The Pickle Post

by Kunal Agarwal on 18 Sep 2009

The fact that supply-chains in India work is amazing. It’s politically correct these days to constantly demand more of our overstretched distribution networks. Businessmen and policy makers have for long highlighted the inefficiencies of the logistics setup in our country, citing high wastage, pilferage and low connectivity along with little or no punctuality and speed as the main hassles with this sector.

I for one would like to agree with this lot, and indeed I still do, but I feel that there is a lot to be said of the fact that we have a working distribution and inventory system at all. It still doesn’t cease to amaze me that in some weird way all of this works, its one big patch-up job after the other, but the fact remains that it all clicks. Things still move from one point to the other, work still happens, life still goes on.

The transporter’s way of dealing with new-fangled and westernized concepts is to largely ignore them. In a profession where pen and paper are considered high-tech, it is asking a lot for people to all of a sudden start using complicated things like ERPs and inventory management software. Initially I tried to fight all this, believing that all of this rot was rubbish and laziness. I thought I knew it all, I would single-handedly show these monkeys how to do it. Yup, that’s what I thought and a thought is all that will ever be.

6 months down the road I have developed a deep-sense of respect for the prehistoric way of working that marks this profession. It is not a matter of being backwards or lazy, but in fact a constant struggle to stay afloat in the face of a thousand different things which can and do go wrong.

When I started working in this area, most of the people I worked with would treat me in a rather odd way. The fact that I had studied in America gave them enough ammo and the time tested retort of “Boss, this is India not America.” Initially, this really bugged me. After all, I had lived in India for 80% of my life, I was as Indian as Tendulkar, just because my English surpassed my Hindi didn’t mean anything. I admit, I was wrong.

Right from the onset, I tried to flex my innovative muscles. I wanted excel sheets, forecasts, graphs, charts, and other such useless things. Jha (of monkey-fame) wanted no part of this madness. This was an honest profession, he would tell me, it was the stuff of blood, sweat, toil and tears. Churchill would have been proud. Yet, I persisted stubbornly. Like an idiot.

I was to soon realize that the average transporter had already been there and done that. They had already had their brush with the modernizing fanatics and their PC-wielding crusades. They know their jobs and how to do them, and that’s what amazes me. Initially, I wanted to put a high-tech German weight gauge on my fuel tanks to make sure that any pilferage of fuel was accounted for and stopped. Soon enough my high-tech weight gauge was itself pilfered. I was upset, no doubt, but Jha sat me down and told me the ways of the road. He told me of a very odd incident which was meant to teach me a lesson or something along those lines.

He had a relative, a nephew, who worked in Patna as a housekeeper for a politician. The politician had found that his Tata Sky dishes were being stolen one by one, and he was soon rather fed up with the whole affair. Being smart, young and forward-thinking, he decided to buy a Rottweiler, (imported, finest breeding, 1.5 lakh rupees) to roam the terrace of his house and scare away any potential miscreants. The scheme seemed to work for a while, but soon the unexpected happened. The thieves decided to abscond with the dog itself. Soon enough, “Timpu” was gone. The rumor was that he was drugged and sold to a pimp in Bangladesh. Jha, said this last part with a flourish of his hand and a twinkle in his eye. Wherefrom this rumor came remained a mystery. Anyways, the point of the story was simple enough, I just wish he would have told me that the damn German weight-gauge would have got stolen at the very beginning. But in a master Yoda moment, he decided that it would be best if I screwed up first.

The whole point of this winding piece is that transporters aren’t as stupid as I thought. They know their stuff, but they only care to remember the little bits that are of any use to them. The biggest surprises are always the drivers. Underestimate a truck driver at your peril. They are a canny lot, full of surprises and largely devoid of scruples. One of them once explained to me that everything on a truck has a purpose. He pointed at the chains dangling at the back from the bumper and said that without them you would always get a shock when you touch the handle (on further reading I found that this was because they act as conductors to pass on the static electricity, that gets built due to air friction, from the truck to the ground) He also showed me that my container wasn’t air-tight as I had thought, he did this by simply filling it with water and showing me the points from which water would trickle out. I was impressed and then I asked him why all trucks are painted in a thousand colours. He simply grinned and stroked the engine with his hand, “to keep her happy” he said. They have a weird sense of humour but they also have a sense for their trade which is impossible to see at first.

It is a curious mix of hearing new-concepts and applying them in a way that doesn’t all together upset the apple-cart that yields the most fruit. My German weight-gauge was ahead of its time, may it rest in peace. I’m sure that if I stay at it I’ll hit upon something different that works. But until then I still go to work every day with a sense of awe that “cartoons” make it half way across the country, mostly safe and only 70 hours late, driven only by the sheer drive of the “Pilots” that make it happen.*

*In trucker talk ”Cartoon”= carton, “Pilot”= driver