Shubha Madhukar

Clean and smooth roads, blossoming tall trees and greenery, uninterrupted water and power supply, and a 24x7 helpline — just some of the highlights of the work that Jamshedpur Utilities and Services Company (Jusco) has been doing in Jamshedpur

The citizens of Jamshedpur don't want their town to be run democratically. In fact, had a referendum been held, they would have long ago vetoed the very idea of a municipal corporation to run their city.

It may sound like a paradox, but when the Jharkhand government issued a notification asking for objections and suggestions for a municipal corporation to run Jamshedpur recently, six lakh people signed a memorandum against its formation. In itself a huge number; it becomes gargantuan when you realise that the number of people likely to be affected by the decision was 10 lakh, of which a sizeable proportion was children, who were not eligible to vote.

Why don't Jamshedpur's people want a municipal corporation? Because they trust Jusco to take care of their civic services. Clean and smooth roads, blossoming tall trees and greenery all around, uninterrupted water and power supply, and a 24x7 helpline — Jusco Sahyog — to take care of grievances if any, are just some of the reasons that people have so much confidence in its services.

Jusco was formed in August 2003, by hiving off the Town Division of Tata Steel, which had been providing municipal services to the township since it was set up in 1907. Today, Jusco does more than just provide municipal services within the 14,000-acre area of the township. Its services include water and wastewater management, power supply, public health and horticulture services, as well as planning, engineering and construction.

In each of these service areas, Jusco has made a mark. The water supplied and the effluents discharged conform to Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and World Health Organisation (WHO) norms. Jamshedpur is among the cleanest and greenest cities in India, and the company has received the environment management system (EMS) ISO certification for adhering to international standards in maintaining the township. It is also the only city in South East Asia to be selected by the United Nations to participate in its Global Compact Cities Pilot Programme.

Jusco has achieved all these and other feats, but it is not resting on its laurels. Driven by the values of integrity, excellence, respect for the individual, credibility, trusteeship and agility, the company is planning to enter into strategic alliances to improve its services and acquire expertise. It is also ready to spread its reach beyond Jamshedpur, to other cities.

In a freewheeling interview, Jusco managing director, Sanjiv Paul speaks about the foundation, functioning, focus areas and future plans of Jusco. Paul joined Tata Steel as a graduate trainee. He has studied metallurgy and, for the better part of his life, he used to make steel. He has been at the helm of Jusco since its inception.

For long, Tata Steel had been providing municipal services to the citizens of Jamshedpur. Why was it necessary to form a separate company?
At Tata Steel, we felt that the time was right for a utility and infrastructure services company that manages not just power distribution, water and sewerage, but also manages services like municipal solid waste management, maintenance of townships including roads, street lights, parks and gardens, as well as infrastructure development in the township.

The citizens of our country are becoming conscious of their rights and demanding better urban services. By making it a separate corporation, Tata Steel could enable Jusco to leverage its experience in Jamshedpur to provide similar services beyond it.

In power, we are one of the better-managed utilities in the country. However, we plan to limit ourselves to Jamshedpur and its surroundings at present and concentrate on improving the quality of life of citizens in this region.

On the infrastructure front, we have recently won the bid to develop and manage the first SEZ in Jharkhand at Adityapur. We would be leveraging the experience we have gained in developing and managing a full-fledged township like Jamshedpur to win business beyond it.

Today, most utilities in the country do not have a fair idea of their UFW. Most do not have a reliable bulk metering system to understand that. Our estimate for utilities in India that have existed for more than 25 years is that 50 per cent of the water they supply goes unaccounted for. Basically, this means that 50 per cent of the volume of water collected from source (river, wells etc) and subsequently treated at treatment plants leaks out on its way to customers' taps or is stolen and not paid for.

The situation was no different in Jamshedpur. The moment we became Jusco and water became a means of our livelihood, we got working on trying to understand our UFW. We installed state-of-the-art electromagnetic bulk meters at strategic locations. This enabled us to receive accurate information on losses on a real-time basis. This coupled with usage of various leak detection mechanisms and a focused group working on this measure facilitated reduction in UFW at Jamshedpur drastically.

In the last two years our UFW (potable / drinking water) — from the river to the treatment plant — has come down from 11 per cent to 6 per cent. Up till the water towers, it is down from 23 per cent to 6 per cent.

What measures did you take to check the loss of water?
In a utility where most of the pipelines are underground, leakages are not visible. Our network is around 550 km or more, and we did not really focus on leakages and losses till we put in a process for measuring it. The moment we realised the quantum of losses, we started looking for and plugging the leakages. Procedures like this call for great commitment, which is unfortunately not visible in most of the urban local bodies that manage these services, which therefore suffer huge losses.

This is not just the story of India. Recently, as part of the World Bank water and sanitation programme, nine CEOs of various water supply outfits from Pakistan and Bangladesh visited the utilities we manage in Jamshedpur. It was easy to make out that they were quite impressed. Their performance is not any better than the utilities here. Most developing countries suffer from this syndrome because water is not treated as a distinct sector. There is a penchant for creating assets, but not enough focus on either managing these or recovering the cost of service from the consumer.

How does Jusco plan to move ahead in the water sector?
The water sector, like other municipal services, falls in the domain of Urban Local Bodies (ULB), which are effectively the third tier of government. Each is governed by its own set of byelaws in an untenable situation where the policy maker, regulator and the service delivery provider happen to be the same agency — the ULB. With the announcement of the Jawahar Lal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (NURM), the Central Government has tried to provide incentives to ULB which reform by allocating funds for development of their towns / cities. Reform would mean segregating the service delivery provider from the policy maker and regulator, charging full cost of service to the consumer and creating an enabling environment for private sector to participate in municipal and urban infrastructure development and its management.

Jusco is trying to position itself as the only corporation in the private sector which has experience in developing as well as managing urban infrastructure and municipal service for a full-fledged township. So far we had been concentrating on consolidating our services in Jamshedpur to showcase it as an example of our capability. Our first steps beyond this domain have been encouraging. To state an example, the Haldia Development Authority has already signed an MOU with Jusco to lease its water assets to us for a period of ten years. Negotiations are underway to finalise this contract and we are hopeful that it will get operational soon. We expect NURM to open up many more such opportunities for organisations like ours.

Is Jusco a one-of-its-kind company?
I do not know of any company in India at present that looks after management of urban infrastructure and municipal services in an integrated fashion like Jusco though there are many good companies which look at various individual aspects of municipal services and infrastructure development. We must realise that huge investment will be required to bring urban infrastructure up to speed in India. With the advent of NURM, ULB will reform and attract the private sector. It will not take much for the big boys in the corporate sector to jump in the fray and we are already seeing some of them getting active. There will be plenty of competition, some of it coming from multinationals as well.

What do you see as Jusco's main challenges?
Our biggest challenge is to upgrade the quality of services we provide in Jamshedpur and showcase it as a well-managed township. Simultaneously (and paradoxically), the other equally big challenge is to grow beyond Jamshedpur and gain credibility in the eyes of our potential customers that we are not Jamshedpur-centric only.

What are your future growth plans?
Our primary focus is to grow in the water sector. We are also looking very keenly at the townships that will come up when Tata Steel grows beyond Jamshedpur. There are plans to set up three steel plants: one near Jamshedpur, another in Chhattisgarh and a third at Kalinganar in Orissa. We are hoping to win our share of work as and when these townships come up.

Uploaded on August 4, 2006