A man in a hurry

Like him or lump him, you cannot ignore Mr V.R.S.Natarajan. But for him, you wouldn't probably have noticed BEML in recent times.

No other CEO has probably left his mark on this Defence public sector company as much as he has. For one, the Government put him under suspension to enable fair CBI probe. He is due to retire in three months.

In late 2002, when the then CMD retired, Mr Natarajan literally breezed in from the blue into the then Bharat Earth Movers Ltd's corner room. There were whispers about the surprise outsider: he was not from BEML and he was catapulting ranks.

The post-graduate in social sciences was actually an HR (human resources) man in Electronics Corporation of India Ltd and the now defunct Bharat Gold Mines Ltd. His predecessors, on the other hand, were mostly uniformed or engineers, or both.

Man in a hurry

For the DPSU, living under the apron of bigger, more visible siblings, HAL and BEL, the roller-coaster ride had begun.

BEML was then financially weak. Here was a man in a hurry who wanted results, quickly, no questions brooked. Whips cracked, heads rolled, people were moved, and there was much heartache. Old-timers who have served for four decades under half a dozen CEOs concede that the first thing that had to change was discipline — or the lack of it.

Suddenly productivity and accountability became the buzzwords. No one was spared. The new CEO's disciplinary actions, suspensions, transfers of people (who he said were recalcitrant and anti-BEML) made him many enemies. Some vouch that with his retirement due in September this year, some of those incidents and wound-lickers are coming home to roost for Mr Natarajan now. His name has been dragged into controversies over Army trucks, an ERP contract, housing society allotments among others.

The quick-talking man's work style was brash, in-the-face and nothing like your typical airy corporate honcho.

Some have called him a down to earth man with soft attributes. Some 500 families of the old BGML in Kolar Gold Fields will thank him for converting BGML land into a rail coach unit. And giving them livelihoods in these units.

Going places

Under Mr V.RS. Natarajan (as he curiously spelt his name) BEML changed its name and its course, and it went global. The orders came in, joint ventures happened. The little-known earth-moving equipment maker was suddenly biting big, into coal contracts; into the hip metro-rail business — even into making small planes, (no offence to ‘big bro' HAL).

The goals were set higher, profits came in and BEML was becoming a happening place, with too much to do too soon. Nemesissoon caught up, in the form of the ore trading venture with the Hyderabad-based Mid-West. The Army Chief spoke of someone trying to bribe him to pass the Tatra trucks. The legacy deal has haunted the man for half his tenure. That — and old contracts which surfaced in recent months — have come under the CBI's scanner. Not one to be cowed down, he confidently sent a legal notice to the former Army Chief, demanding an apology for defaming him and his company.

On Monday, when he learnt of his suspension on the television, he said: “I will come out of this case clean.” Will it be ‘bravo'? Or just bravado? We ought to know soon.

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