Train 18 memoirs: Getting into the soul of ICF

“The world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open”, is, I understand, a sort of threat by Pistol to Falstaff, in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, that the former would open people’s purses and take the riches for himself. I would, however, prefer a simpler interpretation that ICF was my world now and that I must unriddle it fully for myself to see what lied inside.

I moved around freely in the factory, colonies and other parts of the premises. GMs visited the factory on ceremonial occasions, and the colonies only if invited for a function, I was told. I said I would be there twice a day and at times thrice a day.

I would talk to people and try to grasp what they had to say. I would goad them to open up and speak. One of my favourite games has been to ask officers to talk to me about their job content; a simple question I would ask them was to describe their job and duty description. As expected, one would hear the timeworn and hackneyed tune of this and that, taken out of the prescribed duty lists written by some consummate babus. The worst performers in this drama would usually be senior officers who never grew as they moved up the hierarchical ladder and forcefully parroted the platitudes of what they were responsible for. My reply would be direct and simple, “You have a defined duty list and you know what your job is. But your job is not what your job is. The paper enumerates a list and your seniors have taught you something but all this is a mere 10% of your duty. Go, be creative and find the other 90% from your day to day experience to improve things; that is your job.” The smart ones understood entirely, the majority understood reasonably well and the rest, in any case, were incorrigible.

There were exceptions for sure. For example, L.C.Trivedi, the Principal Chief Mechanical Engineer, told me that he was in-charge of the factory and associated activities whereas GM, as the overall leader in-charge of ICF had no reason to interfere with matters related to production. I liked that as it gave me more space to concentrate on other matters. Thankfully most of the would be Train 18 team members knew what their job was; the biggest culprits were a couple of HoDs who would tell me that their job was something which actually matched with the job description of an Assistant Officer of ICF.

In my quest to know the people I was leading, I would play another game. This game arose out of my learning from a great GM we had in Eastern Railway. He was visiting a shed I headed and patiently viewed and listened to whatever displays of good work we thrust at him. He later asked me not to mention problems casually to him but to name two problems, one which I thought a GM could and should definitely solve and another which I thought a GM could definitely try to solve. I was confounded by the uniqueness of the question but somehow regained my composure and quickly told him two pending issues; issues which I felt were certainly doable but seemed like a mountain to me due to the sheer inter-dependability of departments and funds involved. The GM spent some time understanding the same and then congratulated me for giving him problems which he thought he could solve. And Lo Behold! Both the issues were solved by him before the fourth month ended.

I would sit with a group of officers and ask them, one by one, exactly what this GM had asked me thirty five years back. This helped me identify the doers in my team; the quality of the problem given to me would tell me two important things, one, whether the officer understood how things should and could work and two, whether the officer was actually interested in problem-solving or he was a part of the problem itself. That was good. What was not good was all kinds of problems that some officers presented. Some problems which perhaps could not be solved by Modi ji himself, let alone a mere GM. One worthy, a very senior officer, told me that most of the blue collar workers are habituated for forty years to work four to five hours a day and the GM should enforce that they work their eight hours. Another gem I remember was when a senior officer asked me make sure that each and every material which went into making a coach, some five thousand of them, should all be made available so no time was wasted in chasing stores, in short, an industrial utopia.

Although some astute and savvy officers always gave me immense hope through their answers, the not so infrequent idiotic propositions from some senior officers were so amusing that I often wondered if this exercise was worth it. Seeking intelligence from people who did not know what wisdom was? Ghalib has covered it well in another sense:

Hamko un se wafa ki hai ummid,
jo  nahin  jaante   wafa   kya  hai

(From them I hope for constancy who know not what constancy is)

Then there were problems which officer himself could solve. To make the meeting enjoyable, and also to drive the point home, I would ask these non-doer type problem-givers to assume that they were GM and then tell me their action plan to solve the problem; most of them would cut a sorry figure, coming a cropper even before they started to babble out an action plan. Like this industrial utopia gent could not suggest any improvement to move towards his wish of 100% availability of materials all the time. Well, in any case, most of the officers would start learning during the course of the meeting and come up with problems which indeed could be addressed. I not only got to know the ace doers and laggard non-doers of ICF, I also had a huge list of problems to address and build an agenda.

I spent the initial months mainly in addressing and adopting some simple leadership principles, addressing issues of our human resource (HR), emboldening openness, discarding all meanly protocol and hierarchical straitjackets, gradual dismantling of the stifling bureaucratic systems, building a culture of trust and empathy, welcoming ideation from all levels, stressing importance of rectitude and probity, recognizing those who worked well with purpose and meaning while coming down hard on those who did not and many other measures in a similar mould.

For the nonce, I will start with issues related to our HR. I have reposed great trust in the enormous potential of HR and it was natural that I lent a big focus to it. With experience of years in managerial positions, I have been witness to astounding changes an organization could achieve once the individuals and the team were charged and motivated. I believe both in primacy of human capital as well as management solutions based on informed decisions which in turn arose out of studies and analysis. While the latter was started at a good pace, the former was taken for special and deliberate attention.

Human resource is the key to revival and survival, yet very rarely is it understood or appreciated. Even in this age, and even in small organizations employing a limited number of people, you may have all the machines and wherewithal but you would not reach anywhere near your organization ambitions unless your human resource is with you, equally committed.

Officers of IR usually have a ground connect which is illusory or perfunctory. We are, as it is, part of a society which is already highly compartmentalized, with so many unwritten Dos and Donts for various echelons and classes; free interaction that would make one aware of what was going on is usually absent. Complex problems have simple solutions but the management has a tendency to complicate matters by finding complex solutions for simple problems.

On IR, the so called copybook humane solutions, infused liberally with management jargon, are hollow words, motions gone through with insincerity. The reigning culture is one of post mortems of what went wrong and why. There is an all pervading feeling among the employees that the blame for shortcomings was always laid at the altar of the field staff. A very common malaise in IR officers: duplicity and hypocrisy in their human interaction. We all have a grouse of being mishandled by those above us in the hierarchy, yet we fail to practice anything different in dealing with those adjacent to or below us in the ladder. A sense of amour propre at every level of hierarchy is vital for progress and it obviously calls for dignified ways of handling your seniors, colleagues and juniors.

To cut a long story short, what is it that you need to do anything anywhere? I am no management guru but the answers that I get to this simple question, in numerous lectures and talks that I have delivered after retirement, are: will, leadership, passion, vision, determination, teamwork and so on. All good, absolutely. But I believe that first and foremost, the answer is simple: love what you do. It follows that you love your organization and colleagues.

Love your men. Love them in the spirit of what the poet Jigar Moradabadi said,

Is lafz-e-mohabbat  ka adna  sa fasana hai,

Simte to dil-e-aashiq, phaile to zamana hai*

(This word love has a very small trifling story, if it shrinks, it’s the heart of a lover, but stretch it and it’s the world).

*I had quoted this sher in one of my first memos to all of ICF to shed the malaise of petty protocol and feudal politesse.)

Love your organization? Yes, that was the cardinal mantra. If you do not, or if you are unable to, QUIT, unless, of course, it is a bread and butter issue. If you do not, you are doing a great disservice to the organization you work for and, more than that, to yourself. It is of course a bit difficult if your job is to sell the unspeakable, but then, it can be and must be done. You have to stretch love to encompass everything. If you work for IR, you are, in all probability, already there. How can you not love an organization with such a history, legacy and romance that I described earlier? You hardly need a persuasion to love IR. I have done so all my life. And my message to everyone in ICF was precisely this; love your organization. People of Tamil Nadu are passionate and emotional; most of them, like me, did not need any persuasion. They already loved IR and ICF; after all, they were the train-makers. They worked at the very fountainhead of the IR legacy. That was easy!

With time, most of the ICF executives agreed with the dismantling of the regime of nauseating courtliness. No lining up to meet the boss as he arrived, no bouquets, no standing up in the middle of a meeting to greet your seniors, no waiting outside the chambers of higher-ups. Just plain and simple business, albeit with some pleasantries and even occasional banter. Hierarchy is necessary for management but it should not double up as a pettifogging pecking order; an organizational pyramid should be designed to facilitate the chain of command and not for self-aggrandizement. The higher echelons are there to lead, not to indulge in false glorification, reflected from the chair and not one’s deeds.

Talking of self-aggrandizement, this malaise among government executives, particularly those in senior positions, is almost endemic Senior IR officers seem pleased to see their king-sized photos on posters and banners as if they were politicians trying to woo voters. They either cannot see through the flattery or perhaps revel in it. Abject display of toady behaviour and plain subservient obsequiousness is not rejected but embraced. I have always found it very pathetic and wonder why their conscience does not speak to them, like Shakespeare has King Richard III do, "O coward conscience, why dost thou not afflict me!"

The first HR masterstroke that the ICF 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 other stuff. This broom and bucket business is a common sight in most government offices and this is what welcomed a visitor to ICF in the rather run down foyer with unimaginative get up. As a part of makeover of our foyer, which would soon boast of a beautiful heritage gallery, we used this janitor’s space to build the ICF family tree. Each and every member of ICF, all 12000 or so, 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 discover your photo in the tree; I was assisted by my Suresh, favourite attender, to find my own mug.

The ICF Family Tree

Coming a bit closer to our story, 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.

This was the first measures to build a sense of belonging in every member of ICF, a feeling of being a part of a large industrial family. The next measure was to reverse the ugly practices in of inaugurations and launches of new or renovated facilities in the factory, colonies and otherwise. In furtherance of dismantling all old inaugural plaques, we decided that all inaugurations of facilities, say for those above an expenditure of Rs 8 lakh, would always be formally inaugurated/launched by a senior member of staff. If it was a very big facility like a new sports ground or an auditorium, we would invite retired greats of ICF or IR or non-railway achievers from the concerned field. In all these inaugurations, however, there would be no mention of any ICF officer by name, only the name of the chosen staff. His or her name on the stone signified a token of gratitude towards an old member of staff who had perhaps devoted all his life nurturing the area in question. The response to this new custom was overwhelming. The ritual was simple; pleasantries with the nominated staff and her/his family, if they were present, presenting a shawl, a book & a model of a coach manufactured by ICF. The nominated staff would usually come for their inauguration day with family and proudly show them around the new facility. On many occasions, the staff so honoured would actually cry and not hide it.

Inaugurations by staff members, some of more than 500 done at ICF

By the time I signed off in Dec 18, we had had nearly 550 such functions. Counting the friends and family of those so honoured, we had easily won over a large chunk of ICF working army. Even at the risk of repeating myself, I always drove the point home that the idea was to convey that we officers were fortunate to lead a devoted team of supervisors and staff and it was our job to get the best out of them and not to seek stupid immortality through one’s name of a stone.

Inaugurations of a memorial spot for the 500^th inauguration in the main office foyer by a senior staff member

Another simple exercise was to connect with the workers directly. Notices were already put out that anyone could walk into the chamber of the GM, the PCME and other senior officers and thanks to numerous welfare measures, there were hardly any grievances. Not many workers did show up and mostly they did not need to; yet, I was aware that years of ingrained beliefs about the ivory towers in which senior officers were entrenched in, particularly the GM, could not be changed so quickly. I, therefore, started taking rounds in the middle of the busiest working hours merely to talk to all those I could spot. Once again, hundreds of bear hugs, handshakes, vanakkams and namaskarams later, we managed to spread a message of goodwill. Going out unannounced on the shop floor at peak working time, with or without the Chief Workshop Engineer (CWE) concerned, and just shaking hands with the workers was such a pleasure. You can always decry the practice as showmanship or drama but personally I found it very beneficial to connect, to bridge the chasm created by feudal pecking orders and facilitate a free and frank interaction. Admittedly, most of the exchanges were in the nature of “Any problem?” “No problem, sir.” But I found it very gratifying and frequently some minor issues also did get addressed and resolved through these direct feedbacks. As far as I learnt, staff loved it.

Interaction with staff on the factory floor

I would absolutely lose it and get ready to bite the head off someone from ICF if he or she would print an invitation card listing me or my wife (wives of senior railway officer are given a make-believe authority and power, calling them President, or whatever, of the Railway Women’s Welfare Organization) as the chief guest for a function. I remember tearing apart such cards on two occasions, throwing it on the ground, exclaiming loudly, “Can I be a guest in my own home? Can you not find a personages who have done something in this field, seek their blessings as a guest, honour them and, in the process, honour yourself?” Thankfully, the practice of seeking in-house guests stopped and we benefitted from the wisdom of luminaries specially invited to be a guest; the only caveat being that those invited should be, at least loosely, a person of repute in the field.

Apart from recognition of staff through various soft measures, we went totally liberal in awarding them. For every strong action against any erring employee, there were hundreds who were recognized with a certificate and a cash award; I did enhance the amount of cash given away albeit it was more symbolic and the recognition it carried meant more than the money. I removed all restrictions in awarding staff repeatedly, restrictions which were steeped in the misplaced egalitarianism thinking of a dispenser of favours; if someone did good work all the time, he or she was recognized repeatedly. During my tenure, nearly Rs five crores were spent on individual awards but at the end of the day, it was a very small price to pay for getting your key workforce motivated and committed. The awards were always distributed in a manner which evinced some personal touch from me or the concerned senior officers, with a merit certificate and encouraging words.

At the same time, we came down heavily on the shirkers, the uncouth, the undisciplined, the absentees and the proxy-users. These are the bad elements which, usually, are largely incorrigible or too far gone in some vice to be reformed. The unwritten message was clear that all such delinquent people had no place in ICF and it was of no use giving them merely the harshest punishment; they had to sacked, or if they volunteered, sent on premature retirement. The process of disciplinary action was monitored by me personally and no dilly-dallying was tolerated. I went so far as to declare that for delinquent staff which were proven to be guilty, the power not to sack them was withdrawn from every officer and if there a was deviant case deserving some mercy, it must come to the GM for a decision.  One junior Personnel officer told me that propriety demanded that the DA (Disciplinary Authority) should be free from pressures of unwritten directives from top and that the DA should exercise his judgement totally on his own. I told him that his sense of natural justice was good in law but unfortunately, I was not some esteemed justice at law; I was an administrator and given my way of working, this was the right way to go. I remember an instance when Trivedi, himself a hard taskmaster and a disciplinarian, walked into my room rather bemused. He told me he wished that a case be dealt with leniently but the concerned clerk told him, “Sir, if you do that, nothing will happen to you. But the GM would chew me alive.” The case, of course, was settled in a fashion that Trivedi desired but it showed that the missive to all concerned was unequivocal.

We also used an existing provision (commonly called 14(II) for summary dismissal of an employee in exceptional cases of indiscipline, harassment of women employees and gender-based disrespect after satisfying ourselves that an enquiry in the case would be impractical. In my tenure I spent at ICF, some 165 employees were sacked. Sympathy and  mercy, I always said, should succeed strong action.

The great Hindi poet, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, has given us these powerful lines:

Kshama shobti us bhujang ko jiske paas garal ho,

uska  kya  jo dantheen  vishheen vineet  saral  ho.

(Forgiveness is becoming of a venomous serpent, none cares for a toothless, poison-less, kind and gentle snake)

Mohan Raja, the Principal Chief Personnel Officer, was a great ally in this exercise. I told him that we would show mercy in deserving cases but for this benevolence to be respect, first the force and resolve of the administration must be clearly demonstrated. Some of them were taken back after thorough review by Mohan Raja himself on recommendation of senior officers, or through his own interaction, but the issue of a disciplined work force was settled. The message was simple, start invariably with love but:

Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.

(Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare)

Implementing these measures was a continuous process and with experience, we kept making changes too. What we started circa August 2016 and continued till the very end of my tenure is an important part of my narration. I have brought out initial glimpses and details of other measures and actions would keep appearing at various places in the book, with reference to something or the other.

There is something very important that I must point out here. Within days of my joining and moving around the premises, I found that ICF had a great team of officers. A GM of IR in many respects, is perhaps more empowered than, say, a CEO of a company. But he can hardly choose him team. He can get a couple of officers of his choice by pleading with the Railway Board but that is about all. With my experience of twenty nine months in ICF and particularly in building Train 18, in hindsight, if I ask myself whether I would have liked to change some key members of the core team, I would not wish a change for even one of them. Such was a team bequeathed to me and so how fortunate was that?

It was not limited to the team of officers alone. I detected that the key design and manufacturing supervisors and staff of ICF had a certain technical audacity, a chutzpah to try something new. This was something which was a great additive to their noticeable competence. The boredom, the ennui, of doing more of the same was writ large on their faces and ICF was indeed a fertile ground to innovate; their potential was nowhere near being fully exploited and they had been waiting for a leader to channelize their skill and energy towards something much bigger than they had hitherto been mandated to execute. They had it in them to think out of the box and if supported, to go ahead and accomplish it. I could also see, to my pleasant surprise, that the support staff from Planning, Stores, Finance, Personnel and Infrastructure wings also had the capability and the enthusiasm to join in any effort to do something novel. Another bit of fortune for me.

With focus on these issues, seeking to transform things in ICF at grassroots, did my dream recede in the background? Am I digressing too much in this narration? Not at all. I was trying to explore the soul of ICF, discern and interpret it, live it, embody it and personify it to become ICF myself. First silently and then by speaking out, I was checking out if ICF was indeed my vehicle to fulfil my dream. The more I probed, the more I was reassured that I was at the right time, the right place and with the right people. As I verbalized my dream to ICF, numerous dreams, somewhat similar, sprang from the bosom of the ICF people. I encouraged them to talk about it, telling them, the words of the famous Christian Minister, Benjamine E. Mays, “It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream.” 

I also learnt that two officers, who would eventually be two main pillars of our mission to make a modern train set, also had a dream. A similar dream. They were Sushil Vavre, the Chief Design Engineer (Electrical) and Srinivas, the Chief Design Engineer (Mechanical). They had already thought about it and talked about it but were yet to get favourable ears. They had this pent up frustration. Now, they had my ears and I had theirs. 

I would quote Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to everyone in ICF with a dream similar to mine, and as I had found, there were many.

“Dream is not the thing you see in sleep but is that thing that doesn't let you sleep.”

(to be continued…)