Special Plenary session on ‘ Quality in Government ‘

The special plenary session on `Quality in Government’ was conducted on 30/11/2001 at Bangalore. As per nomination by Railway Board vide their letter No.E(TRG)2001(12)68 dt 23.11.2001, the undersigned attended the conference as a delegate.

The Quality Summit is an annual affair conducted by the confederation of Indian Industry and this was the 9^th year. The summit was spread over three days.

The day’s programme in so far as Quality in Government was concerned comprised of five presentations in the morning session by Senior Government Officers, mostly of the Indian Administrative Services.

Mr S.R.Mohanty through the " Rogi Kalyan Samiti" was able to bring about community participation in improving health services in Indore city of Madhya Pradesh. The scheme, very successfully implemented at the Maharaja Yashwant Rao Hospital in Indore spread to more than 600 hospitals in the state & has benefited 7 crore people. About Rs.2 to 2.5 crores are raised every month through user charges, lease, grants, loans and donations. The funds are retained with the samiti which is "mandated to do just about anything to improve the working of the hospital without needless reference to the Government". Rogi Kalyan Samiti is a project based on trust. It has introduced a concept of self-certification in Government.

Mr.P.K.Tripathi presented his experience in revamping the Sales Tax Department of the Government of NCT of Delhi through TQM.

Mr M.H.Khan from LBSNAA Mussourie spoke of the TQM project in training institutions which began in 1997. It was expected that application of the principles of TQM would lead to an improvement in the quality of training programmes and attitudes of the employees of the institutes toward their work. The learning of three years were presented to the delegates.

The APSFC experience in implementing the ISO 9000 quality services in public utility – the BMTC experience. Internal and external reforms were brought about in the BMTC which was carved out of the KSRTC. The results, Mr Kharola told us were outstanding in as much as there was a total turn round – the corporation made a profit of Rs.14.5 cr in 2000-01 as against a whopping loss of Rs.32.43 cr in 1997-98. Innovative technology such as GPS (Global Positioning System) with Geographical Information System was used by the corporation which has led to punctual operations lending reliability.

The afternoon session was a joint session in which delegates of "Quality in Government", "Quality in Education" and "Quality in Industry" participated. 

The session started with a presentation of the successful conduct of the Mahakumbh at Allahabad. Mr.Alok Sharma who shared his experiences, enthralled the audience relating the various established procedures that go into the conduct of such a mega event as well as innovative ideas that worked.

Mr G.L.Talekar spoke to the tiffin box carriers of Mumbai, a highly decentralized, extremely simple logistic system, built around the public train service in Mumbai. The Nutam Tiffin Box Suppliers Association is a model of managerial and organizational simplicity – just like the presenter who kept the audience both in wonder and splits of laughter.

The valedictory address was by Swami Sukhbhodananda of the Prasanna Trust who spoke about the Seven Chakras in the human body and improving the quality of life, "Be Happy" was the message. The audience sat spell bound as the Swamiji with "Loukikam" and practicality spoke of happiness and quality.

In conclusion it was an excellent experience with a tremendous amount of exposure. All the speakers were technology – savvy – each of them carried a note book, with presentation material in a CD. It seemed to me like we in the Indian Railways take a large number of things for granted since we have grown up with them – our Codes and Manuals which lay down the rules and procedures systematically (since ISO – 9002 : 1994 certificate is procedure-oriented, we could consider getting it for some of our own units), the high degree of transparency in our purchases of stores and services through our tendering system, our excellent filing system which is systematic and uniform and which enable retrieval of files within minutes, consistency in our approach and the highly skilled and committed work force.

We could perhaps do better in areas of customer grievance redressal, customer satisfaction, avoiding deviations in the performance of tasks and improve the image of the organization. This last area requires considerable emphasis since the very service provided by this organization, its magnitude and sheer volumes is unmatched by any other single sector. Along with marketing out product, we need, to consider may be marketing ourselves also ! (Perhaps the postal department can be considered close to some extent in terms of magnitude of services provided).

It was a wonderful experience and I should like to thank FA&CAO/SR and Railway Board for nominating me for the conference.

(MANJULA RANGARAJAN)

DyFA&CAO(CN)I/MS/SR