Riding Two Tigers

This document contains the acknowledgement.

It is a dream of any young professional who enters the corporate world to sit on the Board of these corporates. It’s the culmination of most of their dreams to hang their boots after sitting in Board meetings and participating in the future and present decision-making of these companies they work for, their temples.

Dr. Arup Roy Choudhury has already authored two books, “Management by Idiots” (Mcgraw Hill 2013) and “Delhi’s New Moti Bagh.”
This book is a de-mystified and insider account of the journey through life of Dr. Arup Roy Choudhury, today one of India’s foremost business leaders and change manager, the one who has led both government and private business houses from both terminal closure or saturated mediocrity towards dynamism, growth and prosperity.

Both my parents were born much before India became independent. Theirs was the generation that fought for independence without having any inkling about outcomes and without any expectations in return for their struggle. At the tender age of 13 or 14 years, my father was influenced by the movement. His uncle, a teacher in Ram Mohan Roy Seminary School, was part of the students’ team that tried to hoist the tricolour at Patna Secretariat.

I am a child of the sixties. Back then it was impossible to miss the buzz of the master filmmaker David Lean’s Dr. Zhivago, a Hollywood production with the lead role played with elan by the charismatic Egyptian actor Omar Sharif. Even at the age of 10, I recall that seniors and elders would speak of the book by Boris Pasternak, upon which the film was based, in the milieu and the politics around freedom of speech (or the lack of it) in the erstwhile USSR.

The latter half of the 1970s was a tumultuous period in Indian politics fuelled by a wave of anger towards the Indira Gandhi-led Indian National Congress, which had declared a state of emergency in the nation between 1975 and 1977. In the general election of 1977, held after the Emergency was withdrawn, the Congress lost to the Janata Party, formed by an amalgamation of non-Congress parties and led by Prime Minister Morarji Desai and other leaders.

Baqubah was the capital of the Diyala province in Iraq. For those who may find this of interest, the name originates from the ancient Aramaic words “Bet” (house) and “Yaqub” (Jacob) means “Jacob’s house”. Economic activity was always agri-centred because of the proximity to both the Diyala River (a major tributary of the Tigris) and the Al Adhem River.

I recall the flight back to India on Air India… it was exciting. I felt all grown up having dealt with real life project management and inter-personal managerial situations. After a heady immersion into my chosen profession, that too in a distant land, I thought to myself on my flight back that there was much to catch up on.

The process of breaking of the mould of bachelordom is a berthing into a new life. The Sangeet and the bachelor parties of today which happen before a marriage, celebrate the persons entering this new phase of life.

There are two schools of thought that a young professional encounters when starting work life at the middle management. Being middle management is actually akin to being a filler in a sandwich. You can get bitten from the top and bottom. It is a level where you are exposed to the senior management of the company who are dominating and expecting a lot of work from you whereas you have a group of young people who are precious but very raw material who have to be molded by you to deliver what is expected by the management. They realise this is not an easy task.

Around this mid 1990s, the working environment, especially the economic environment in India had changed. Pursuant to the liberalisation of the economy in 1991, the financial position of employees in the public sector vis-à-vis other sectors changed substantially. The Pay Commission was still under consideration and within the salaries of the public sector executives, it was difficult to meet requirements even for small families like the one I had – being myself, my wife and son. I did not need to support my parents.

My Life with DLF:
After returning from Malaysia in 1994, we went through the most different phases in our life, financially. For the first time, income and expenditure on the ‘house-hold’ accounts could not be matched. There were two reasons for this. One was that staying in Malaysia had having loosened our purse strings and the positive conversion of the Malaysian Ringgit put us into a habit of spending freely while on vacation in India.

Well, I spoke in some detail of having to live with a “Lala“ when you worked in private enterprise and I also talked about how important a Lala is for a business.

What can you say about a person who came to my life at my stage of “ignorant” bliss and has stayed with me since then? Even now, I can feel his existence all around me and his tight grip over my destiny, as it goes along with its ups and downs although he is no more since 1999.

For most of us who start their career in the public sector, a dream is nurtured, that of becoming Chairman & Managing Director of a public sector company, at some stage. This happened to me when I noticed an advertisement for the post of Chairman & Managing Director in National Buildings Construction Corporation Ltd. (NBCC) and applied for the job. I was a very casual applicant since I believed that such positions were not advertised but persons were selected through internal PSU’s system of selection. However, this post was advertised, I was informed that two successive efforts earlier had not given any positive result. While I met with the basic requirements on technical front and qualification, I then just 44 years of age, one year less than the age requirement advertised of 45 years. However, I did not give much thought after I sent in the application.

When I joined NBCC, I was absolutely new to lead a Public Sector Company, leave aside a sick Public Sector. Although I had realised the precarious position about the company that I had joined, I for one decided to take the bull by the horn rather than shying away from a good fight.

Education is a training laboratory for applying in the world outside the laboratory. The courses a student takes on at various education institutions at different levels actually work like a preparatory school for the real world. It is meant to take you softly while inculcating you with basic values, beliefs and education to enable you to take baby steps into the Indian and global corporate work. It will also be a fall-back referenced point at any time when you feel that you are losing your way in the rat-race to the top.

Well, I have been learning from what I have written in the earlier chapters and applied directly in my life. This chapter is to revalidate what I have practised. My almost 15 years of heading business enterprise under different Lalas yielded some positive results as given below. Records are bound to be broken and some practising manager will in future overwrite this record, I am sure.

The document contains recognition.

The document contains Important Responsibilities Handled.