[India Today]

Published date: 31st Jul 1982

September 1981 to go into the question of revising the rates of forest produce. The eight-member committee, chaired by the chief secretary, consisted of the advocate-general, the chief conservator of forests (general) and the secretaries of forests, commerce and industry, law and parliamentary affairs and finance. Said a member: “It was purely a fictional committee. It was formed so that there would be no embarrassment to Rao when the new rates were decided. If a problem arose he could blame the committee.”

The committee was asked to submit its report within a fortnight of its formation but for “various reasons” its term was extended thrice, before it finally submitted its report on April 20, 1982. A committee member surprisingly said: “The delay was mainly because we decided that the chief minister should approve the rates before we make our recommendations.” The revised rates suggested a drastic reduction: eucalyptus was ‘ brought down from Rs 810 to Rs 205; bamboo from Rs 180 to Rs 120 and softwood from Rs 900 to Rs 470. Even then the industry is complaining and Feroz Asghar Ali, president, South Indian Plywood Industries said: “The new rates would result in half the units being closed by next year.”

By lowering the rate the Government will lose a total of Rs 12 crore. Harihar Polyfibres itself will save a total of Rs 3.79 crore if it lifts the 67,000 tonnes of eucalyptus that it consumed last year. The two paper industries, West Coast and Mysore Paper Mills will save Rs 76 lakh because of the reduction in bamboo prices. The plywood industry which used 1.16 lakh cubic metres last year will save a total of Rs 4.64 crore. The new rates have prospective effect as it was realised that the amendment could not have retrospective effect.

The Law Department is now trying to introduce a new rule so that it can be implemented. If it is unable to clear this legal hurdle, the total loss to the Government for the one-year-and-five-month period during which the rates were stayed would be Rs 22 crore (if it is the old rate) and at least Rs 5 crore under the new rate.
The PAC found that the considerable delay in taking a £ha1 decision on the rates was “abnormal and totally without justification”. It concluded : “This is a clear case of favour shown” to the industries. But the Government is adamant and S. Shyam Sunder, chief conservator of forests (general) maintains: “There has been no hanky-panky. The old rates were unrealistic but the I new ones are fair. We arrived at these rates without any pressure. There’s been too much of mudslinging.” But it remains to be seen whether Gundu Rao will be able to wipe the taint of this affair off his hands.

Even since Bharat Heavy Electricals limited (BHEL) Set up its prestigious Research and Development (R & D) Division in August 1978, the corporation has been getting more and more schizophrenic about its role as India’s largest repository of power technology. At the root of this has been a struggle between BHEL’s myopic managers and its increasingly frustrated scientists. The estrangement peaked last month when the recently-created Energy Systems Group (ESG) was moved from BHEL’s sprawling’ Vikasnagar campus in Hyderabad to dowdy rented quarters elsewhere in the city.

That was not the only insult for BHEL’s scientists. In a shoddy move, Dr A. Gopalakrishnan, general manager of the R & D division, was demoted to head only the ESG and asked to report to the executive director. Tiruchi. Gopalakrishnan. 45, a brilliant nuclear scientist, had been lured from a plum job in the US in early 1976 and asked to head the Energy System and New Products (ESNP) Division in Delhi. Two years later the ENSP unit was moved to Hyderabad and merged with the then nascent R & o wing. and Gopalakrishnan was put in charge.

Increasing Conflict: For a while, the centralised R & D division did extremely good work. But Gopalakrishnan and his fellow scientists began to encounter increasing conflict with T.V. Balakrishnan, director R & o. The recent moves are therefore seen as a victory for Balakrishnan. But BHEL managers are anxious to point out that the ESG’s shifting was necessitated by the need for more interaction with the Regional Research Laboratories at Moula Ali, which is a long way from V ikasnagar, and with the Department of Science and Technology. Says Balakrishnan: “The employees would have faced difficulties constantly commuting to and from the complex to the city.” He admits however: “It was probably a mistake to have shifted R & D from Delhi in the first place.”

Balakrishnan denies that the move implies a demotion for Gopalakrishnan, saying that ESG. which deals with thermal .and nuclear systems. handles the most crucial part of the corporation’s research effort. He says that the ESG will also be involved in a coal gasification project funded by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. He admits, however. that the unit may probably have to shift to Tiruchi eventually in order to coordinate better with the nuclear engineering group there. There is reportedly stiff resistance being put up by the R & o employees to this plan.

Whatever the truth may be. it is clear that Balakrishnan and Gopalakrishnan have been at loggerheads ever since BHEL signed an agreement with Kraftwerke Union (KWE), a subsidiary of the Siemens group of West Germany, in 1980. Gopalakrishnan at that time was arguing for selective rather than blanket foreign collaboration so as to encourage indigenisation. He felt that Balakrishnan had not represented the researchers’ viewpoint with the management.

Problems quickly cropped up. Gopalakrishnan and his team had developed an indigenous power surface condenser and even sold one to the 210 MW Raichur Thermal Power Station. KWU, however, insisted that it could not give guarantees for its steam turbines unless its own condenser technology was also used. The scientists lost that round. Later KWU argued that its turbine technology could not be used unless BHEL agreed to the KWU/Siemens turbine control system package. Here, too, BHEL’s Dynamics and Control group had already developed indigenous capability for control systems manufacture by the Control Equipment Division in Bangalore. Once again, KWU won out, and Gopalakrishnan had to give in.

Demoralisation: Essentially, BHEL’s scientists have been fired by a strong urge to delink the corporation from all foreign technological tie-ups. In recent months, BHEL has also lost out on quite a few prime thermal power projects with the country. It lost the Ramagundam project to Ansaldo of Italy in an international competition. Then, the Government, on the plea of project finance, awarded Anpara ‘B’ to Japan’s Mitsui, the Rihand project in Uttar Pradesh to a British consortium, and the Waidhan project in Madhya Pradesh to the Russians. Now, the Maharashtra Government is trying to award the Chadrapur project to the Swiss Brown Boveri group. All these setbacks have led to considerable demoralisation.

Gopalakrishnan also reportedly attracted corporate ire when he set up a multidisciplinary Failure Analysis Group (FAG) within the R & D division in 1978. The FAG pin-pointed several recurring problems in BHEL equipment, and shortcomings in BHEL 1 design, manufacture, erection and equipment commissioning. None of this endeared the researchers to the management.

Research and Development employees point out that more than Rs 25 crore has been invested in equipment and facilities for the prestigious division, and that it will be wasted expenditure. The employees’ organisations and unions have also been drawn into the conflict. The R&D Executives Association has written to BHEL’S Chairman and Managing Director K.L. Puri saying that : “Vital analytical groups requiring laboratory back-up studies and laboratories needing analytical backing are separated from each other. No technically viable justification has been given by the management for these changes.”

The employees have also demanded a probe by an external expert committee into the need for the split. N.V. Bhaskar Rao, president of the srom ployees Union. says bluntly: “It is a somersault by the management.”

But Puri is not willing to concede that argument. Says he: “What is wrong with shifting Gopalakrishnan from one prestigious post to another? We all know he is brilliant. Can’t I move my sofaset from one corner of my room to another?’ Although being likened to a piece of furniture is not exactly a compliment, Gopalakrishnan has not been daunted. Says he gamely: “1 will continue with my research work whatever be the regrouping.” Nevertheless, it looks as if BHEL is going to be involved in the wrong kind of power struggle in the months ahead.

Bombay
New Network
It was a choice few television addicts in the city would refuse. At the flick of a channel selection switch, resident of Bombay’s congested Cuffe Parade area were offered a tantalising alternative to the routinely dull Doordarshan programmes: Marathi news and the endless talk shows could be dropped effortlessly for hit American TV serials like Magnum Charlie’s Angel or Sesame Street; the song and dance sequences of Chhaya Geet gave way to the notorious Texan oil- billionaire J.R. Ewing, the villainous hero of the American TV smash hit Dallas; and Sunday’s ritual Hindi film was re­ placed by international block-busters like Capricorn I and Star Trek.

Starting last month, television buffs in the crowded high-rise development area were queuing up to subscribe to the cable-fed broadcasts from a newly­ launched company called Nemula Video Network, a closed circuit networks system operated from an apartment in Maker Towers. A flat payment of Rs 1,500 bought the subscriber a cable connection to the tiny “broadcasting station” and monthly rentals of Rs 200 paid for three hours of nightly viewing. The package included one feature film and at least two television serials or programmes. By mid-July, numerous television-owners in at least seven Cuffe Parade buildings were linked up to one of the systems of Network, and negotiations with residents of another 13 buildings neared completion.

Network’s concept is surprisingly simple. The “broadcasting station” is in fact a little more than a small apartment which houses a video cassette recorder (VCR), a few television sets to test the image, and signal boosters to amplify the electrical impulses which carry the image to subscriber sets. All the sets in a given building are linked to a common community antenna capable of receiving normal Doordarshan air waves, and the antenna in turn is tied up with the VCR in Network’s station. Thus the cable station is little more than a community video viewing outfit-instead of a single viewing set being linked to the VCR, a theoretically, infinite number can, with appropriate signal boosting, receive images from the same set. Explained a Network executive: “This is nothing more than the normal cable connecting your VCR to the TV set. But instead of one cable you have many cables and the same VCR can feed any number of sets.”
Extended Operations: Network is an offshoot of the well-established visual publicity firm, Western Outdoors. In the past few years Western Outdoors has been instrumental in rigging up closed circuit television viewing systems in at least six horse racing courses nation-wide. In various hospitals and hotels, the company has set up closed circuit video viewing facilities very similar to Network’s, used in residential flats in Bombay.

Cuffe Parade, a densely populated area of high income-earners, was a logical starting point-of the roughly 2,200 flats in the high-rise concentration, upwards of 80 per cent are estimated to be television set owners, and Network executives estimate that up to 90 per cent of these could be eventual buyers of their services.

To avoid problems with the authorities. Network has stuck to the closed circuit transmission system which was already accepted in hotels and hospitals. Transmission is entirely by cable, so no wireless or telecommunication laws are infringed and the cables pass through only private property, so Posts and Telegraphs laws are not violated. From the original Maker Towers nucleus, cables are passed with the written consent of residential cooperative societies, through private parking lots and walls to neighbouring buildings, thus keeping completely clear of public property like roads or vacant lots.
Law Suits: Twenty days after it first started, Network was already embroiled in fighting law suits. Arguing that the commercial exhibition of his Seeta Aur Geeta by them constituted breach of. copyright, film producer G.P. Sippy, last fortnight, sued the Network for damages. With hearing scheduled in the near future, the law suit has become a test case for the film industry, which is united in its efforts to halt the dilution of its revenue. Video recording companies like Esquire, in fact, explicitly ban the use of pre­ recorded video .cassettes for anything except personal consumption, and commercial use is deemed to be a breach of copyright.
Despite the controversy, however, the queue for Nemula Video Network’s services was at the end of the fortnight growing even larger, with buildings out­ side the Cuffe Parade area sending the company requests for installation of a transmission unit. Possibly worried about the outcome of the law suit, Network executives had already planned to delete Hindi films from their repertoire. “The demand is for English films and serials anyway,” said one , “so we’ll stop Hindi films and carry on with the rest.”