Sophistication to 'desi'

[collections from some of the stories told by my friends in power industry .Utmost care is taken to avoid identities. Any resemblance is purely unintentional and unwarranted]

Sophistication is something for which the man at the receiving end must be sophisticated enough to absorb it in it's true sense. If he is not then the entire finesse will be vaporized in no time and the system becomes 'desi' soon. The man at the helm may not know all the delicacies about to be served on his platter but he must have that much visionary leadership & an inquisitive mind to understand and then give it a fair try to feel the hi-tech sophistication and then enjoy a better work environment and subsequently maintain the new system. The sophisticated bulldozers were all bought 5 years back for deployment at the coal handling plant. It's totally soft controlled from an air conditioned cabin. The drivers were specially trained by the contractor. Soon with in a few years the air tight cabin lost it's beautiful shining look. The painting was an useless expenditure. The AC stopped working. Instead of repairing ,some of the glasses were removed for air flow. The delicate instruments stopped functioning. Finally one day traces of spitting were found inside the cabin. The highly sophisticated bulldozers are now stripped of all the sophisticated functions except the bare necessary job of a 'desi' bulldozer -just bull & push. When it was questioned why all the sophistication is lost ? ' Keya jarurat hai ' (What's the usage ?) was the simple answers given by the section head. Chalta hai - is the culture which goes deadly against the sophistication in the power industries. In a typical power plant - those equipments or those minimum sophistication whose stoppage or malfunction simply stops the generation of electricity only those equipments or sophisticated systems are maintained up-to-date whereas all other equipments whose stoppage or

malfunction does not immediately affect the generation of electricity ,are greatly neglected thereby reducing the degree of sophistication and the long term health of the system. The leader must have a piercing eyes to make a sweeping measure of the entire department and then points out where the sophistication is lacking. It ensures the long term benefit of the system. After all sophistication makes life easier and the society becomes a better place to live. Lets come to some more examples. In a typical Power plant The boiler produces steam , The turbine rotates the generator using steam and the generator while rotating produces electricity. To make the boiler, turbine and generator to talk to each other while doing all the above jobs there is a very sophisticated system called 'Coordinated master control (or CMC) more like the music maestro Jubin Mehta . Once that CMC is in service with all it's finesses a power plant gets a brain of it's own. If the operator does not response promptly in case of emergency the machine is still very safe in the hands of CMC. It will do everything to make the machine run or stop comfortably & safely. The life of the operation engineers become easier. Alas ! I've rarely (perhaps never ) seen any power plant has CMC is in service with all it's finesses. It's the 'chalta hai' culture (read in India) which makes the CMC out and the system 'desi' keeping the old & inefficient operators handling the machines so roughly. Coal Handling Plant or the CHP is the slaughter house of all sophistication. Bring in any sophisticated system and in no time it will become 'desi'. People call it because of coal itself but it's actually the callous attitude of it's people.

In another plant it was observed that the new conveyor pulleys supplied by a big & reputed manufacturing company is breaking apart in a very short time. The pulleys were banned in no time and the old sturdy 'Russian designed' pulleys were put in it's place. On detail inquiry it was found that the associated other pulleys are running jam or with stripping of other sophisticated mechanisms thereby putting huge load on these new designed pulleys thus breaking them apart. The older Russian designs used to sustain because of huge factor of safety , design margin and not to talk of for huge cost. The matter was brought to the notice of the decision makers and they in turn asked for purchasing of old 'Russian designed' pulleys only. The 'desi' style becomes certified.
S. Bera vindhyanagar