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Christabelle
Noronha
KP Mahalingam, former director of technical
services, Tata Steel, shares precious memories and anecdotes
from his 37 years of association with
the company
Kunnisseri Parmeswar Mahalingam,
now a sprightly 84, served Tata Steel with distinction
for 37 years in an era when Tata Steel was Tisco, and
steel-making involved working in the searing heat of
openhearth furnaces. Radical changes have transformed
the company since the time when Mahalingam’s career
took wing — from graduate trainee to technical
adviser to the MD, and finally, to director of technical
services in 1974. That essential chapter in Tata Steel’s
history now lives on in Mahalingam’s carefully
preserved portfolio of letters and photographs and his
cherished memories.
Among the many gems in his collection
are vintage photographs of the late president of India,
Sanjeeva Reddy at Tata Steel, and letters from JRD Tata,
Ratan Tata and B Muthuraman, among others. “My
only regret is having been born 50 years too early,”
Mahalingam wrote in a 2006 letter to Chairman Ratan
Tata, who was once under his tutelage at Tata Steel,
with reference to the amazing changes taking place in
the company and the Tata Group as a whole. “There
is indeed so much happening that I too wish at times
that I was several years younger,” the Chairman
wrote back.
Mahalingam’s nurturing and
talent-spotting skills were also, at least in part,
responsible for the current Tata Steel managing director
B Muthuraman making a career with the Group: He was
a member of the selection committee that in 1966 spotted
the potential in a greenhorn graduate trainee who was
destined to lead the company.
It is our privilege that Mahalingam
has so graciously shared these pages from his precious
scrapbook of memories, and made even more memorable
the 100th anniversary of the company he loves so dearly
by sharing anecdotes of a bygone era.
Those were the days…
Etched in my memory is the sight of a reddish-yellow
glow over the northern skyline, visible even 10-odd
miles away, as the train chugged its way into Tatanagar
station, gradually building up into a mammoth sky-high
fiery behemoth, with huge plumes of smoke spewing into
the sky — it was awesome and inspiring.
At the time, Tata Steel was the
single largest integrated steel plant in the then British
Empire and a source of pride to every young Indian engineer.
Some years ago, the old Bessemer converters which created
this distinctive aura around the steel plant, were replaced
with LD converters and their highly sophisticated pollution
control measures, and I believe that the resultant glow
diminished somewhat. Since my days as an A1 Class Apprentice,
numerous changes have taken place in the ferrous metallurgical
processes and consequently, in the Tata Steel plant
and township. The enormous changes (of course, for the
better) which my wife Saroj and I saw in December 2004
(during our visit to Jamshedpur on Mr Muthuraman’s
thoughtful invitation), were mind-boggling. Be it the
landscape, environment, townships, social activities,
or process technologies, knowledge management, and a
myriad other areas which make a large corporation “tick”,
the transformation was amazing.
The beginnings of my affair
with Tata Steel
In 1942, the only avenue for a young aspiring engineer
was either the Indian Railway Service of Engineers,
or Tata Steel. I chose the latter. The only route for
higher supervisory and management positions was the
graduate trainee (GT) route, then known as the “A
Class Apprenticeship”.
Selection was confined to graduates
in mechanical or electrical engineering, or metallurgy.
First class graduates from Indian colleges were given
a “munificent” stipend of Rs75 per month for
the first two years, followed by absorption in the permanent
cadre on a five-year contract, which started them on
a princely Rs200 per month.
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To a callow, greenhorn engineering
graduate of 19 years 4 months, the first sight of the
steel plant at Jamshedpur was truly spellbinding. The
spell was somewhat fractured by the sight of ex-A1 Class
apprentices shoveling raw material into the yawning
mouths of open-hearth furnaces, and their seniors lugging
20 kg oxygen cylinders on sturdy shoulders while traversing
steep steel stairs! The struggle to open the furnace
tapholes and smartly step aside to avoid getting burnt
called for some skill. Most of the eight-hour shift
was spent in ambient temperatures of over a 100 degrees
Fahrenheit. But the challenge — and the lack of
other well-paying jobs in the nation — kept most
of us from scurrying back home.
I was perhaps the youngest GT
at Tata Steel; today, I am perhaps one of the oldest
living ex-GTs! It will be of interest to know that the
late SK Nanavati was the first managing director to
be drawn from the Graduate Trainee Scheme (or “A2
Class Apprentice”, as it was known those days),
with B Muthuraman, the current managing director, being
a close second.
Smokescreen over Jamshedpur
We were smack in the middle of World War II, and there
was no immunity from its influence. At the time, all
of Tata Steel’s output was used for British tanks,
shells and other weaponry to fight WW II. The British
had this notion that Jamshedpur was a highly vulnerable
target for Japanese air attacks, and that if the entire
works, city and townships were to be blanketed under
a cloud of dense black smoke, the Japanese would not
be able to locate us!
In their infinite wisdom, they
conceived the unique plan of having several crude brick-and-mortar
tar boilers, located some 40 ft apart, all over the
works. When lighted at intervals, these would belch
a thick pall of dense black soot and smoke, the purpose
of which being to “hide Jamshedpur”.
Owing to a shortage of men, we
apprentices were tasked with the direct supervision
of a group of such boilers in 8-hour shifts, to ensure
that their operatives did not sleep on duty. For this
special duty, we received an allowance of Rs15 per month.
Jamshedpur did receive a couple of “yellow”
signals from Calcutta, warning of Japanese planes heading
our way, but these turned out to be false alarms. So
we never knew whether our smokescreens served to hide
us or, as is much more likely, act as smoke signals
telling the enemy exactly where we were!
What makes Tata Steel great
These are some of the special attributes that go towards
instilling in all of us the pride of being a part of
“the best company to work for”:
- Its empathy for workers and their families, in
every facet of their lives. Its sense of fair play
and justice when dealing with employees, customers,
suppliers, state agencies and similar bodies.
- Management’s recognition of hard work and
merit of employees and others who work for the company.
Importance accorded to ethical and unblemished performance
in all activities.
- The never-ending quest for expansion and development
of its technological capacities in recent years, including
expansion and acquisition of plants in the same or
allied fields of activity.
- Refusal to rest on its laurels, or be content with
its current status at any point of time.
- Compensation to employees reasonably benchmarked
to industry norms, despite not being at the very top
of the scale.
Uploaded in August, 2007
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