INITIATIVE: MR. CHAIRMAN N.M. SUNDARAM !

SERVICE STORY: My LIC days.

by PG.POOCHERY

The year 2009 is coming to a close.

I started writing my service story in my blog from December this year. I have already written 29 posts and this is the thirtieth one. My service story may be written in about hundred posts. This blogger service has opened up before me new vistas of possibilities into certain hitherto unknown areas . But for this blogger service, my erratic thoughts and musings wouldn't have seen the light of the day.

I am a strange man. And stranger are my convictions. This has made a lot of difference to me in my life. I have before me a note book where I have noted down some of the incidents I have experienced and gone through in my life. I can write down these experiences one after the other. And my service story will be told in so many posts.

But let me confess that with a sense of urgency I feel like writing about a person connected with working class movement in general and the insurance industry in particular. He is a very important person to me and the insurance employees. There were a number of prominent leaders like Mr. Saroj Chaudhary, Mr. Sunil Moitra, and Mr. Chandrasekhar Bose but I have not had any opportunity to meet and talk to them.

Then who is my leader about whom I feel like writing here? Yes, your guess is correct. He is none other than Mr. NM Sundaram himself.

His charisma and personal magnetism is something different from other trade union leaders you meet.

His ability to guide others is also very different.

He has a serious look and a confident way of expressing his ideas.

And that personal charm marvels.

I have watched this man with amazed admiration.

He always talked confidently. He didn't have any doubt about anything he talked about.

When he talked to me at the zonal office, for a moment I longed for more privacy.

I suggested to him that it would be better if we moved to the nearby union office.

But he told me: "Nobody will disturb!". And believe me, it was really so.

While I admired him for the extraordinary person he is, he admired others too. Normally it is a practice at lower levels of employees to speak with a fair degree of animosity about top management men and rival union leaders. Com. Sundaram is an exception to this rule. He had only nice words to speak about at least some of them. For example, he said Mr. Narasimhan, who was then Chairman of LIC, was a straight forward gentleman. He had also nice words about Mr. Nachane who was a rival union leader.

I carried these remarks in my publication 'Initiative'. I feared a lot of opposition from union cadres for publishing these remarks. And some of them at Calicut and Chennai did express these feelings to me. Let me explain. When I published these remarks, it was out of a journalistic instinct that I carried Sundaram's remarks which he had actually said in an off the record conversation with me. He was actually not replying any of my questions.

As a freelance journalist, these were the remarks which attracted me most. And I believe, I have not done any disservice to any body by publishing those words. Some points do come up during an interview and the interviewer ably utilizes some of the innocent remarks made by the person who is interviewed. It is a fact that Mr. Sundaram made these remarks. Finally I published my magazine 'Initiative' and fearing hostility from union ranks, I just handed over only one copy to a union functionary at Chennai. Though I prominently carried Mr. N.M. Sundaram in 'Initiative', I was afraid to meet Mr. Sundaram and hand over a copy of the publication. I should have done it as a normal act of courtesy. I still regret, I couldn't do it.

While on a visit to Calicut, I met Mr. Sundaram and told him that I carried certain remarks made by him in 'Initiative'. "What of that?" was his immediate reaction. He was as usual very brief in his reply and he didn't seem to feel that I did any harm to anybody.

I found that Mr. Sundaram was respected in management circles also. Once Mr. N.N. Joshi, then Chief (Personnel) asked me to meet Mr. Sundaram and talk to him. "Mr. Sundaram is not speaking to me these days", Mr. Joshi told me. I met Mr. Sundaram at Chennai. And without telling him the purpose of my visit, I talked to him for a couple of hours. I conveyed the gist of my talk to Mr. N.N. Joshi.

Those days I was making an attempt to conduct an all India seminar at Calicut. The chairman and all prominent leaders of employees unions including Mr. N.M. Sundaram had agreed to take part in this discussion. Mr. Diwan had asked me to send the details of the programme and he had also instructed his personal secretary to allot one or two days for attending this seminar at Calicut. But I had to abandon this project because of the non-cooperation of the local divisional manager Mr.V. Narayanan. Calicut had the misfortune of having such managers too.

I wrote in 'Initiative' that Mr. NM Sundaram is a person who is revered and respected. While I do not wish to repeat all those words once again here, I consider Mr. Sundaram as a very able, honest and straight forward gentleman. These are the words he used to describe the then LIC chairman Mr. Narasimhan also and I do feel now that those words are apt for describing Mr. Sundaram as well.

I have met at least five chairmen of LIC at LIC headquarters at Mumbai during the period they occupied this post and discussed various matters with them. And if you ask me what's it that I find in Mr. Sundaram which I didn't find in any of these chairmen, I would only say that Mr. Sundaram himself would have been a better chairman than any of the five chairmen I met there.

That is Mr. N.M. Sundaram!

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