Train 18 series 26..there is nothing better than winning over your staff!

GMs of IR are allotted a hefty sum for entertainment. I do not know what the protocol for spending this money is; I depended on the secretariat to handle it. But it is certainly not meant for the GM to get together crony officers and party. Party? Railway officers partying? A bit of an oxymoron. In any case unless you can define a gathering of railway officers with spouses, with an unwritten code of separate seating for sahibs and memsahibs; if you tried to break this segregation too much, fellow officers and their spouses would look askance at you. Some booze and even wine now-a-days. Occasionally, some insipid and vapid party games which would challenge your sensibilities and shut down your mind. Some underlings singing at a stage who would soon make way for some sahibs and memsahibs to inflict the assemblage with some extra-euphonic and para-cacophonic singing. And, for sure, a dance floor buzzing with sahibs dancing as couples and memsahibs dancing in triplets, or even quartets, reproducing some hilarious moves like the pelvic thrusts gone south-west, hop, skip & jump, cat walk routine with hands thrown in air for some obscure reason and the supreme steps of the man born with two left feet. Never to say no to a drink, I would confine myself to the more earthily cerebral  corners where choicest of bawdy jokes emanated from the whisky glasses.

Using my entertainment funds for such parties? Not my cup of tea, not by a mile. Why not use this fund, to the extent permissible, for better bonding with the entire team of ICF, not only senior officers but junior officers, supervisors, office staff, technicians and equivalent categories. I discussed the matter with Sri Babu, the Secretary/ICF and he seconded it as a good move which would help team spirit. We held up more than a dozen such tea parties and banquets in GM’s residence. It was a novel experience for all the participants; it was, for sure, not possible to get all of ICF to roll up because of the sheer numbers but we did cover large representative groups. For most of the participants, the GM’s residence, a palatial villa quite in line with the norm on IR, was like an impenetrable fortress; they were initially quite bemused to be invited there but once they came in, we made sure that they felt at home. The goings on in the assemblies were facilitated and conducted by some buoyant and energetic junior officers in a very friendly and informal fashion; one of the officers who was in regular demand was Sri John, a Senior Personnel Officer. He could make the participants get up and speak or even sing, perhaps for the first time in front of a large gathering. I cherish the experience intensely and it did the team ICF incalculable good.

Another HR masterstroke that the team put together was the family tree. In the main lobby, we had a sort of a large ante room where the janitor kept his brooms and stuff. This is what welcomed a visitor to ICF along with a run down foyer. As a part of makeover of our foyer, which would soon boast of beautiful heritage gallery, we used this janitor’s space to build the ICF family tree. Each and every member of ICF had a small photo of his or her stuck on a tree branch. It was an instant hit; a selfie or family picture point for our team members. It was some game to find your photo in the tree; I was assisted by my favourite attender to locate find my own map.

Resplendent in this sublime family tree are the faces of the champions of Train 18; inhumed in these icons is the spirit of the builders of Train 18.

We at ICF had already started wearing ICF on our chests; an ICF team shirt. I had tried it earlier wherever I worked but it never got replicated by any organization on IR; I would think that we railway officers thought it was infra dig or pretentious for a government organization. In any case, I do not know of any government organization apart from the forces which employs any such informal, let alone formal, dress code.  Nevertheless, team ICF adopted it very willingly. 

No organization can hope to succeed unless it empowers its women employees. On one hand we instituted a no nonsense policy when it came to dealing with men accused of any major gender-based misdemeanor or transgression. The instructions given out were simple; any one so accused, formally or even informally, would be a suspect and within a day the truth would be determined informally. Once we were sure that the complaint was genuine, we would not subject the complaint to any embarrassment of enquiries and testimony. Using the powers given to government officers to sack an employee if the offence did not merit an enquiry, we would simply show the accused the door. In case of minor offences of the nature, steps like shaming and removing the accused from the work area in question was the norm. On the other hand, women were encouraged to challenge themselves in respect of their output vis-à-vis men and many accepted the challenge. From mere helpers in job, they sought to become the doers. We had nearly twenty exclusive gangs of women generating an output equal or better than me. Where else in any industry in India would you see a group of thirty ladies, welders and fitters, doing the heavy fabrication job of manufacturing a coach shell on their own?

The pride these women workers felt in their redefine roles of doer and not helpers is palpable in one of these photographs which became a favourite of the newspapers and electronic media in Chennai:

As for our concern for environment, we were to revolutionize the working in ICF in respect of waste management in the factories and colonies, renewable energy generation, rain water harvesting, reduction in energy consumption through technological measures like LED lights and 3-phase drives for machines etc. Awareness and the zeal to do something for our environment had penetrated among most of the workers and their families, instilling in them a sense of responsibility as they witnesses improvements around them.

Let me dwell a bit on our success story of waste management. We had successfully implemented segregation of garbage at source, collection and disposal with very little being sent to landfill; more than 90% of the waste was either composted in sheds built in the colonies or sold to recyclers. The old garbage bins, which were now superfluous, were converted to plant bins.

Having put the systems in place, I would move around the colonies with the concerned supervisors from our Health wing. If we saw any garbage anywhere, we would call upon all the residents, mostly ladies, around that spot to join us; I knew the culprit garbage-thrower was there among them but would ask them with some indignation, “How can you allow someone to throw garbage near your house?” I continued this drama for a couple of months, particularly on Sundays and pretty soon, peer pressure alone on the odd garbage-throwers was so immense that all our colonies became totally free of any garbage. 

Periodically, all the GMs of IR were required to celebrate a Swachchta Divas. This would mean that GMs of all variety and hues would assemble with a retinue of underlings, flunkies and gofers, brandishing long-handle brooms in their hands and get down to some serious sweeping. Sweeping what? Sweeping something! We were bombarded with photos of great worthies merrily brushing, whisking, swapping God knows what! I simply transmitted a message that I could not send a good photo because I had nothing to sweep. It was not liked, of course. But what a mockery had been made of the noble intention of the PM? Symbolism is good to send a message across but we are adept at making symbolism itself the terminal and let the purpose be damned! Has any country in the west, or more appropriately in near or far east, become clean and tidy by sweeping and brooming and not through installing effective systems? In our own small way, we had met the expectations of the Swachchta Mission, without spending too much more than what we were already spending on garbage management.

Under the leadership of a senior staff, workers of both the factories took a pledge to keep the factory are neat and clean; not as symbolism again, but only after most of the cleaning work had actually been accomplished.

This along with our resolve to keep the work place free of scrap, dirt and debris were the soft components towards our goal; strong action towards installing renewable energy sources like a wind mills and solar installations and significant energy-saving measures drove us to the unique distinction of achieving Carbon Negativity.

We followed up all these changes and their clear acceptability and popularity with creation of ICF icons: three of them, the Integral Man, the father of coaches, the Integral Mahila, the new ICF shakti (power) and the Integral Environmentalist, the embodiment of our green consciousness. These icons which we created as a tribute to the spirits of ICF can be seen adorning the ICF premises today at all the strategic corners and continues to enthuse the workers towards purposeful action in making coaches, empowering women and improving our environment.

Many of these initiatives were covered strongly by the national press and media, first by those based in Chennai and later Delhi. Talking of media, I have an interesting face of theirs to highlight. Asked by the then Chairman of Railway Board, Sri Ashwani Lohani, we had held a media workshop in ICF and naturally, Train 18, with so much buzz about it at ICF, started getting coverage even as concepts were getting finalized and manufacture had just started. We were exposed to a very positive side of Press and Media; they were quite eager to bring forth a story in which they saw a good message for the country. This became even clearer as the project moved towards completion. It also excited the team as no end as we were now reassured that Train 18 was going to be a success, a game changer. I used to tell the team, quoting Ophelia from Hamlet that, “Lord, we know what we are, but not what we may be." But here was the media letting us know what we were and what we were going to be. It cut across their political inclinations. And all this coverage, to date, has been happening without ICF affording them any favour or service. All the team ICF, particularly Sri Venkatesan, the Public Relations Officer, did was to keep good communication going with them. As much as 99% of the coverage has been positive and we should not even talk of the 1% of fake news circulated by some rogue elements in railways and their friends in Press and Media.

One of the regular questions from our friends and media was same old, by now hackneyed, one and I was trying to find a befitting answer everyday. The easiest path for me was to retreat to much superior intelligence. Peter Ackroyd in Shakespeare: The Biography has found answers for the brilliance of the bard. On his creativity, he writes, “He had learnt in his schooldays that one of the first characteristics of invention was imitation, and he was an imitator of genius.” Someone has said that ideas that spread win. Shakespeare, believe me, is the wellspring of new ideas for all of us as he had mastered the art of articulating on the human nature and ideas in an organization must flow for or through its human elements. What were we doing here at ICF if not merely trying to bring the best out of our human resources. Some have criticized Shakespeare as derivative, which, indubitably is rather foolish. One has to keep reverting to the existing knowledge and information to evolve new ideas. And that is the reason I keep quoting the bard, which was my easy, and I would think effective getaway, with Press and Media. And to make it more flowery, post facto, our own uncle is always at hand:

Humne ja ke dekh liya hai, had-e-nazar se aage bhi
Rahguzar hi rahguzar  hai,  rahguzar  se  aage bhi**

** I have gone and seen what lies beyond the horizon, paths and paths are laid out beyond your road.

(to be continued…)