In this post we travel to a small place in India called Jamshedpur in the east.  India’s first steel city now in Jharkhand,  a coal & ore rich belt of India amidst jungles, tribals, Maoists. An interesting mix.

The airport at Jamshedpur is just a small flying club with a small landing  strip and a 2 storey house called ATC and passenger area. In the days of Air Decaan, there used to be one fllght from Kolkatta alone, which is a 3 hour distance by train.  So It hardly take 25 minutes by small aircraft. As you wait in the drawing room of the house, porters shift your luggage manually from the aircraft. A very very short drive from the airport & you are in your house/hotel and that’s one great advantage. Its rightly said –small is beautiful.

The township layout is quite different from one we are used to at BHEL., Trichy. There are no boundaries. Suddenly you find colonies and suddenly you find hotels, shops, traders and all the private flats and houses etc. Both are interspersed and intermixed. Since the city is being maintained (power, road & water) by Tatas (JUSCO)  it makes it easier for administration.

During our school days, if we needed a clarke’s table, the only way to buy it was to travel to Trichy and get it or ask a bus student to get it for us. That was the distance between colony and the markets. I still remember the rebuke from our teacher that township students assume all bus students are next to book stores in maingaurd gate. At Jamshedpur, markets are just 2 or 3 streets away for a kid to bicycle around. A good model of area development.

Everything about Jamshedpur is about Tatas-TISCO,Telco and a host of Tata companies. Nothing much to see around if you are as a tourist. Tisco is steeped in history.and people are really proud about it. I personally feel that a little bit of reality shake from their resting on past glory would do much better for the Tata’s here.

Tata’s hierarchy has quite a few tamilians and mallus who are famous seconds to the frontline figures; and many more down the line. As a result there are a couple of  popular south Indian 70-100 seater restaurants which are fully crowded with north Indians morning to night. You will never miss home food here - complete with sambar, rasam, kootu, poriyal,  etc. Evening chaat centres with aloo tikkis, paani puri’s. Gulab jamuns and hot jilebi’s are not to be missed.

The womenfolk of Jharkhand are... Ssh.Ssh. Stop.stop. stop.

I follow and ask my people to follow a ten commandment guideline at work and personal lives. The fourth commandment tells about humbleness and handling success. I give them two of my favourite  examples: 1. Lalit Modi – One time IPL convenor who showed BCCI on how to mint money through cricket, but now languishing between court cases and out of BCCI. 2. Sarath Fonseka the Srilankan army chief – who has a unique distinction of completely decimating  the opponent down to the last man  in what was once one of worlds deadly gureilla warfare opponents. No other army chief in the world can take this credit. Now he is languishing in jails separated from family, kids abroad in unsecure condition etc.

Both had gigantic success; but did not handle it with care. It went into their heads, mistook the success as theirs and challenged the very establishment whose support was actually the one that was instrumental in achieving this success.

Jamshedpur brings us the third example in this important management concept in Russi Modi – a larger than life figure in Indian steel industry, Tatas & Jamshedpur. He was the heart, brain, lungs right and left hand of JRD himself. One could not imagine Tata steel or Tatas without Rusi.

All that life long achievement vanished in short time – just because he failed in a real life test on a subject called “Change Management” (again – one of my favourite topics ).When JRD’s  successor was being named, he couldn’t accept it. He started publicly challenging and disparaging the very establishment he built. He lost the public elections miserably, where he should have been elected unanimously. Mistaking the root cause of success is a common folly at work place.

Winning a guerrilla warfare is easier than winning a political game. This applies to our work life at office. Politics at office is a huge energy drainer. Never challenge your drowsy sleepy establishment though you have bought them all the laurels. You can never win the blood bath against an establishment.

All the three once successful personalities have left us one lesson: Forget Not Thy Ladder.

This post was first written in 2012 & today(2017)  a Tamilian heads Tata Group.My prophecy has come true.