Stories of reward -I

By Dr Mukund Naware

Dr Naware shares three instances of “intangible” rewards that he received in early years of NDDB. Intangible rewards that are constant ever lasting source of “psychic income”.

Sometime by the end of 1974 or early 75 a meeting was held at NDDB, Anand to undertake a overall review of various activities that were going on under Operation Flood -I in the presence of a team from WFP/ FAO.

Officers from all the Regional Offices, Cell Offices had participated along with all Site Engineers and Spear Head Team Leaders.

At that time there were only three Team Leaders, Dr. Madhavan, representing Coimbtore; Dr. SP Mittal representing Murshidabad and myself representing Jalgaon Milkshed.

That was my first meeting where I was expected to give a presentation. I was not prepared for that.

At this meeting each of us were expected to share what we were doing and the progress achieved. When it was my turn I made a beginning by saying .. ” Well our Jalgaon story is entirely different ! ”

It was a good beginning I thought. Somehow I managed to continue and spoke for more than twenty minutes. I had no problem in finding words for my expression. I could simultaneously read the expression on the faces of all those who listened. I saw that Dr. Chothani, my boss, was extremely happy as I went on narrating our Team’s achievements.

The meeting ended successfully.

Towards the end Dr. Kurien, our Chairman, remarked that the work of engineers has a vertical dimension since dairy plants can be seen but the work of creating Farmers’ Organization being spread over a vast area has horizontal dimension and more likely to go unnoticed.

After that meeting we returned to our office and after sometime Dr. Chothani called me to his cabin.

Dr. Chothani was very happy about the remarks made by Dr Kurien which was like a reward to all of us, he said.

Contributed by Dr Mukund Naware NDDB 1972 – 1986. He spent five years in field and was in RO Bangalore, for more than eight years. He was also Manager (Procurement) for F& V Project, Mother Dairy, Delhi during 1985-1986.