Train 18 series 23… our HR magician was going strong

There is no gainsaying that your most important resource in any organization, irrespective of the level of automation and mechanization, is your human capital. If you are able to deal with this primary resource WITH sensitivity, receptiveness and empathy, you have taken the most important step towards achieving something I keep repeating it because it was the key; I was fortunate that our HR management was headed by a very mild-mannered but assertive officer, the Principal Chief Personnel Officer, Sri Mohan Raja. He was the fulcrum in all our endeavours towards exploiting our human resources to their full potential. He was again going to be the mainstay once again when we decided that the time was ripe for ICF to adopt a universal biometric attendance system in ICF. In this area, and many more, he was going to prove himself to be the magician who helped turn around the HR scenario and the perspective at ICF.

Although we did not have any incidence of industrial unrest in ICF throughout my tenure, it never meant that we were soft or permissive. On the contrary, we were always looking for ending malpractices which had crept in for decades. A small example: ICF staff had got into the habit of listing two or sometime three bank accounts with us. One would be their salary account and the others were used for their railways loans and advances. If there salary account ran the risk of automatic transfer to a bank from which they had taken a hefty loan, their railway loans and advances would be safe from these banks. Now, since these accounts were certified by ICF, we were a party to this malpractice. Once a staff approached me with a grievance; through some mix up his Provident Fund advance was credited to his salary account which was subsequently transferred to the bank against some standing unpaid loan. Here was this gentleman actually complaining about it. I checked further and when I learnt that the practice of keeping two or more accounts was so prevalent, I immediately asked Sri Raja to put a stop to all this; one employee should have one bank account listed with us, period.

Sri Raja went about it in a very systematic manner. He first issued a notice to all employees to revert to us with their preferred account details which would become their sole account. As expected, not many responded. He then issued a clear notice that in case of a positive response is not received, the salary account of an employee would be treated as his or her sole account for all purposes. As expected, some leader types reached me and pleaded, “Why get into all this personal business of employees? It’s between them and the banks.” I would tell them off clearly, “No sir. It’s them and the image of ICF. We should not be in the game of supporting, even if indirectly, some of employees taking advantage of banks. In any case, they are not poorly paid as compared to other sectors and it does not speak well of us. So please, back off from this issue and let the PCPO do what was correct.”   

But our friends insisted, delivering a sermon on chalta hai. Chalta hai? I can’t find an equivalent in English, it means something like some wrong things are acceptable as a legacy and there was no percentage in disturbing the applecart. I recalled the first lord in Shakespeare’s All's Well That Ends Well, saying, “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.” They were speaking to me, unknowingly of course, in the fashion of the bard, who summed up this underlying motif so frequently when dealing with the psychology of the humans; one must accept the darkness of others along with the light if one is to survive in society. I could have pleaded their case better than them but then Shakespeare is our uncle, not our father; uncles can often call a spade a club. I did not budge. Without much ado, this indefensible transgression by ICF discontinued and the banks were happy. We are a nation which is ready to excuse any wrongdoing or impropriety by declaring it as chalta hai. If we have to take India to the status of a progressive developed country, we have to resist this attitude of accepting obvious inequities and wrongdoings.

What Sri Raja was next called upon to resolve something which was, at once, simple and complicated at the same time. Introduction of biometric attendance for all factory workers. Biometrics for attendance of workers? So what could be so complicated about a system which should have been in place to begin with. Well, not so simple.

All the workshops, factories and even maintenance depots/sheds of IR work on what is informally called a contract system between the shop floor management and workers. The work content for a day is informally, and at times, formally in incentive-based units, is fixed and workers tend to complete the work in less than the duty hours, and having completed the task, they leave the work place. So the units in IR have workers on duty from as low as three hours to six hours; a unit with assembly line type working would have them working for six hours but in others it would be usually three to five hours. ICF, although not as bad a as certain units in Punjab and Bengal, was no exception and the norm was about four hours of solid work and then home. This was an open secret for years and when IR started introducing biometrics for attendance, they limited it to office and other desk staff; feeble attempts to introduce biometrics for shop floor workers became a victim of status quo, driven by convenience of comfort zone and timidity, that is chalta hai for you. I was always bitterly critical of our forefathers in IR who allowed the system to degenerate to this level. But here I was, the GM of ICF and now left with no alibi to point fingers at others while doing nothing to rectify this stark dereliction. I had to act.

Yes, I had to act but, in the footsteps of Mr. Touchstone of As you like it, I was not going to be foolishly wise; I had to a wisely foolish man. This was not something you tackle by bulldozing; all those who made such attempts in the past at large workshops or factories cut a sorry figure with nothing to show for in the end. My message to Sri Raja and all other senior officers, particularly Sri Manish Pradhan, CWE/Fur and Sri Shashi Bhushan, CWE/Shell, was simple. We had to do it but gradually, without inviting a precipitative situation which would tend to derail the larger things we had on the anvil, like enhanced production, new models and of course, Train 18.

I will not go into the details of negotiations with the staff and unions which went on for months. Sri Raja along with both the CWEs was doing a fine job. We were in no hurry but the key members were very firm that it was now or never. The more docile office and desk staff were already in the biometric regime and they were happy that it would be made universal. Our target was to start it latest early 2018 but the unions would come up with some objection or the other. The then PCME, Sri L.C.Trivedi was all for it albeit with a caveat; this should not cause an unnecessary drop in outturn. By the way, he had earlier tried some novel ways of admonishing the staff who turned up late. A large group of scouts and guides would gather at the factory main gate with placards saying, “Dear parent…Why do you ask us to go to school in time if you yourself do not come to work in time?” Such soft measures would not help in getting the biometrics going, for sure, but certainly helped in setting the agenda loud and clear. 

The contract for capturing the finger scans and photographs was already finalized, waiting for our go ahead. Meanwhile, I learnt informally that there were some two hundred employees who never turned up for work and their attendance was marked through some proxy. They had some business or other engagements and their job at ICF was merely like an additional insurance. They would settle with the lower level supervisors and colleague staff to give up their incentive earnings to them and perhaps some occasional goodies having manipulated the system this way, they would simply absent themselves with impunity I made a note of this valuable information and instead of going straightaway after it, which would not have been difficult, waited for the right time.

The right time soon came. Sri Raja told me that a final strong push was required to go ahead with biometrics. I met the unions and representatives and they asked me, quite disarmingly: 1) Why go for this system when there was no stress on this from the Board? 2) Why only at ICF when no other unit is planning for it? 3) With increasing production and good industrial relation prevailing in ICF, why introduce a coercive system? And so on. I told them that our workers should have the pride of being the first unit on IR to implement it.

The discussions meandered along the expected lines till I threw in the clincher: 1) We would have some flexibility in the entry time to keep it in line with the current practice 2) We would do it for recording presence and not insist on out attendance 3) We would inform the Board of our initiative and ask them to introduce it in at least two other large units on IR and once they do so, we would go for a comprehensive system including out attendance. I then asked them if they knew of some two hundred fellows who never turned up for work. As they huffed and hawed, I threw Kabir at them and explained the meaning:

Bakri paati khat hai,   taki kheenchi khal

Je nar bakri khat hain, tinka kaun hawal**

** The poor goat eats leaves and we end up skinnig it but the men who eat the goat itself, what should you do to them?

What I conveyed was that biometrics was not for all the sincere staff who came to work, albeit a bit late, the goats but for those who did not come at all, the men who ate goat. This worked and the meeting was concluded with a clear mandate to start universal biometrics. Scanning work was started within days and biometric attendance at entry time introduced soon after. There were some hiccups like some senior supervisors complaining that they found it embarrassing, or even infra dig, to record attendance along with the staff; they said that since they, in any case, worked extra hours, they should be exempted from this ignominy. I thought about it, called two senior principal chiefs, got ourselves photographed registering our attendance and put banners all across the factories with these photos and the legend, “The biometrics system is for one and all, do not forget to register your attendance”. 

That did it. The system is in place since. We awaited Board’s response to our offer but as expected, we did not receive a reply. After all, the member in question was a typical government babu, busy sending meaningless letters to railways and issuing purposeless transfer orders; those who have never risen beyond their competence level of a junior officer cannot be expected to be a part of any disruptive decision-making. 

Our other HR and welfare measure singled us out from all other railway units and that was a big advantage while negotiating with staff. Railway units have large budgets and earmarking a very small part for staff amenities and welfare is not difficult; it’s just that leaders pay scant attention to it. The list of facilities put in place by Sri Raja and team, assisted by ICF’s excellent Civil and Elect engineers, is endless but just a sample here:

• All canteens inside, including extensions, renovated and modernized
• Every colony was given an upgraded welfare centre with a badminton court and at least one well-equipped Gum
• Every colony was provided with at least two parks, upgraded from stretch of lands lying abandoned.
• Unmatched sports facilities which I would describe later
• All four marriage/community halls renovated and  air-conditioned, providing an excellent platform for community as family functions to staff at nominal rates
• All staff quarters provided with fencing for privacy; bold signages on metalled roads, works underway in all quarters for tiles flooring
• A host of on-line applications and apps introduced reducing the burden of approaching offices for their Personnel-related issues, e.g., loan applications, passes, queries etc. 

ICF had become the only Carbon-negative unit on Indian Railways, thanks to great stress on renewable energy sources like wind mills and solar installations apart from significant energy-saving measures. We also obtained Gold rating from CII’s GreenCo rating system, the only manufacturing unit of IR to be so awarded. The green efforts were spearheaded by Sri D.P.Dash, CDE/E; I will describe the efforts made to move to carbon negative status separately. But he had a novel idea to kill two birds with one stone; achieve the objective of extensive greening and its maintenance and winning over a senior staff member and how?

Following the destruction caused by cyclone Vardha in Dec 2106, ICF had devised a comprehensive action plan to revive greenery by planting scientifically-selected tree varieties which could resist high winds. Experts were consulted to make a list of indigenous trees with higher chances of survival. Plantation of trees was made a regular activity and in the year 2017-18 alone, nearly 5000 trees of 10-12 feet height and 30,000 other saplings and shrubs were planted. We decided to name the groves and plantation in colonies after a senior member of the colony. Mahalingam vanam (grove) came up in September 2017 with planting of hundreds of local variety plants in a well-protected vacant tract of land in North Colony; Thiru Mahalingam, at that point in time, was the senior-most resident of this colony.

  

The interest shown by the residents was palpable and we knew that a great start has been made in not only towards greening of ICF spaces but a major it was a major HR feel good factor. Nearly fifteen such vanams were developed over the next one year or so.

And now the story of the lake. Some months after joining ICF, I discovered that we had a lake which was hidden by ugly wild growth and stank to high heaven. I was told that it was a reservoir for raw water. “Reservoir? It was certainly once a beautiful lake which you people have decimated. We are going to revive this dying lake, come what may”, I remember exclaiming. One of the accompanying engineers said, “Sir, I have seen migratory birds visit this water body some decades back. They don’t come any more to this squalid water”. “Of course they would not, dear friend, why would they”, I blurted, even as these simple words of the poet Afzal Khan rang in my ears:

Dalan mein sabza  hai  na  talab  mein paani

Kyun  koi  parinda   miri   deewar  pe  utre**

** My atrium is devoid of any greenery and my lake is bereft of water, Why should a feathered creature descend at my place?

This lake, with no clear mention in the available archives, seems to have existed prior to 1900. It was definitely a source of water for the factory in early days and we were able to fish out this picture from 1950s:

An unplanned and uncontrolled growth of vegetation had encroached upon the catchment area of the lake. Starting some thirty years back, unauthorized colonies on the west of the ICF premises started pushing sewage mixed with storm water into it thereby polluting it and damaging its eco-system gradually. Uncontrolled growth of green wild vegetation around had hidden the lake from public view; the lake, in any case, was an ugly sight with algae and foul-smelling suspension.

Restoring the lake to its old glory posed a challenge. But a group of nature-lovers from ICF rolled up, determined to rejuvenate and enliven it. The project began with clearing the wild vegetation on the roadside and creating a Lake View Park, which today, welcomes any visitor to ICF with a majestic view of the lake. A step by step process was followed; a comprehensive program for restoration and rejuvenation of the lake and its surrounding was launched with some fanfare and excitement. After clearing the water of weeds and the bank of wild growth, a walkers’ trail was made along the bank by deploying earth excavators. The algal bloom in the lake along with High BOD was a major issue preventing normal aquatic life; nutrients for algae would flow in along with sewerage. These disgusting channels of flow were plugged by providing bagged sand filters and creating a masonry structure to allow the storm water to flow through but restricting the sewerage. This plugging led to some distress in non-ICF residential areas nearby but we sought to resolve the issue through some CSR actions, in spite of the unauthorized nature of their discharge system, as we wished to be a responsible organization with social commitment.

Part de-silting of the lake was taken up to remove the existing materials by engaging deep water sewage pumps for pumping the slurry and filtering the sediments. This involved critical deployment of pumps and associated pipe lines with floats for the de-silting process. This work was continued till the desired quality of water was achieved. The restoration of this lake soon assumed the proportions of nothing less than a mission; interactions with staff were held at the shore. It worked. Every single employee of ICF and the residents of the colonies started looking at the lake as a symbol of our commitment to healthy environment. And more than that it became a symbol of our pride. A jetty was commissioned and boat rides were organized. We had one more picnic cum selfie-point for our team members.

But what has the revival of a dying lake got to do with making of Train 18? Everything. Restoration of this lake embodied the resolve of the members of ICF. And when migratory and roving birds descended in its waters for the first time in decades, they represented the vibes of vitality inherent in ICF; after all, you can fool people through some hard sell but can you deceive a flock of birds who soar high to come down to earth only at a beseeming spot?

My salutation to Allama iqbal for revealing this to ICF:

Ai tair-e-lahauti  us  rizq  se  maut  achchi

jis  rizq se aati  ho  parvaz  mein kotahi**

** O Gabriel, death is better than that existence which prevents flight.

These birds had discovered ICF and ICF had discovered itself. We were ready to fly high, with not just with Train 18, but many Train 18s to come.

(to be continued…)