Meeting With Workers of Rourkela Steel Plant

ADDRESS

I am indeed delighted to be with you all at the Rourkela Steel Plant. I greet all of you. I am happy to note that this Plant is the first public sector integrated steel plant set up in the country, exclusively producing flat products.

I thought of sharing with you a few of my experiences. I have considered three aspects that will shape the Quality of Man. They are : Innovative Leadership, Mission driven Knowledge powered village complexes for rural prosperity (PURA) and Connectivity between Development and Leadership. Innovative leadership.

On 10th August 1979, the first SLV-3 experimental launch planned to take-off at 1500 hrs . It was the work of 2000 scientists, workmen and staff of ISRO and partners from academies and Industries. I was the Mission Director and along with a 50 member strong team within the SHAR Control Centre with 6 specialists to assist me in critical decision making before take off.

Now I will move to the second mission of SLV-3 that took place on 18th July 1980, it was 6.30 in the morning. The whole nation's attention was towards the SHAR launch complex and the control centre. The mission team were busy and computer took over the flight sequence from T-4 minutes. At T-0 the flight took off textbook trajectory we were witnessing. After nearly 600 secs of the flight I realised every stage has given the required velocity including the 4th stage. I made an announcement, "Mission Director calling all stations. The SLV-3 has given the required velocity and right altitude to put Rohini satellite in the orbit. Our down range stations and global stations will get the orbit satellite beam the required data within an hour". There was a thunderous applause from all the stations and visitors gallery. The most important thing happened then. Prof Satish Dhawan asked me to handle the press conference with our team members. The message I would like to convey is, " When success comes in after hard work the leader should give the credit of the success to the team members. When failure comes the leaders should absorb the failures and protect the team members. I could not get this beautiful, technological education of failure management in any of the text books written by any of the Harvard or any of the management institutes at that time. I would like to say particularly to this audience, since we will be managing hundreds of persons, dealing with a challenging task : There will be failure in a product, system, failure in a project, failure in the procurement action or failure in the administrative action even failure in the political system. It is vital to protect the team immediately after a failure from the onslaught effect of failures. Equally we should celebrate success of individuals and team. About us, Mahatma Gandhi has said, in his autobiography; "it has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow men". It is indeed a big message for leaders of organizations and their members

MISSION DRIVEN KNOWLEDGE POWERED VILLAGE COMPLEXES FOR RURAL PROSPERITY

India has Millennium Mission 2020 that gives a road map how a developing India can be transformed into developed India taking five integrated mission, educational healthcare, agriculture food processing, Information communication, infrastructure and self reliance in critical technologies. This integrated mission calls for uplifting the 300 million people from poverty line for which the economic instrument of operation is doubling the GDP rate. One of the recommendation of the task team has brought out the necessity of bringing self supporting prosperous economy to 70 % of the rural population. How to empower the thousands of village complexes with knowledge?. The program is called PURA.

Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas (PURA) is an example for creating rural wealth and prosperity. The model envisages a habitat designed to improve the quality of life in rural places and makes special suggestions to remove urban congestion also. Naturally our most demanding urban problem is that of congestion removal and efficient supply of water and effective waste disposal in every locality are the paramount civic needs. There is a minimum size below which a habitat is not viable and not competitive with the existing congested city. At the same time, the existing congested city is not economical compared to a new town once a minimum size of expansion is crossed. As against a conventional city say, rectangular in shape and measuring 10 km by 6 km, the model considers an annular ring-shaped town integrating minimum 8 to 10 villages of the same 60 km2 area, and the same access distance of 1 km to transport arteries. It needs one and only one transportation route of distance half that needed for the rectangular shaped city; so frequency of transportation will be doubled halving waiting times. It has zero number of junctions and will need only a single level layout. Also it needs only one route as against 8 needed for the rectangular plan, so people will no longer need to change from one line to another to move from any one point to any other. That saves transport time. Further, as all traffic is concentrated into one single route, high efficiency mass transportation systems become economical even for a comparatively small population. This cuts costs substantially and is more convenient for general public. Knowledge powered rural development is an essential need for transforming India into a knowledge power and high bandwidth rural connectivity is the minimum requirement to take education, health care and economic dynamism to the rural areas. Knowledge society leading to knowledge super power can prosper and survive only in the environment of economic security and internal security. Nation has to work for transformation into 'developed India'. Road maps on certain areas have been generated where we have to work for. Development and Leadership has got intensive connectivity.

Development of Leadership

For the nation today what is needed is a combination of technology, leadership and inspired workforce. Let us analyze the dynamics of good organizations for national development. Developed India as defined can be only powered by economic strength.

The economic strength is powered by competitiveness.

The competitiveness is powered by knowledge power.

The knowledge power is powered by Technology.

The Technology is powered by resource investment.

The Resource investment is powered by return on Investment.

Return on Investment is powered Revenues.

The Revenues is powered by Volume and repeat sales.

Volume and repeat sales is powered by customer loyalty.

The customer loyalty is powered by Quality and value of products.

Quality and value of products is powered by Employee Productivity.

The Employee Productivity is powered by Employee Loyalty.

The Employee Loyalty is powered by Employee Satisfaction.

The Employee Satisfaction is powered by Working Environment.

The Working Environment is powered by management stewardship.

Management stewardship is powered by Invisible leadership.

What is that Invisible Leadership ?

"Invisible leadership is excersicing the vision to change the traditional role from the commander to the coach, manager to mentor, from director to delegator and from one who demands respect to one who facilitates self respect "

For a prosperous and developed India, the important thruster will be the growth number Invisible Leader. Will this race grow ?

Concluding Remarks

Technology and value addition are prime important for prosperity of the nation. Value addition in a product per employee today in India is far behind compared to countries like even Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Korea. We have to work hard in Value addition techniques in our manufacturing industries, service and agriculture sectors. Skilled manpower and capital equipment need up gradation. It is said that " the precious things for a company or a country are the skill , ingenuity and imagination of people". Recently I have come across that India is exporting 30 million tons of Iron ore every year from four of its ports. We should remember that it is not a renewable resource. What is needed , the steel Industry with its people of imagination, skills, with addition of new innovative technologies and unique management style we should increase iron content percentage of our ore with appropriate technologies , convert them as steel products, and also design and produce globally competitive new alloy steels.

A Movement, a methodology for value addition has to be given thrust since it is a main component of the second vision for the nation - Developed India.