Starey starey knight

Lessons  from L&T’s showpiece projects   

What is this life if full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And watch the beauty of our spouse?’

– Updated from ‘Leisure’ by William Henry Davies

Woke chairmen like Anand Mahindra have asked their L&T counterpart to make up and smell the kapi. They are the latest and weightiest to join the banned-wagon against S N Subrahmanyan’s no-longer-private video. In it,  L&T C’man, seeing no use for TLC in the workplace, hinted at a 90-hour week. This would subpoena Sundays and thus nix non-productive pursuits such as ‘staring at your wife’. Since Smt S has maintained Sphinx-like silence on this now-viral issue,  we don’t know if she too would prefer her Pati Parmeshwar to best the Almighty, and leave her to rest alone on the seventh day. Adding to the damning barrage, serious and hilarious, I’d like to use  L&T’s most-vaunted projects to show how its boss can engineer a workplace as happy as profitable. 

Mumbai’s trans-harbour Atal Setu. Don’t be  intransigent and harbour a grudge against sybaritic Sunday. Instead, bridge the  gap between corporate objectives and personal goals. Also span gaping chasm at home.

Delhi &  Mumbai Terminals. Extending my analogy to full airports, L&T needs internal systems as sophisticated and sensitive as those in its aeronautical arsenal. Human error can still stymie top-end remote-control equipment. The tragic consequences of  over-competitiveness leading to over-stretching flight-duty time standards are too well known.

Bullet Train. Boss may want growth at Subrahsonic speed, but manpower acquisition can be as fractious as the current land acquisition is if procurer thinks he can use his superior muscle to coerce  provider.

Undersea tunnels for Mumbai’s coastal road. These are deservedly hurrah-ed engineering feats,  but the recent video’s leak was even more embarrassing than the physical one which sprang in the barely three-month-old  underpass at Priyadarshini Park. Tunnel vision is as dangerous.

Cryostat – largest-ever, high-vacuum-pressure vessel built — for International Thermo-nuclear Experimental Reactor, France. Like it, L&T Chairman could aim at generating energy through fusion not fission. Implosion is guaranteed if higher-up pressure is applied while keeping employee satisfaction in vacuum.

Statue of Unity. Tallest companies are built as much on diversity; even more crucial is calibrating the right balance – structural, chemical, work-life.

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Alec Smart said: “Now even cricket’s LBW is Leave Behind Wives.”