(j) 10th Posting - MD, Spinning Mills

My next appointment was as the Managing Director for two upcoming Spinning Mills in the cooperative sector. The Mills were named the Kangsabati Co-operative Spinning Mills Ltd. for  Barjora, Bankura, and the Tamralipta Co-operative Spinning Mills Ltd for Midnapore, with headquarters for both in Calcutta.

I joined my post on the 6th of August 1982. Both the Mills were then, so to say, at an embryo stage.

There was a joint administrative office with one re-employed officer of the Handloom Directorate as an Administrative Officer and a couple of staff on deputation. The office used to sit in a small cubical within the premise of another Govt office in Calcutta. The director of Handloom & Textile was the Chairman of the Managing Committee for both mills. The committees consisted of members nominated by the State Govt. 

My first task was to find office accommodation and the staff for the office. I obtained names of eligible candidates from the Employment Exchange to appoint the staff for the office. A selection board set up for the purpose had selected the candidates by an interview.

Meanwhile, I hired accommodation for the office and appointed a part-time Chartered Accountant for Accounts.  The Chartered Accountant was an honest man. I did not have to worry much about the account matters. 

After the office had started functioning, I also purchased a Jeep for the Project site for efficient supervision and coordination with local authorities.

The project cost for each mill was around ₹ 801 lakhs as per the original estimates. The State Govt was to provide 50% of it in the form of equity participation; of the balance, a part would come as soft loans from NCDC (National Co-operative Development Corporation), and the rest as term loan from a consortium of IDBI, IFCI & ICICI. 

Later, the State Govt sanctioned a scheme for bringing water to the mills from off-site sources at an initial cost of ₹ 27 lakhs. This amount would be outside the project cost and was to be financed entirely by the State Govt. The availability of water, an essential item for running a spilling mill, was not looked into at the time of formulation of the project.

After setting up the office, I proceeded to take possession of the land selected for the Mills at Borjora and Midnapore before my joining. The architect for designing the structures and overseeing the construction work, also appointed before I joined the organisation, was already in position. I felt1 it was not prudent to rely solely on a private architect in such voluminous construction activities. I considered having some senior engineers on deputation from the government for proper and adequate supervision. 

Accordingly, the Managing Committee created a post of an Executive Engineer for the two Societies to supervise and monitor the construction activities. Later, I got an Executive Engineer on deputation from the State PWD to hold the post. To my good fortune, he was an honest man. I also got the situation for an Assistant Engineer created for each of the Mills and had two Assistant Engineers on deputation from the Govt against these posts for day-to-day supervision of the civil construction work. The Assistant Engineers worked under the control of the Executive Engineer.

The orders for the spinning machines with capacities of 50000 spindles for each of the Mills, too, had been placed with Texmaco before I had joined. The Mills had also paid a part of the cost of machinery in confirmation of the order. I did not find any reason for such a hurried action in placing orders for the machines when there was no infrastructure to install them, even the land was not in possession, and there was nothing to be gained by way of discount or price protection for early placement of the orders. 

Later, when I was in charge of the project, the supplier company came up with a proposal for delivering the machines. The proposal, if accepted,  would require Mills to pay the entire balance cost of the machinery. The civil work at the site had then just started. It had a long way to go before the building for the installation of the machines was ready. The Company had offered to keep the machinery in their custody after delivery and untill the buildings were ready for installation. The Company's proposal came to me through the then Chairman of the Societies. There was nothing in the proposal for the Mills but everything for the supplier company. It was a design by the supplier to secure the full payment of the cost of the machines. I strongly opposed the proposal in consideration of various factors that would go against the interests of the Mills and placed the matter with my reasons and views to the Chairman. 

One morning, after my views on the company's above proposal were known, a couple of senior officers of the supplier company met me in my office for a discussion on the matter. When I told them there was nothing further to discuss, they tacitly offered to sponsor a visit for myself and my family in any State of my choice. I contemptuously rejected the offer. The proposal of the company did not find its approval.

After taking over possession of the lands, when I got ready for the initiation of the civil construction work, it came to my knowledge that there was a cardinal constraint for both the mills: water required for the production was not available at the sites. It was indispensably necessary to make separate arrangements for water if the mills were to come up. I immediately brought the matter to the knowledge of the Govt. The Government decided to have schemes to get water by pipelines from the river Damodar at Durgapur through a distance of 12 km to the mill site at Borjora and from the river Kangsabati through ½-1 Km to the mill site at Midnapore. The Government entrusted their Public Health Engineering Department with the planning and execution of the scheme. The funds for these schemes would come from the State Government budget. It would not be a part of the project cost. By this decision, the state government would also have to bear,  apart from the cost of execution of the scheme, considerable recurring expenses to run and maintain these pipelines once they became operational. It is a classic example of an ill-conceived project burdening the exchequer with additional funds for survival. When selecting the site, nobody cared to see if the sites had the basic requirements for running the mills. As far as I remember, the initial estimated cost for the pipeline scheme was ₹ 27 lakhs.  

The Co-operative Spinning Mills had an All India body called the All India Federation of Co-operative Spinning Mills Ltd (AIFCOSPIN) located in Mumbai. The Federation had experts who helped the Spinning Mills authorities in the preparation of the Project Report, selection of machinery, and the appraisal of the project by the financial institutions on payment of consultancy charges. Our Spinning Mills, too,  were the members of this body. The services of the apex body were utilised for the preparation of the project reports, selection of machinery, appraisal of the project, etc., for our two mills, too. I was surprised that this expert body associated with the preparation of the project report did not mention anything about the absence of water at the sites. The experts of AIFCOSPIN did not perhaps visit the site, which they should have while examining the feasibility.

Anyway, I visited the Federation office in Mumbai once with my Chairman in connection with the affairs of the mills and to attend the AGM of the Federation. 

I also visited NCDC (National Co-operative Development Corporation), headquartered in Delhi, about the sanction of NCDC loan for the Mills.  We had received the sanction before I departed from the project.

My activities during my tenure as Managing Director here read as follows: 

(1) setting up infrastructural facilities, like an office with supporting staff and officers, making arrangements for land and water for the mills, etc., to start with.

(2) Negotiations with All India financial institutions viz., IDBI, IFCI, ICICI for term-loan arrangement and the appraisal of the project by these institutions for the purpose

(3) The finalisation of contracts for Civil/Electrical work, Humidification plants, and Textile machinery, the initial part of the last one done before my joining.

(4) Overall supervision of construction activities and,

(5) Exercising administrative and financial control as the Chief Executive.

It was a special kind of multifaceted project, which very few middle-level civil servants would have the opportunity to head. I could enrich my knowledge to a great extent by working as the head of this project at its implementation stage. I was the head of the project for more than four years and remained involved in every aspect of it.

I left these organisations on March 2, 1987, to join my new post of Deputy Secretary to the Govt. of West Bengal in the Commerce and Industries Department.

The construction work of the factory was then in an advanced stage, and the appraisal of the project by the financial institutions was complete. 

I had so long been working from my rented house at Baranagore.  When still there, I got an allotment of a Govt. flat in a newly constructed housing complex named Minto Park Govt Housing Estate, at 247/1 Lower Circular Road, on the fourth of December 1982.

It was due to a Senior Colleague of mine, Mr Khagendra Nath Bhowmick, that I could get this allotment. Mr Bhowmick was the Deputy Secretary of the Housing Department dealing with the allotments of flats to the Govt officers. My sincerest gratitude goes to Mr Bhowmick. 

The flat was in a multistoried building in a posh locale.  It was on the sixth floor overseeing the Racecourse and the Victoria Memorial. Numbered as 68, it was well-ventilated and open to a beautiful landscape. We moved to this flat on Jan 14, 1983, and stayed there until we shifted to our own flat in the Prangan Cooperative housing estate in Salt Lake on the first of June 1997. My mother had died here after a brief illness due to a fractured femur. The memory of my stay here brings me both pain and pleasure. It was here I had met with the most unwarranted situation in life brought about by an ADC to the Governor in his attempt to trespass on my house to settle score in official matters. I have described it in detail on the page of my Rajbhawan posting. It was, here again, I had lost something precious, the memory of which I still cherish deeply in my heart. I got and declined my first-time promotion to the IAS from here for some compelling reasons. I had also joined the IAS after refusing the promotion twice earlier when here; the early part of my service in the IAS again was attended to from here only. My younger daughter had suffered a severe gastro-enteric attack requiring hospitalization when we were here. My eldest maternal uncle, Baramama (now deceased), and his daughters came from Bangladesh to visit us here. His younger brother, my Kutumama, too, came from Silchar with his daughters on a visit to us here. My cousin Dipu came here from Bangladesh with his newly married wife, Jhuma. Again, it was from here I had given my youngest sister-in-law, who had formed a part of my family for a pretty long time, in marriage. It was again from here my younger daughter started her school life. This house, therefore, shares many memories of my Calcutta life.

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