PRIVATISE AND PROSPER – BWSSB STYLE

Like the story of the visionary businessman Srihari Khoday from some 25 years ago, here is another real life recounting of my brush with another equally business minded agency – the Bangalore Water Supply & Sewerage Board, fondly called the BWSSB : rather a brush with some business minded officers of the Board, to be more precise.

As a very strict rule, I do not entertain requests for our services from Governmental Agencies, Parastatals, PSUs  etc., for reasons well known to those who may have had the misfortune to deal with these rascally entities.

About 20 years or so ago the BWSSB came to the happy conclusion that it could not handle the K&C Valley STP (the one behind the Karnataka Golf course in Murugeshpalya) satisfactorily enough with its own resources of men and materials. A decision was therefore taken to entrust Operation & Maintenance of the STP to private hands. A very laudable decision by all counts no doubt - but for one deal breaking consideration which I was to discover later.

I was pushed, sweet talked, persuaded and cajoled to pick up this tender by a very close associate of mine at that time with the solemn assurance that it was for the greater good of the society and for the benefit of the long suffering Bellandur lake which was at the receiving end of Millions of litres of untreated or partially treated sewage from half of Bangalore city. 

Also, the BWSSB officer in charge of this exercise was a long time friend, a class mate of his from school and college days. Despite initial reluctance and nervous trepidation that I felt, I steeled myself to venture into hitherto uncharted territories : If Captain Kirk and his crew of Starship Enterprise can do it, so can Dr. Kodavasal and Team Ecotech !

I studied word by word, para by para and page by page the tender document until I could recite the tender backwards. This method of dissecting a tender document to the last comma and full stop was drilled into me in my first job in India with Dorr-Oliver Inc. immediately on my return from the USA.  And as prescribed in Section 3.5 of the Tender document, I dutifully visited the STP for the customary site inspection. From more than a Kilometer away on the lonely Godforsaken Wind Tunnel Road, I was unerringly guided to the spot by the ever increasing stench of untreated sewage. No google map was required to home into this STP.

The STP itself presented a picture of a major disaster struck area. Dismantled and stripped down pumps and forlorn motors strewn around helter skelter ; Sewage overflowing from channels and drains, with swarms of mosquitoes proliferating in this happy breeding ground ; Less than 30 % of Surface aerators which deliver Oxygen to the bugs which treat sewage, lazily churning the surface of tanks, which in itself was a minor miracle. There was not a single human soul in sight. I beat a hasty retreat from this unholy hell hole, now firmly determined that no amount of pushing, sweet talking, persuasion or cajoling will make me participate in this tender.\

The final kick in my ass for this crazy adventurism was delivered by the BWSSB classmate himself who took me aside and gently broke to me the unwritten clause and condition of the tender for privatisation of O&M of the STP.

Apparently the STP generated a lot of organic sludge from its settling tanks which were the only units which worked in the STP (Sir Isaac Newton and force of Gravity be thanked) and which was good farmland manure. And in those days, when Bangalore city was not the urban conglomeration and concrete jungle that it is today, there were farmlands and farmers in close vicinity to the STP. These farmers paid Rs. 400 per tractor load to take away this rich manure for their use. The total amount per day thus collected ran into several thousands of Rupees.

The classmate from the BWSSB then assured me that the only Service Level Agreement they would hold me to was that the entire proceeds of sale of organic manure from the STP should be off the books and passed back to the officers who were good enough to make the Privatisation exercise happen.  There was no further requirement from the STP and no questions asked. Bellandur lake be damned.

Bellandur Lake up in Flames

Three cheers for a Happy New Year (The Fourteenth day in April is the Tamil New Year) and all hail Privatisation – BWSSB ishtyle.

Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal                                     First Published : April 14, 2016

FOOTNOTE : This same worthy from the BWSSB I understand was engaged by the PCB to study the working condition of the hundreds of STPs spread across the length and breadth of Bangalore. This report was coauthored by another officer of the PCB itself. The report I was told paid a glowing tribute to these wonderful STPs  and concluded that more than 95% of them were in excellent shape. I wonder if they actually inspected and studied these STPs to come to this happy conclusion or simply collected the Analysis reports from these STPs for this exercise. Having been in this business in Bangalore for more than 34 years, I know for a fact that 95% of these reports are fabricated and totally bogus. Strange coincidence what ?