E.Sreedharan
How many people in Delhi - or, for that matter, Kerala know a man called Elattuvalappil Sreedharan? He is 70, and logically should have retired a long time ago with enough achievements to boast about to his grandchildren.
But E.Sreedharan is still going strong,and has to his eternal credit the feat of having built the Konkan Railway, which dramatically reduced the Mumbai-Kochi distance by one third. The ‘expert’ opinion had been that the project was not feasible from the physical, economical as well as the environmental perspective. There were PILs filed, processions taken out. Sreedharan defied them all and built India’s first, genuine railway project of any notable size after the British.
He did not stop there. Everybody laughed when plans to build a metro rail in Delhi were announced. The chaos even a small, one-line metro in Kolkata had caused for a decade and a half were common knowledge. But Sreedharan took up the project, which is now progressing ahead of schedule and without making a tenth of the mess the construction of an ordinary flyover creates in Delhi.With the Delhi Metro, Sreedharan has created a system that is a technological marvel as well as an example of successful corporate culture.
This unwavering dedication and focus are qualities that go back to his childhood in Chattanur, Palakkad. The quest for excellence came naturally to Sreedharan. In school, he would vie with T.N. Seshan, the former Chief Election Commissioner of India,to come first in class. He later studied at the Victoria College in Palghat and then graduated as an engineer from the Government Engineering College, Kakinada (now JNTU). After a short tenure as a lecturer in Civil engineering at the Kerala Polytechnic in Kozhikode and a year at the Bombay Port Trust as an apprentice, he joined the Indian Railways in its Service of Engineers. This was through a nation-wide selection procedure and his first assignment was in the Southern Railway as a Probationary Assistant Engineer in December 1954. He first came to the limelight in 1963 as a 31 year old executive engineer of the Southern Railway, restoring the Pamban bridge connecting the Rameshwaram island with mainland Tamil Nadu, which had given way under a lashing tidal wave. The Railways set a target of six months for the bridge to be repaired while Sreedharan's boss, under whose jurisdiction the bridge came, reduced it to three months. Sreedharan was put in-charge of the execution and he restored the bridge in 46 days! The Railway minister's Award was given to him in recognition of this achievement.
In 1970, as the Deputy Chief Engineer, he was put in charge of implementation, planning and design of the Calcutta metro, the first ever metro in India. Cochin Shipyard launched Rani Padmini, the first ship it built, when he was its Chairman and Managing Director (CMD). He retired from Indian Railways in 1990.
Though he retired, the Government was reluctant to let go of his services and Sreedharan was appointed the CMD of Konkan Railway on contract in 1990. Under his stewardship, the company executed its mandate in seven years. The project was unique in many respects. It was the first major project in India to be undertaken on a BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) basis; the organisation structure was different from that of a typical Indian Railway set-up; the project had 93 tunnels along a length of 82 km and involved tunneling through soft soil. The total project covered 760 km and had over 150 bridges. That a public sector project could be completed without significant cost and time overruns was considered an astounding achievement by many.
Sreedharan was not through yet. He was made the managing director of Delhi Metro and by mid-2005, all the scheduled sections were completed by their target date or before and within their respective budgets. Sreedharan was given the sobriquet of 'Metro Man' by the media. In 2005, he was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) by the government of France. He had announced that he would retire by the end of 2005, but his tenure has been extended by another three years to oversee the completion of the second phase of Delhi Metro.
Success and virtue- a rare combination in today's world. But they run side by side in Sreedharan's life - like rail tracks.
Labels: Famous children
posted by Vicky @ 3:42 PM
1 Comments:
Could Mr. E. Sreedharan help us hapless Mumbaiites? Now after building 3 skywalks at Bandra, Khar and Vile Parle at the cost of Rs.42 crores, the MMRDA has decided to demolish them in order to make way for the second Metro line that will connect Charkop in the West to Mankhurd in the East! The height of the Metro is placed at 5.5 mts and the skywalks are 6 mts high. Hence the MMRDA has to get rid of these 3 skywalks.
In the first place, the public hardly uses these costly skywalks. Now they will be pulled down. I'm quite sure that after that they will re-build these costly skywalks once again irrespective of whether the public uses them or not. Who is to bear the cost of these demolished skywalks, the demolition itself? The taxpayers! The people responsible for the colossal waste of public funds should be brought to book.
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