The Hindu Business Line : R.P. Singh — Walking the unconventional path

WHEN you expect a typical, bureaucratic sarkari environment littered with files and chai glasses and instead walk into a plush, paperless, spanking clean building flanked by a Satish Gujral sculpture on one side and a well-tended rose garden on the other, you know the man at the wheel is different. A public sector undertaking may be subjected to all kinds of pressures but to make its environs even better than a multinational's is definitely not one of them. It is obvious that the person responsible for transporting power across the country also means business on his own home turf — the Power Grid Corporation of India.

Mr R.P. Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, admits that he is a man in a hurry, wanting to complete every project he undertakes well in advance. And that is exactly what has stood him in good stead over the almost one decade of his innings at the helm of the transmission major.

"I'm not hard working, I'm a good manager," he says candidly. The organisation has grown six times with a manpower increase of only 21 per cent, which speaks volumes for his managerial abilities and his ability to think out of the box and find solutions that go a long way. "We decided to go in for high tech automation, which decreased our need for adding too much manpower," he explains.

His non-conservative ways have also contributed to the power transmission system growing in an integrated manner over the years, with virtually no major grid failure in the past three years. So much so that Power Grid has had team visits from the US, Japan and China to study how it manages such a large-scale transmission network.

Mr Singh advocates a public-private partnership for future power projects and is in the process of executing a joint venture project with the Tatas in Bhutan. "The project is going on smoothly and IFC, the World Bank's private arm, is on record saying that this kind of partnership has not happened anywhere,'' he says revealing that there are others too in the pipeline.

On the personal front too, Mr Singh does not hesitate in non-conventional decisions. In fact, every career move that he has made was initially opposed by family and friends.

"I started with the Tatas in their graduate training scheme in 1970 and when I decided to join NTPC in 1977 at one-third the salary, there were objections. But the exposure I got there was tremendous."

In NTPC, Mr Singh was known as the `Steel Man' and when he shifted to the power division and then again to the unknown entity — Power Grid — that was to come up, he didn't find too many supporters.

"But I loved the challenge of a new organisation and as I look back I can say that we have taken all kinds of risks and have succeeded. Today, we are creating competitors for ourselves by involving private players,'' he says and his colleagues agree. "More than routine work, it is the challenges that excites him," said a colleague, adding that the boss loved to see his projects grow and bloom.

Mr Singh's personal interests involve seeing other things bloom as well. He is a keen gardener, considering he comes from a land owning family of Bihar, and ensures that every project site is totally green. He has a penchant for walking too and carries his joggers in the car hoping for a chance to take a quick stroll.

And, walking offers the only break from the daily grind since vacations are few and far between. The last time he took a week's break with his wife in Coorg way back in 1997, he recalls, he was promptly called back to New Delhi the day he landed due to a grid problem.

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page