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Turning around PSUs
The article (MM, September 16th) on V. Krishna mur thy’s tenure at the helm of SAIL made me nostalgic about our association with him at middle management level: executing his out-of-box ideas on shop floors to Improve productivity: his efforts to bring back steel experts who left SAIL for one reason or other to lead the units; his concern to train and develop executive managerial skills by conducting workshops with management consultant; improving HRD and introducing labour participation in decision-making; motivating R&D efforts; taking bold decisions to aquire Maha rash tra Electro mel ts and Ba dra vati Steel Works for integrated raw materials flow – all these bold measures, made SAIL, a run-of-the-mill organisation in the 1970s, to transform into a successful commercial enterprise in the 1980s.
VK established the Indian Model of Management.
Bhilai Gopalan
1/6 Sankara Flats
1, 6th Cross Street
Shastri Nagar
Adyar, Chennai 600 020
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Jerdon’s volumes
The T.C. Jerdon article (MM, September 1st) was an impressively written piece. The story of a pioneer ornithologist was told with great warmth. I hope the author is writing his biography.
In the 1990s, while serving in Ahmadabad, I was invited for lunch by a former rajah to his palace in a small town nearby. Near the dining table stood an almirah and there, among other books, the three volumes of Jerdon’s The Birds of India caught my eyes. It was the first edition, in mint condition, complete with golden letters embossed on the calico-bound hard cover. My friend, himself a keen birder, was working in the estate of the rajah and I told him about seeing the book.
Ten years later, I visited my friend in another town. He brought out a bundle wrapped in cloth, gingerly kept it on a table and opened it. In it lay Jerdon’s books, sparkling. My friend told me that when he left the estate job, the king gave the books as a parting gift. No…I will not reveal the identity of my friend. I do not want his house to be burgled.
S. Theodore Baskaran
26, Asha Township Phase II
Dodda Gubbi Post
Bangalore 560 077
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Recalling Triveni
K. Ramakotees wara Rao of Triveni, which was brought out beautifully, was a good friend of my father.
K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, father of Prema Nandakumar, used to contribute to Triveni under the pen name ‘Crystal’. I think his magnum opus. Sita yana, appeared in Triveni. This is the Ramayana retold with focus on Sita.
Dr. S.S. Rajagopalan
30, Kamarajar Street
Chennai 600 093
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Sole author
The article on Triveni in MM, September 16th, was by Ganga Powell alone and not as stated. The error is regretted.
– The Editor
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The old order changeth
A comment in lighter vein on the changes in the work ethic in the first 100 days after Modi. This little ode is dedicated to all Government offices everywhere.
The Boss all fired with
Vision
Made it his one and only
mission
To see that things were
moving
In the corridors of power.
Now the files are getting lighter,
The halls a whole lot brighter.
In at nine and out betimes
at nine,
The canteen is no place to spend the time.
And when you go to pay your taxes
At the corner where the fax is,
That lazy blighter is not
sleeping at his desk.
The motto being
“fitter not fatter,”
There is no Moghul biriyani
At one for Indirani.
The lady is in a fix,
A meal or aerobics?
There is no fiddle and no faddle,
No huddle and no muddle,
And the Boss can’t stop grinning
For the money that is jiggling
In the coffers where it rightly ought to be.
– Beatrix D’Souza
When London was worse
Reader T. Santhanam's letter in MM, August 16th, exhibits a contempt for Indian toilet habits and admiration for European culture ignoring the very recent history of flush toilets inside houses. Far too often, our media, government and social activists exhibit such an attitude. I hope the following changes a mind or two.
The Thames & the Cooum
In the 19th Century, the river Thames that flows through London was a far worse river than the Cooum that flows through Madras. Not only the river, but the stinking city of London was the world’s largest dumpyard.
When the scientist Chad wick proposed that Thames be cleaned, The Times, London, opposed it vehemently: “England wants to be clean, but not be cleaned by Chadwick” ran its editorial, according to Peter Medawar in his book The Limits of Science.
Poor Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, died surrounded by 42 cesspools, and the inconsolable queen then ordered the cleaning up of London – thus was born the modern sewerage system. This was the most useful royal death in history, first for England, then the world: the largest metropolis of the post-Industrial Revolution era systematically got its first effective sewerage system.
Another fact might be mentioned here – one about horses. More specifically, horse dung. As Stephen Leavitt explains brilliantly in his book Super Freakonomics, the modern curse of Carbon dioxide pollution is insignificant compared to the pre-automobile horse-dung pollution that every European and American city suffered. The tall basements of stone houses in the US cities of that era – New York, Boston, Philadelphia – and similar cities in Europe owe their design to the moneyed classes, who built such residences to prevent rain-mixed sludge, enriched with horse and human refuse, from entering their homes. In a remarkable coincidence, the houses of Bohra Muslims in Siddhpur in Gujarat were built on the designs of the European houses of the time – and have the high basements similar to such houses. Environmentalists mindlessly curse the internal combustion engine and the modern mechanical world as the root of all pollution, and as evil incarnate. But it was diesel and Benz’s automobile that improved farming.
Thomas Hager, in his book on the synthesis of nitrogen, The Alchemy of Air, vividly describes cargo ships carrying mountains of guano bat and bird dung from the Pacific islands off the Peruvian coast, arriving at the ports in England. This worsened the smell. London was steadily getting dirtier and smellier well before the Industrial Revolution, dumping its untreated sewage and trash into the Thames only worsened things – in fact, the Great Stink of 1858 caused Parliament to shift from London to Oxford!
Most readers of English literature will be familiar with Charles Dickens’s satires on the soot and terrible pollution of London. What we generally don’t think about or realise is that such a London no longer exists. It has become far cleaner, far less polluted metropolis. It is a lesson for the dirty cities of the world.
I cannot resist pointing out at this point that the single most repeated thing about the Indus Valley Civilisation is that the people had the most advanced sewerage systems of the world until the 19th Century. The system they developed appears to be better than what we have in most cities and villages in India. During January 2014 site visit of the Tamil Heritage Trust to Lothal, we were given a tour of the drainage systems of that Harappan city. Sewage is disgusting as current affairs, but is apparently fascinating as heritage!
As Sriram V. elucidated to some of us on a Chintadripet Heritage Walk, it was during Lord Hobart’s Governorship of Madras Presidency, that the plan for a sewerage system for Madras germinated. In fact, Lord Hobart’s death was as useful to Madras, as Prince Albert’s was to England.
R. Gopu
writergopu@yahoo.com
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