A RETROSPECTION
60 YEARS OF INDUSTRIAL GROWTH ---NEED FOR ENGINEER LOKPALS
Dr Rajendra Kumar, Director (Retd), Regional Research Laboratory (CSIR), Bhopal
Earlier Scientist Director, National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur
The large scale, multi sectoral, heavy and widespread industrialization during the past sixty years has, no doubt, transformed the weak and fledging Indian economy of 1950s into a resurgent global economy. The charioteer engineers in the early phase of industrial growth in its early years were men of wisdom and character who carried easily the burden of their socio economic responsibilities, inspired and supported by the enlightened political leadership of those yester years. Together, they ensured that the industrio-economic growth did not affect the ethical framework of the society.
Against this background, the country was aghast at the December 1984 disastrous explosion at the Union Carbide's Bhopal Plant - commonly known as the Bhopal gas tragedy - which killed thousands of sleeping people, maimed yet another thousands, besides also those who were yet unborn.
At atime when the country is exasperated at the series of financial scams - almost always interfacing with technology and execution of engineering contracts - and the Anna Hazare agitation for the elimination of corruption from the public domain is the buzz word across the country, it may be pertinent to pause and think - could the Bhopal tragedy be avoided had there been an empowered engineer Lokpal at the Bhopal Plant, operating at the level of Corporate governance.
Engineering has a compelling interface with finance and, therefore, with profits, leaving wide scope for personal and corporate profits, through malpractices. The leaders of corporate governance, often not engineers, often tend to throw their weight about to implement technologically inadvisable programmes or by cutting vital, though minor, corners of technology to increase the short term profitability of their industrial unit. Unchecked and technologically unaudited measures could lead to immediate, or in-making, disasters which impact heavily on safety and security of the society.
It is now well accepted globally that it is often only small omissions/cuts that have caused major industrial disasters which had inflicted misery on the unsuspecting and innocent public, or have led to major wastages of materials of construction which are produced after major consumption of thermal energy or have caused major environmental degradation without any corresponding societal gain. Many of such engineering disasters could have been averted had there been a suitably empowered engineer director to veto a wrong decision or action. There is after all only a small phonetic difference between the Sanskrit words 'SHIVA" (universal good) and "SHAVA" (death and destruction).
A few examples may now be cited.
WAS BHOPAL
Many investigations carried out in the aftermath of the tragedy suggest that the disaster occurred because several critically vital instruments/controls/devices/equipment were not functioning over a long period of time. The investigation carried out by the CSIR seems to suggest that the catastrophic chemical reaction was triggered off by the build up of metallic impurities -iron, chromium and nickel - in the reacting liquid. These elements entered the reacting liquid through corrosion of the pressure vessel, made of austenitic steel. Whilst a short answer to the question posed above is a firm "yes", the CSIR investigation fell short of answering why the corrosion occurred in the first place. The questions remain to be answered are - were the stainless steels selected for the pressure vessels suitable for the arduous service requirements ? Were appropriate welding processes adopted? etc etc
DO NOT CUT CORNERS
I would like to illustrate this point with a very interesting example. Stacks/chimneys are as essential a component of a thermal power plant as the boiler furnace is. An existing power plant was seeing expansion through addition of another boiler. The expansion plans included a new boiler along with its own chimney. Someone decided to do away the additional chimney as one was already existing, ostensibly on grounds to effect economy' This was done but the plant began to suffer from profound engineering deficiency and boiler tube failures began to occur, resulting in plant outages and consequent loss of power generation. Had there been an Engineer Lokpal, the awkward situation resulting not only in financial loss but also in unproductive increase in carbon load of the environment could have been avoided.
CHANGE LAWS - BE TRUTHFUL
Modern boilers are marvels of engineering, designed and operated by teams of experts and specialists Indian laws treat a large boiler of a 500 MW rating at par with a small utility boiler and require that all cases of boiler outages, through component failures be reported to the Boiler Inspector. Since the boiler could be r-started only with his/her permission. In order to save themselves from the obstructive attitudes of the mandatory authority, the plant authorities may not reveal all the facts concerning a boiler outage even to the investigating team, set up by themselves. In an interesting case study, though metallurgical investigations on the failed components unmistakably pointed that the damage was largely due to an explosion that had occurred in the combustion space of the boiler, plant authorities would not admit the same. So instead of the experts helping the operation engineers to develop practices as would negate the occurrence of another explosion, the main issue got sidelined.
The need for having engineer lokpals for different disciplines is getting acuter by the day as the management fundamentals get more complex and beyond common sense.
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