companies adopted the flexible airfare policy which made air travel an affordable one for the average Indian, it was this government airline's top management with due support from their political bosses that played such nasty games which forced such customer friendly companies to wind up their operations ! 

Through out its history, this government airline company have been charging the highest price for its air tickets. Since the majority of the air travellers who travel by this air line are doing so only because they have no other choice are paying such high prices. They keep cursing this  company , its employees and its management every time they have to shell out huge sums for such hopeless service ! The government many time forces its officers and staff to travel by this airline by paying high charges. Effectively this amounts to transfer of government money from one department to the other ! 

What they (the Indian public) fail to understand is the millions of loss this company keep on making even after they charge the highest prices in the world ! Coupled with it the public hear the news about the pilots of this government airline taking the highest and unimaginable salaries and that too some of the privileged ones without doing any flying at all !

Here the government has to be decisive. They should clear their mind on the future course firmly without dilly dallying on the issue. If they cannot manage it well, then decide to privatise it as early as possible. It should be remembered that the government had done such privatising earlier. If the huge number of employees are what prevents privatisation, close it down permanently and re-appoint those who are useful with new terms and conditions !

But the moot question is the not privatisation or nationalisation ! It is the question of having proper policies and laws. Only the law makers can do it !

But if the law makers themselves do not have the competency to do the work they are entrusted with then no one can save India. Only the public can do it. For that the public have to think in unison. They should learn the fundamentals of choosing their representatives who can do good for them !

If they cannot do it, then perhaps democracy is a costly luxury for them.

That was what a general of a neighboring country of Indian root declared some years ago !

Whatever be it, the story of Air India alias Indian alias Air India Express alias Indian Airlines is a sad story for all in India !

[View the linked list of all Blogs of the Author Here ! ]

Why Indian Employers Fail to Get the Best From Their Employees ?

More than three decades ago, while I was still in the campus, I had great aspirations for the future that I would be having as a responsible employee of the organization where I would be joining later. At that time, I was not much sure which would be the organization that I would be joining. There was not much opportunity to understand the work cultures of the various organizations who were hiring young engineers like me for their work. 

From hearsay, we were knowing about a few large PSU companies and a few public limited companies in the private sector in our country who had been considered as good choices for the best students. Besides, the central government also hired fresh engineers from the conventional engineering disciplines for serving the civilian or military services.

The main information source for us to know about the organization was the advertisements that they used to publish for various purposes including those for selection of their fresh management trainees either in technical or non-technical streams. The advertisements used to be really attractive.

So the company where I joined was a very reputed one which used to take fresh engineers almost every year in batches through a recruitment process that was pretty impressive.

They also had an elaborate training programme for the freshers which included regular class room studies, examinations and the like held in dedicated training institutes. A few other companies also followed this methodology. The idea was to give the young recruits an overall idea about the company's activities and to give a familiarisation about its various departments and their functions.

All during this time there was nothing that gave the realities of the company's working to the freshers. The realities the fresh employees actually faced after they were posted to the actual area of posting.

The rest of the story is more or less universal in India as far as big companies are concerned.

In big companies, posting of employees, both in the executive and non-executive category, is done on a casual manner. In a majority of cases, the posting of persons are done arbitrarily without any planning. No real study is ever conducted to assess the actual need based requirements of various skills both at the staff / workmen levels or at the managerial levels.

The departments and the people to whom they are directed to report for work are pretty unaware most of the cases about such postings. It would be the task of the person to whom the people are directed to report to find and fetch essentials like table, chair, cabin, working tools, etc, etc and also the type of work he/she has to perform. Often it takes months for the organization to arrange these things for the newcomer. The newcomer also may have to fetch for the work he or she may have to carry out in the organisation.

Two kinds of orientation and attitude develop in the newcomer during this time.

If the person joined in a place where he or she was actually needed and where the department provided all the necessities for the persons further adaptation and work in the organization, the person grows with a positive attitude and a feeling of belongingness to the organization.

Otherwise the person soon learns various kinds of survival techniques to pull on in the organization. He or she becomes a part of what is known as departmental politics ! Survival in the organization becomes the main agenda of the person rather than contributing for the larger interests of the organization with a positive attitude. 

Let me elaborate these things with one or two real examples.

The first place where I got posted as a junior officer was a Captive Thermal Power Plant of our company whose business is production and marketing of saleable steel products. I was posted as the officer in charge of a section of the thermal power plant which was getting ready for commissioning. My section comprised of a water de-mineralization plant (DM plant in short) and a chemical laboratory for ensuring various chemical quality control that are required for the power plant.

The DM plant was being constructed by a company on turn-key basis under the consultancy of a reputed public sector engineering consultancy company.

When I was posted as the first line officer of this section, I was told to report to a person who is designated as the head of the department of the new power plant. He was a person with years of experience in boiler operation and maintenance. The first day of our meeting, he said point blank to me that he did not know any thing about DM plants or laboratories and it would be my responsibility to find out and organise the section the way it should be to carry out the functions of the power plant in the near future. In this case, I was required for the organization though the organization didnot know much about my job that I was supposed to do.

I had never seen a power plant before that !

I had never studied about these things during my engineering college days !

I did not know how many people would be required to do the various activities of my section and what would be their jobs.

It was a hard self learning. I had no one to ask for guidance. Yet, I was successful in organising my section, getting and training the people, getting the various kinds of tools, tackles, materials and the like, both for the plant and the laboratory and making my section perform well during the commissioning and post commissioning years of the power plant.

During those days, I found certain procedures of the company very ridiculous and illogical. It was easier for me to procure a atomic adsorption spectrometer costing millions which was not very essential for the work rather than procuring a shelf or typewriter essential for my work which costed only a few thousands. 

If I wanted a person having a chemistry background for doing my laboratory work, there was all likelihood of getting a person experienced in welding work posted for doing the work of the chemist !

It was easy to procure a truckload of caustic soda, but difficult to procure a bottle of ink !

It was easy to get people posted, but was difficult to get chairs or tables for them for working !

Later I find this kind of irrationality in all walks of life in all kinds of organisations in India.

I was interested to find the reasons for these.

For mundane things many organizations have set up centralized agencies. These centralized agencies are manned by people who are problem creators or unwanted elsewhere.

For example, many organizations  have a centralized procurement and distribution system for office furniture and consumables like paper, pen, etc. The person responsible for this work has to see that all others are getting these essential requirements in time and in required quantities. The idea is good. But imagine the situation when this responsibility is discharged by an irresponsible person ! What normally happens is that such persons would make all out efforts to make those in higher positions happy and satisfied by fulfilling their requirements, even unjustified sometimes and in that process gains such courage to discard the genuine demands of all others in the organization. The organization suffers in the long run !

One of my friends working for an American company told me that this kind of things are rare in that country. Perhaps that may the case in all good companies. But I can say that this is the case in most of the large Indian organizations which are generally perceived as not so good by the employees and other stake holders. For smaller organizations, the problem may be of a different type but similar.

The right man for the right job is often forgotten in Indian organizations.

All Indian organizations are composed of people of all sorts. Extremely bright ones are required to work with extremely lousy persons at times. The brighter ones have no option but to adapt to the speed and efficiency of the latter !

In India selections are done on the basis of both merit and reservations. I am not against reservations for jobs.

But Indian organizations need to learn more organizational dynamics and getting the best from the human resources.

Posting of persons to various organizational positions have to be done with care and proper planning. What the person is supposed to do for the organization and what the organization is giving the person to execute his responsibilities should be clear to both sides.

The leader of a work team should have a say in selecting the members of his or her team.

These are not very difficult things to achieve or implement.

But unfortunately in India it does not work in that manner.

That is the reason why Indian employers fail to get the best from their employees !

In my humble opinion, if Managements of Indian organizations give a little more attention to these kinds of things which apparently looks so simple or unimportant, then they would definitely add synergy to the organization to perform well.

India's New Era Corporates: Pressurized Employees and Failing Customer Care !

Ever since India's economy shifted its gears for fast forward economic growth under learned political leaders and economic advisors like Shri Man Mohan Singh and Shri Montek Singh Ahluwalia, India has seen the birth and growth of hundreds of new era corporates. All these began to happen in the Nineteen Nineties. These companies began to provide employment opportunities to millions of young Indians, a thing which never happened before in India in such measures during its existence in the previous forty years after it became a republic.

One of the major shift that took place in this new economic culture was the importance of service sector over primary manufacturing or production sector.

Services like computer software development, banking, financial services, Telecom Services, Tourism Services, Medical Services, Transport Services, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services, etc which predominantly depended on Information Technology (IT) for existence and growth soon surpassed the core industries in the production sector.

The hardcore technology for initiating this growth came from the developed world where companies like Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Siemens, Motorola, etc got the opportunity to create a scenario in which their products have become inseparable items for sustaining economic growth.

Potentials for growth in education, employment and incomes for the individuals got enhanced many fold from the previous decades.

However, the unprecedented importance on services without ensuring balancing growth in other sectors of production and infrastructure is apparently causing inconsistencies in human existence and livelihood.

Human life struggles have enhanced many fold.

Job security which the previous generations enjoyed is becoming something of history the young generations cannot think of.

Growth and profitability of companies have become inconsistent and always in an unsteady state situation.

Governmental rules and regulations on businesses keep changing every now and then.

Business enterprises in the services sector get incorporated quickly and get vanished also quickly.

They are becoming to be known as dot com businesses which are in reality bursting commerce entities!

When the engine of an automobile develops some trouble, the driver loses his cool. He keeps pressing the brake and accelarator pedals erratically making the vehicle move as if gone mad.

Who is at fault, the driver or the vehicle ? It becomes difficult for the onlookers to judge.

The economies in many countries in the world in the post liberalization era are facing situations some thing like this.

Who are at fault? The corporates ? The Managements ? The governments ? The employees ? The customers?

No one is sure.

Employees get the pressure. They are a confused lot confronted with ever changing rules , systems and demands.

The more the confusion, the more the time they have to spend at their offices. It is becoming more and more difficult to satisfy the customers of their simple problems. Apparently, the employees do not have anything in their hands to provide some remedies of their own. If the systems are not provided with the remedies, they simply cannot help. Even if it appears simple if viewed with some common sense.

Then there are external experts and consultants and solution providers who promise to reduce their problems with their magic solutions.

They approach with magic words like ERP, Six Sigma, ISO and so many such jargons making every one in more complicated situations than that existed before ! These are also service provider companies who boast of knowing everything to simplify business processes for all stake holders. Regrettably, in practice their employees also seem tense under non achievable work pressures and with no confidence of overcoming the problems.

It seems every one is engaged in tying knots every where and trying to untie knots all at the same time! Without really knowing what to tie and untie !

I keep watching the young employees of the new era corporates of my country.

I am just wondering what would be the situation a few decades later if we keep going like this ?

Is it necessary that for the sake of generating 'economic activities' and generation of employment we keep doing anything which is termed as a service ? Is it necessary that we keep charging and taxing all such services?

Is it fair for the governments to leave every thing to the market forces ? Is it not the responsibility of the governments to ensure that the businesses that are run in the country are capable of running and sustaining on a long term basis? Is it not necessary for the governments to think of the welfare of employees of the companies? Are they not citizens of the country?

Is it fair on the governments to create a situation wherein the promoters of the company are forced to manage capital to start ventures and pay to the government hefty licence fees amounting to years of  expected profits that the companies are likely to make in the future? Is it fair that such companies are allowed to wind up or or face bankruptcy  if a situation of that sort arise in the future which essentially makes their employees jobless and shareholders tense of worries about the future?

If these are not the responsibilities of the governments then why do we need governments ?

The employees are the major earning citizens of the nation who supports the nation and for whom the nation exists!

We need earning citizens. But not pressurized citizens !
I was just thinking.

Time for every one to think !

[Other blogs related to corporate governance :

1. The Poor Indian Bosses !  

2. How to Kill a Successful Organization ?

3. Engineering Services Department - the Trump Card

4. The More Learned You are, the More You Respect Others !  

5. Ruling or Serving : What do we Seek ?