An Epitaph to My Valiant Colleagues Who Laid Their Lives While Struggling to Make Steel in Bhilai!

It was just a day before. And the time was already 11 PM and sleep had just begun to take away my consciousness temporarily for the rest of the night as usual. But I was compelled to get back to awareness by the cell phone ring. 

It was a colleague living a couple of blocks away on the other side. With an obvious voice of high anxiety he asked whether I saw the 'breaking news' clip that was getting flashed on the national channels at that moment.

I knew the biggest breaking news at that time was naturally the World Cup 2014  Football inauguration on the other end of the globe in Brazil. And I am no blind fan of any game or any entertainment. So that breaking news was no news for me.

'It is about your plant at Bhilai'. My colleague interrupted my thoughts. 'Something serious has just happened there. Several casualties! The news is not clear, but find out through your sources!' He told.

I got it. Something serious have happened at the steel plant at Bhilai- the plant where I had been working for most of the time right from the beginning of my career. And at the fag end of my career, I was moved out and that plant has not been in my day to day routines for the past over three years. Yet my job required me to be associated with some technical and engineering problems of that plant occasionally at least. Some engineer colleagues were required to be in touch with me mostly for official purposes.

I tried scanning the TV news channels for some more information. It was of no use as the news flash has now reduced to occasional text flash which added no further information. And most of the national TV news channels at that time of the night would simply be killing the time by various techniques only for becoming 24 x 7!

So, I thought of calling some body in Bhilai Steel Plant who could give me the first hand information. The first name that flashed on my mobile screen was of Mr B K Singh, the Dy General Manager of Water Management Department of the plant. His name appeared on my call logs as he was one among the few who talked to me in the time that immediately preceded. At that time I could have never imagined that this junior colleague of mine was no more to answer my call as he had already left to his heavenly abode in the accident that had just happened about 3-4 hours ago! 

I do not know the reason, why I did not call him. Instead I called another friend. From him I got a vague idea of what could have happened. And that information pointed out to the possibility of people whom I know for years who are working in the Water Management Department involved in the accident. My friend who talked to me had pretty no idea of what caused the accident!

The information was that already six or seven are dead and several are in the Intensive Care Unit of the large 1000 bedded hospital and research center owned and managed by the PSU steel plant. I was also shocked to hear about the possibility of Mr Singh too affected seriously. My friend also informed me of the  rumour that he was one among the dead! And the casualties are all due to gas poisoning! There was no explosion as was flashed in the national news channels!

Strange! How come the people of the water management got affected by gas poisoning? 

Integrated steel plants are huge industrial mammoths that process millions of tonnes of minerals, water and air to convert them to millions of tonnes of finished products. In that process, these plants generate job opportunities to thousands of people directly and indirectly. They are the economic prime mover engines that keep working non stop to fill the coffers of the national exchequer even while their own balance sheets are not so comfortable!

But integrated steel plants are also a kind of battlefields for the thousands of employees who work there day in and day out. They are in reality a net work of scores of factories networked locally by innumerable connection lines such as roads, railways, gas pipelines, conveyor galleries, water pipelines, compressed air lines, oxygen lines, fuel lines, power lines, etc, etc. Any short or long oversight could possibly turn out to cause a safety risk to people.

Due to their complex structure and layouts, it is very difficult for people to gain a full knowledge of all the systems. Even engineers who have worked their whole life time in the steel plant may not be conversant fully with all aspects!

Design and installation of integrated steel plants are a complex process involving several national and international agencies. Operation and maintenance management of an integrated steel plant is also not an easy task, because of this complexity. Major accidents do take place in steel plants mostly in long intervals of time and those accidents are all the out come of several factors. Cumulative human oversight being the most prominent!

I had the opportunity to be a member of some inquiry committees on major accidents in this steel plant in the past. Being worked as an in-house consulting engineer for this steel plant for several years, I have had the opportunity to understand the techno-human dynamics of integrated steel plants that affected it both positively and negatively. 

An engineer's natural curiosity gripped me and I wanted to know how these water engineers became victims of gas. More than a decade ago, I used to be a kind of technical adviser on the water management systems of this same plant. My area of work now involves engineering management of all utilities including water, gas, etc for the integrated steel plants. The curiosity was therefore purely professional coupled with the pain of knowing the sad fates of some of the known faces!

The present head of the department of water management at Bhilai is my long time friend. I called him to know more. He took up the phone. He was more worried than me as he was not in Bhilai. He had been on a long leave and was answering me from a south Indian city. He too had heard about the accident just as me and was trying to find out what actually happened. In his absence, Mr Singh was acting as the head of the department who by now was no more living to tell about what happened. To add to the confusion, I learnt that the General Manager concerned (a known colleague of mine who was to retire in this same month) and two other well known DGMs are affected and are fighting for their lives in the ICU. Perhaps one another among them was also no more including another officer of the fire department. 

Later in the night, I had pretty no sleep or had a disturbed sleep. The faces of my Bhilai colleagues who met with the accident kept flashing in my mind.

Yesterday, the news media came up with more news about this industrial tragedy in Bhilai.

The president of India condoled the loss of lives in Bhilai. A magisterial probe is already ordered as per the news reports. There are opinions from occupational health experts. Foreign media too covered the tragic incident. Media also reported Congress VP's demand for a high level probe.

I have talked to a few of my engineer colleagues who are in Bhilai. With my own understanding of the system and the other information in bits and pieces, I could make out the picture of what could have really happened to cause such a serious and painful industrial disaster. It was an unprecedented case of what is known as the 'siphon effect' causing poisonous carbon monoxide rich Blast Furnace gases from the Gas Cleaning Plants (GCP) getting drawn through the suddenly emptied water supply pipes which supply water to the GCPs for cleaning the gases from dust. The sudden emptying of the supply pipe could have happened due to a sudden rupture of the old pipes some where at the lower most positions! And the lower most position of the pipe is the pump house floor where there is possibility of people present doing some work. At least that was what I could reason out. But the difficulty is that such things are almost difficult to foresee and rectify till such accidents happen! It is impossible for any one to foretell when an old pipe would rupture! Therefore, the best practice normally done elsewhere is the replacement of such pipes and connected equipment after they exceed their useful age. Unfortunately, there are no standards in India which stipulate the useful age of pipes and equipment of Industry, beyond which it is mandatory to replace them.

All metallic structures are subject to failure after some time due to various mechanisms such as creep, corrosion, inter-crystalline changes, etc. Metal pipes and vessels may look outwardly and physically in reasonably good shape even after years of service. However, their inherent strength to withstand load and pressure might have changed much over time. Thus a new pipe and an old serviced pipe having the same physical features may not give the same performance; the latter might fail unexpectedly. However, such failures happen only once in a blue moon!

Had there been some attention to one or two simple things perhaps this accident would not have happened. It could have been avoided had the system be designed with proper water seals, air release valves, etc which could have prevented total emptying of the water from the pipeline causing a through passage for the gases. 

But all accidents cause due to cumulative errors and omissions of many individuals over a period of time. It is the short term and long term actions, attitudes and reactions of the people at all levels that are more important and responsible to effect well thought actions that keep the complex equipment and machinery work safely.

Some may think it is the integration of the equipment and machinery that cause the problems. That may be true to some extent. But integration of peoples' thoughts could always win over the complex human made systems effectively. If that does not happen for any reasons, the man made machines and equipment might inflict painful accidents like this now and then. 

B.K Singh, N.K Kataria, R K Sharma, Samuel, Sahu and Verma are no more. I feel sad for them and their bereaved families. They have lost their lives battling for the nation in a different battlefield! May their souls rest in peace! May the souls of all those who met with such fates in the past in the same field also rest in peace!

I do pray for the speedy recovery of the others who are undergoing medical treatment.

Yet, this question keep ringing in my head. Could this have been avoided?

Perhaps, yes! Only thing that was needed was an honest determination for 'safety first' that does not lose its priorities midway or every now and then!

Even when profits, money and returns are all important aspects of industrial production!

Are we failing to learn certain important lessons in technical and professional leadership?

It is time to introspect honestly!

Er Rajan C Mathew FIE
Ranchi , Sat 14th June 2014
11:30 AM IST

Epitaph for a Friend Who Made and Lost A Fortune!

Mr TDR was a good friend of mine. He is no more in this world now. 

Since we humans are not so broadminded to open our lives to the public domain, I am not daring to reveal his name lest some of his near or dear ones may find it unacceptable to them for various reasons. So, I simply prefer to identify him as Mr TDR.

I got introduced to him some time in mid 1980 in a hostel meant for the junior officer trainees of the company where I too joined as a trainee officer. My friend Mr TDR belonged to the senior batch. Since the majority of the 150 odd hostel mates there belonged to Hindi and Bengali speaking regions with a few each from the linguistically different south Indian states, there soon developed a special bond among those few linguistic minority groups.

The company in those days was not so comfortable with the idea of selecting female officers, though it did select one or two occasionally. But the junior officers' hostel was strictly a male dominion in those days.

My batch of officers did not have any one from my home state Kerala and I was a loner in my batch on that count. And that helped me to get entry in to the linguistic group of the few Malayalam speakers belonging to senior batches. Since I was of more or less the same age as my seniors, my acceptance in the senior batch fellows from my home state was not much difficult. Besides, we were a very small group as compared to the Hindi or Bengali groups.

TDR was one or two inches shorter as compared to the rest and often I sensed his inferiority complex getting surfaced as an assertion for establishing some kind of superiority. Often we youngsters argued on various issues ranging from politics, cinema, sports, religion and the like during our spare times and no one was very willing to accept others' view points in such debates. The arguments often used to go high pitch and caused some irritations only to be stopped just before the onset of angry outbursts.

Yet we were good friends and could not think of being alone without the company of the others at times when we are not attending out official on the job training duties. Obviously those were the times we were all unmarried eligible bachelors!

The modest bicycle was our mode of transport in those days. Owning a motorized vehicle was one of our dreams that we wanted to accomplish at the earliest opportunity.

Mr TDR was the first in our group to fulfill that dream while we were still in the hostel. None of us knew the art of riding the the motorized two wheeler or four wheeler at that time. Yet, I remember obliging him to accompany him to the showroom to buy his brand new scooter. I rode his new vehicle alone in the night by experimenting with it. In the process I learnt it and became his driving tutor the next day! Within a few months TDR bought a second hand Fiat car. He and me learnt driving in that car some time in the early 1981.

He was very enthusiastic about his work as a maintenance engineer in the production department where he worked while I worked as a process plant operations manager in another department. He was very enthusiastic in inviting me and showing me the various innovative ideas he had employed and put to practice. His improvised methods of reactivating various non working and non attended air pollution control equipment was indeed commendable considering the manner in which his seniors preferred to neglect those. He was too critical of the plant designers and often used to tell me about better ways of designing the plant systems. In another couple of years the plant management fulfilled his desire by transferring him to the engineering design department where he learnt the techniques of practical plant design. In another couple of years' time I too was placed in the same department, but in another work area. Now we both have become professional colleagues in the same functional department.

During this time we both got married and began to live in the same apartment building. His wife and my wife too became good friends. Being a prevalent practice for some Hindu castes in southern India, his wife was his own first cousin. Initially he resented this marriage from being taking place as he considered his bride as his sister but had to succumb to the wishes of his parents and relatives. Even after his wife began living with him at the distant place of his official work, he was not fully settled to this marriage. Soon marriage discords began developing in their life. Later, I had to step in the role as a marriage counselor to them and the problems got resolved for some time only to blow up fully to a divorce in another few months. The divorce was as in fact not because of him or his wife but as a result of the hurt egos of the elders of both families.

TDR remained unmarried for a few years after divorce. During this time he was becoming more and more secluded and trying to spend his time by inventing more work for him. Later his family convinced him for marrying again. In another one or two years' time he resigned from our company and left the place with his second wife and his small girl child. His resignation was due to his protest against his superiors who, in his opinion did some favoritism in giving promotion to his not-so-efficient colleague. When he drove off with his second wife and his small kid in his car to the distant place in the west coast of India, I was the only one to see him off and wish him the best.

His bosses in the new private company where he joined encouraged him professionally. He was encouraged to pursue a PhD in engineering from a premier engineering institute and soon he accomplished that. He wanted to excel in his field and rise in professional career and soon he was successful. He became a General Manager in some multinational and soon emigrated to a foreign country. In his pursuit for higher professional achievements, he found his family as a hindrance. He left them back in India and spent the rest of his prime time in the foreign land and even became a citizen there.

He had been in contact with me during these years, though the communications used to be once or twice in a couple of years. He faced professional successes and failures in the foreign land. Overall he made a financial fortune for his wife and daughter who stayed back in his home country.

A couple of years ago, he decided to return back to India. During this time he became a Hindu philosopher with much self study in Advaida Vedanta. It was the time when I too got my search towards spiritual truths after much studies in almost all the existing religious texts to find the most convincing truths in the Urantia Book. In our philosophic exchanges, regrettably, my friend TDR could not advance beyond the Advaida Vedanta where his mind got stuck up.

He returned to India with higher enthusiasm to achieve his unfulfilled dreams. Now, he had enough money to pursue further. Unfortunately, something happened about which I have little idea, after he reached back. I found him gloomy while he talked to me over phone once in a while from his Indian location few thousand kilometers away from my location.

A few months later, he called up me to inform me that he had become a Sannyasi of the Hare Krishna movement at Vrindavan and began to live there. Obviously, he could not connect to his family at this stage. In yet another couple of months he left that perhaps with some disillusion. He began to stay with his elderly parents, his wife and daughter staying away from him. He had money to make one more big house for him. He began to stay in his newly constructed house. But destiny was going to be different. Soon he was affected by cancer. He wanted to meet me and I made efforts to travel to his place and meet him. The signs of the dreaded disease and the equally dreaded medical treatments were obviously visible. We had nothing to talk.

After all what was there to talk? 

His wife and daughter were no more living with him. They made some occasional visits. His old parents were now taking care of him! I asked him about his divorced wife. She did not re-marry and she died of blood cancer some years ago. He informed me.

In just another few months time late in the midnight I received a call from him. I was shocked when I heard him telling me as if abandoned by all near and dear ones and sitting alone in some strange railway station of north west India, far away from his home. He wanted me to help him. Later, my inquiries revealed about his mental condition. It was his delusion due to the ill effects of his cancer treatment. He called me from his hospital bed!

In another couple of months I went to meet him again. This time he was alone, almost abandoned in a palliative care unit of a private hospital. He had become a skeleton, yet capable of talking and smiling, lying helplessly on the bed. We won't meet again, he whispered to me holding my hand.

We would have met some day, my friend. I could not tell that to him loudly for him to hear.

I left in a few minutes. Memories of many past events played in the back of my mind.

In just another two month's time, sitting thousands of kilometers away, I heard the news. TDR was no more.

He had escaped from the vicissitudes of this life.

I do not have the caliber to judge about the achievements of his life!

May his soul rest in peace till it is adjudged for some personality revival!