Scene 1 The friendly Chief
When I joined IOCL, the Chief Personnel and Administration Manager (CPAM) was Mr. Laxman Upadhyay. He was from Patna, the capital city of Bihar. As a son of the soil, he had tremendous clout among the people and more significantly the trade union leaders all of them from Bihar.
My early remembrance was of a durbar; all the time from 9.30 am till 6.00 pm, his cabin was crowded with people, trade union leaders and others. There was none of the formality associated with the office of the Chief.
He retired almost six months after I joined IOC as a management trainee. In the meanwhile, Mr. Jamal Hussain was the Senior Personnel and Administration Manager being groomed for taking over as Head of the department.
Mr. Upadhyay had a friendly disposition to everyone including me. Mr. Jamal Hussain was also friendly yet one was left with the feeling that the suaveness concealed inner inadequacies and conmanship. He could not be said to be ineffective, but his impatience to studying the way in which the place worked left him superficial. He too left the place in a year or so.
Scene 2 Storm in a teacup
Nearly 5 years later, Mr. Upadhyay was in the refinery for a visit. The atmosphere was charged up for some other reason. The refinery guest house is a place where many govt. VIP passersby rested being a public sector undertaking. Because of the unavailability of proper lodgings and rest houses in the vicinity, the local police used to be favoured with the occasional hospitality from the side of the public sector IOC.
In the recent past an incident verged on the flammable. One of the police who accompanied a VIP asked for tea from the kitchen and the same was delayed. After a few impatient minutes the police called the Personnel officer in charge of the guest house and may be a few harsh words went by between them.
The officer in charge raised an issue and the officers’ association took up the cause and threatened immediate withdrawal of all facilities to all outsiders. They demanded that the refinery be left free to look after its affairs and not be used for the entertainment of the local police or any VIPs.
Scene 3 Deconstruction in action.
The situation was tense. The Director Refineries who was on a visit was to be appraised of the situation by the officers’ association. Mr. Upadhyay who was on a friendly chat with a few of us deconstructed the situation for us.
What was the problem about at the end of the day?
There was a delay in the arrival of a cup of tea , a sign of poor service from a guest house point of view.
What is at stake?
The Refinery is situated in a remote village of the poorest state in India. Outside the refinery and its township, the law and order situation is precarious. Electricity and running water are luxuries too. The local police had been helping with all sorts of cooperation with the refinery for a very long time. In Patna city there is a fifty - fifty chance of being robbed if you carry cash. The refinery and its people were living in relative abundance. What does a cup of tea mean to a refinery refining a through put of nearly 3.5 MMTPA?
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Mr. Upadhyay was earlier accused to be of running a coterie in Personnel matters. He was the one thought to have been behind the informal tie up with the local police authorities. Up until then I had also thought of him in poor light. With the deconstruction I developed better insights into the workings of a seemingly mundane relationship issue. Although Industrial relations was supposedly a matter of maintaining relations with the employees contingency demanded that it mean more than that .
Meanings are constructed around the situation. I can go on. But what does it mean to have experience? If not the above what is experience?
