ICF achieved the highest outturn of 1,622 coaches of 32 variants in 2013-14 fiscal
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru at the inauguration of ICF in 1955.
G. Jagannath is nearly 70. He joined the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) as a chargeman (trainee) in 1964 and retired as senior personnel officer (sports) in 2005. He won Arjuna award in 1970. The table tennis player won individual bronze medal in Commonwealth Games and silver in team TT event. I was a 19-year-old diploma holder when I joined ICF.
After Avadi tank factory, ICF was the only undertaking, which employed people en masse. There were around 12,000 employees then. Ambattur Estate was slowly coming up.
Anna Nagar was an uninhabited wilderness where some of my friends went hunting. It remained so till 1970 when Madras hosted a world fair and people started moving in slowly.
Neighbouring Ayanavaram, GKM Colony and Villivakkam used to be notorious places. We used to send the shells from the Shell Division to the Furnishing Division on tracks via Villivakkam.
One ground sold for Rs 300 and Rs 400 there. Nonetheless, there were not many takers (including me) as people dreaded living in what was considered then as a den of criminals.
But for the ICF staff, there were fewer residences in the surroundings. It changed gradually as ICF spread its wings and ushered in development.
In some years, Anna Nagar, Ayanavaram, Villivakam and GKM Colony transformed into good residential colonies.
Even the roads were different. Vehicular traffic was not so dense. In fact, there was hardly any vehicle. I remember, when I bought my first bike in 1965, a Jawa, there were only five or six bikes in the entire ICF shell division parking lot.
It was no different in furnishing division either. It was bicycles all around. Only the general manager and a few senior officers owned cars or rather used one provided by ICF.
At the factory, there were around 12,000 employees who produced roughly 600-700 coaches.
The target was increased by around 50 every year. Once an employee punched the cards and entered the workshop at 7.30 am, s/he exited, except when they had special permission, only for lunch at 11.30 am then.
Even when I won the Arjuna Award in 1970, first by an ICF employee then, the officers received and felicitated me, but it was work as usual from the next day. Such was the kind of discipline that prevailed then.
As machines started arriving and the staff council gaining strength, discipline slowly disappeared. By the time I retired in 2005, there was a dramatic change (for worse). Now, people walk in and walk out as they wish; so is proxy punching. Hardly anyone seems to ask these days.
European officers, according to me, were partly responsible for the discipline. The Swiss were here till the late 1950s. Even the quarters I lived in for 24 years from 1981 was occupied by a young Swiss officer.
He returned decades later in 1999. It was a bright Saturday evening when I returned from work early that weekend. Around 4.30 pm, when I peeped through the window, I saw an elderly English couple standing in the garden and pointing towards my house (quarters). I was surprised to see our (ICF) PRO Mahadevan accompanying them.
When I inquired, I learnt that they had lived in the house before I moved in. I took them in and offered some snacks. I do not remember their names. But, the Swiss officer (now 60) sent me a copy of a photograph he had taken with me that evening. The 20-house residential quarters I moved in at the age of 36 had been demolished and converted into a hospital, which, ICF will open, hopefully, before I turn 70 in March next.
(As told to K. Karthikeyan)
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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