Unsung heros of India

Vini does her MCA from IGNOU (www.ignou.ac.in) Open University. Upon completion of her project for the 5th semester she was summoned to the Pune regional center for a viva. It was on the 18th April at 11:00 AM. Very early considering we had to get there from Mumbai. I decided to tag along as it would b e a good break and a nice day out together .

However it sounded quite normal thanks to the large VOLVO network operating on the Mumbai Pune expressway by Neeta and a couple of other players. The fantastic and mighty B7R Volvo has changed the entire landscape of traveling by bus to short and long distances. Last year we used it to go to Aurangabad for a vacation. Just go to any of those travel agents who have put up a Neeta Volvo sign. See the chart to see your choice of seats and he gives a call to the Neeta HQ to book it – simple. No queue, no other details. He gives his own receipt with the date of travel and the seat numbers. We started in a 05:45 am bus from Andheri Station and sharp at 09:00 am we were inside the IGNOU RC center in Pune. Of course a lot of help from Noopur and her Brother In Law who stays in Pune and gave his clear details on where to get off and how to go there.

As Indian's we are so pessimistic about how the country is run, how the infrastructure is bad and the politicians corrupt. To me the Mumbai - Pune expressway is an example of what India can achieve. It is a masterpiece of Engineering, just like the Konkan railway project. Just shows that all it takes is some focused thinking and commitment.

That doubled with the enterprising spirit shown by Indians. The Volvo bus services are a shining example of that, made possible by someone who is just 10th pass, non-MBA who started off as a small tours and travel agency booking hotels and then going on to run some deluxe/luxury bus service on the old bad highways. seizing opportunity; thanks to the bad State Transport service and pathetic over booked train services; apply some common sense and they go ahead to buy a fleet of those fantastic B7R Volvos - nothing less than Rs. 50 lakhs a piece or more.

It is amazing to see how a whole industry is suddenly born, with a huge network of travel agents across all the small towns and cities continuously on the phone with an army of street guys crawling all over looking for people to fill those buses with. Fantastic highway hotel joints like Nishi Sagar spring up which have good clean toilets (The first I saw which had more water than urine on the floor). The network includes these eating joins, petrol pumps, travel agents - so many tiny pieces to make the big jig saw complete.

The drivers and are extremely ordinary people; living in some shanties; mostly migrated from the villages of UP, Bihar or interior Maharashtra - driving a B7R Volvo. The so called logistics coordinators on the bus who taps in to the entire network to fill that bus I think single handedly achieves what complex logistics software based used by a DHL or a FedEx; networking with all the travel agents before a bus reaches a site where agents are already looking out for prospective customers. It is really amazing to see this.

We were adventurous and so caught an Asiad from Pune to Lonavala. It was exactly the opposite of a Volvo. Nuts and bolts shaking etc. , but a great experience on one hand to zoom on the expressway in an AIR suspension VOLVO at 100+ kmph and a state transport Asiad on ordinary Truck suspension at at best 60 kmph.

We caught a VOLVO from Lonavala. At 03:00 PM on a Tuesday afternoon it was running full. The travel agent we were at was a 4x4 feet joint who was on the phone getting information from his men at strategic bus halts taking information about empty seats available and so on. No CRM or ERP or web bases system or a complex WAN network , just a Reliance phone !

I guess India is different in so many ways and no amount of Pizza Hut and Coke business models from Harvard will ever be able to achieve such ingenious economies of scale. I am sure - give this whole Neeta Volvo business to the big shot IIM-B who was paid the highest ever salary during campus recruitment, and he will successfully screw it in some weeks. Common Sense and business acumen I guess only comes from being street smart, not just being an IIM or another B-School graduate.

The fun is to see how these private entrepreneurs force the dinos in the State Transport to wake up and take lessons from them. I saw a couple of VOLVO buses of the MSRTC (Maharastra State Road Transport Corporation) under the flagship of Shivneri running the same route. The same effect which forced the BEST in Mumbai to buckle up and introduce AC buses after loosing revenue to the pioneering concept of the Limnouzine bus service. Another news I hear is that even the railways are now facing heat from low fare airlines and are now working up strategy to face this threat.

IGNOU is yet another example; this time of government initiative. A concept of an University where anyone can take admission; age, location no bar; no need for any reservations for any section of the society. A lot of premium courses which ordinarily are class room courses with universities are available . Vanita and me do our MCA from IGNOU. The course content is fantastic, the faculty imparting it range from bad to worse, all up to your personal enterprising nature to pick up the contents and make sense of it and sit for the tough exams which are again high class.

It is amazing to see how the university carries itself from various shacks around India. Pune RC 16 is a typical example. It is run from the 1st floor of some Krishi Bhavan or something like that next to the Pune Passport Office (which is again a shack !). It was diagonally opposite to the famous Symbiosis management institue.Quite a contrast between two worlds again IGNOU Vs Symbiosis !!

The office is bare bones run completely by some babus who operate from in roughtly around 3000 sq. feet of office space with old school files and cupboards piled around the place. Vanita had her viva done peacefully. The next people who came in for the noon vivas were not so lucky as we heard, for some sr. vice chancellor level person came in for surprise vivas. It is amazing to see how in spite of poor infrastructure setup, poor delivery methods a world class MCA course is run across the cities and towns and villages of India and at some points there are controls to weed out students who will really not be qualified to be MCAs.

The MCA course is delivered through a tie up with the Karrox Ghatkopar center in Mumbai, where again it is run in Govenment Style administration under one Abhay “Sir”. The ACs don’t work – Pentium computers running pirated Windows 95/98 OS with old sticky keyboards. The classrooms are typical coaching class desin with optimized seating for 50 in a room meant for 20.. There are faculties’ lke Bhupendra and Niraj on one hand who are self styled Wizards at teaching; and there are faculties like Sachin on the other hand who balance out the good work put in by Bhupendra.

Despite such adversity, not once have I seen the grey areas being used as opportunities for undertable transactions nor have I seen the process being circumvented. It is truly amazing.

I guess these are the unsung heros of India, one class who innovate bring a revolution in something and set a trend and others who cause no revolution neither do they help evolution, but they run a system with slow but able administration.They are not the Patels and the Gandhis of India, but in their own way and style they contribute to India's progress. They dont make the best systems which can be compared to an Oxford or Cambridge - but they ensure that the system which exists runs as smoothly as it can without collapsing. They do not bring a revolution nor do they bring about any evolution. Just like disciplined workers in a giant steel factory or maybe soldiers in the army, they just keep the system going.