Managing people is sometimes like herding a flock of sheep

It was 12:30 pm, and I had not eaten anything since the day began. How could I? I was at a police station in Agra filing an FIR. And then the telephone rang!

While I was a Faculty Member at the NABARD Staff College in Lucknow, one of the most popular programs on offer was one on Project Finance. It was compulsory for all officers, a two week programme, including a field visit to a Project over the weekend, to collect live data and apply the appraisal tools and techniques taught in class to it.

One such program fell upon me to co-ordinate. At the request of the participants, I decided that we would do a weekend trip to Agra, instead of an innocuous destination I had for planned earlier.

The entire batch was full of excitement about the Trip, but since it was at short notice and we needed 30 berths in AC Class, we ended up being booked in a train that would drop us at Tundla Jn. in the early morning hours, from where we would get picked up by Sumo jeeps to get to the hotel in Agra, a distance of about 41 km. The hotel where we were to stay organised the pick-up vehicles.

Landing in the early hours of the day, we left the railway station and reached the parking lot, where vehicles were waiting to drive us to Agra. Still groggy and half-asleep, we settled down, 6 to a vehicle. As the highway was under construction and excavation had left two-way traffic to be accommodated on a single lane it was an hour and a half drive. Reaching the hotel around 8 am, we had two hours to get refreshed before proceeding to the field for the study. I waited in the hotel lobby to receive all the trainees, and get their room allotments done (two to a room) before proceeding to my room. An hour stretched to two, but only 4 of the 5 vehicles reached the hotel. We sent one of the Sumos back to retrace the path, and try and locate the missing vehicle. Minutes turned into hours and my tension grew. All kinds of thoughts went through my mind. The trip to Agra I decided against the advice of my boss, and here I was all alone regretting having made the decision. The other participants tried to reassure me that all would be fine, but I had my fears. By 11:30 am, with no news coming (pre-mobile days), I broke down, It was not right to wait any longer. I took two other participants and the hotel manager, proceeded to the Thana (police station) to lodge a missing persons report. Just as I sat down to narrate the sequence of events to the SHO, his telephone rang. It was from the hotel. "Sir the people have reached" was the terse message. Tears filled my eyes.We started back. Not a time to celebrate. First thing I wanted to know was, what happened?

The Sumo that they were travelling in was the last in the convoy, and broke-down in the middle of nowhere. So all of them got off the vehicle and off-loaded their luggage and looked around for a vehicle to find to get to the destination. In these parts of the country where public transport is near non-existent, trekkers & tempos are always plying, mostly with people packed like sardines. But they preferred to board a UPSRTC bus, and another batch took another bus. Why didn't you hire a Vehicle, I asked? Sir, they asked a lot of money, and we were not sure it will be reimbursed! I was dumb struck, sad, angry and disappointed. Was I so cruel as to not be ready to reimburse the cost? Even still, was NABARD so miserly? It was not the time to reprimand. I asked them to freshen-up and have lunch that was ready to be served, and we continued on the days schedule, curtailing the part that was lost to delay.

The rest of the trip went well & as you know, after events like these the bonding in the group grows. We visited the Taj Mahal, the primary purpose of our trip, the next day. The excitement was somewhat muted by the experience of the previous day.

For our Project work, we visited a bridge project that was built with NABARD funding. The people were so grateful for the bridge. It was a textbook case in Economic Rate of Return (ERR). The bridge connected villages on the other side to the agricultural market in Agra for sale of their major commercial crop, potato. They saved significantly in transport cost and were able to realize better prices. Much more importantly, boys in the villages were now getting brides from places across the bridge. Before it was built, people told us, parents hesitated to give their daughters in marriage to boys who lived across the stream, as they would be cut off during floods & flows in the channel, and if I recollect right, there had been some cases of people being washed away while trying to cross the stream during high currents.

There are always lessons to be learnt from such mishaps. As they say, never let the lessons of a failure go waste. On return from the trip, and after concluding the programme, I made serious notes. Some of the rules I set for myself:

1. Preferably travel in a single vehicle even if it means more travel time (bus over Sumos).

2. If moving in a convoy, I would decide ahead of the trip, who sat in which vehicle. Atleast one person in each to be assessed by me as having the capacity to handle a crisis, and 'think on their feet'

3. The coordinator of the programme to be in the tail car and not lead the convoy.

4. All vehicles to move in a pattern that they are in sighting distance of the vehicle in front and the one at the back.

As always, things happen when you are unprepared, not when you have everything planned. So this type of challenge never recurred. It mutated and showed-up in other forms. More about them some other time.