The hard work of over 2 months put in by my team of Vijaya, Reena, Raghuraman, Karunakara Menon, Rao, Srinivasan, Krishnamoorthy, Hema Suneetha, Saibaba and many others for the last two months saw its fruition on 28th January 2005 when the regional seminar on 'Management of Change in Railways' in connection with IRAS Platinum Jubilee was celebrated in a grand manner at Hotel Taj Connemara, Chennai.
An auspicious start to the function was there with the invocation song specially recorded for the occasion by Mr.P.Unnikrishnan, a leading Carnatic musician. Welcome address was by Mr. Pathasarathy, FA & CAO,SR who also gave the mementoes to the Chief Guest and FC. The vote of thanks for the morning session was by Mrs. Kalyani Gopal, FA & CAO, SWR who also gave the mementoes to the panelists and Chairman. Sanjay Mookherjee, FA & CAO, ECoR thanked the afternoon speakers and gave mementoes to them. All the three seminar sessions was very ably compered by Reena Ranjan, Dy. CAO/G, SR.
The highlight of the Seminar was the novel and brilliant introduction of the speakers. My team of Vijaya, Reena and Karunakar Menon had obtained about 10 photos of each speaker and recorded a short documentary of the speaker using the photos and with voice-over by Vijaya and Reena. The items for the Bharatanatyam in the evening were similarly introduced with voice-over by Karunakar Menon and Usha Venugopal.
Dr. Raja Chelliah, eminent economist was the Chief Guest. Mrs. Vijayalakshmi Visvanathan, FC/Railways delivered the keynote address. Four eminent persons from the Government, public and private sectors- - Mr. N.Vittal, retired CVC: Mr.M.Ravindra, retired CRB: Mr.S.V.Narasimhan, MD, Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited and Mr. N.Gopalaswami, Director, Dalmia Cements were the speakers. Mr.V.R.Ganesan (who joined the servicein 1949) , seniormost IRAS officer to attend the seminar presided over the morning session. The souvenir which was released by Dr.Raja Chelliah and received by FC contains a number of interesting articles and has messages by FA, AMF, AMB, four retired FCs based at Chennai and the GMs of the three participating railways.
Mr.S.C.Pandey, OSD in Ministry of Finance, Mr.V.Sriram, ICRA and Mr.A.Selvaraj, ADRM/Chennai were the speakers at the afternoon session. A sizeable audience from all over India attended the seminar. GMs and PHODs of the three hosting railways as well as RWF and ICF, all retired FCs, retired and serving IRAS officers of the three hosting railways, all IRAS officers in HAG and above, officers from the Board nominated by FC and winners of the Quiz Contest held by me were all invited to the function. Many of these including Mr.V.Sivakumaran, retired FC, Mr.Ramesh Chandra, GM/SR, Mr. Shivendra Kumar, GM/ICF , Mr. Chowdhury, GM/ECoR had turned up. Saurabh Mitra and Zaigham Ali Khan both of Western Railway were the winners of the contest and came for the function.
There was a grand Bharatanatyam recital by girls of Abhinaya Natyalaya, Chennai under the tutelage of Ms. Krishnakumari, a leading dancer of Chennai. This was followed by an evening of music by David Pascall and our own officers along with dinner. The grand finale was the lucky dips and special awards.The evening function was ably compered by Hema Suneetha, Sr. DFM, chennai. The prizes were given away by Vijay Sharma, ADFM, Chennai who is the youngest IRAS officer on Southern Railway.
The coverage by the media was excellent. The Hindu and New Indian Express carried articles on IRAS on 28th January 2005 and they along with Business Line covered the function the next day.
Everyone who was there was all praise for the conduct of the seminar which, to put it mildly, was high-class. Everyone also had things to take away apart from beautiful memories. Nothing went wrong even though there were hundreds of small details. How could anything have gone wrong with Vijaya and Reena going over everything with a fine toothcomb? Thank you, IRAS officers of Southern, South Western and East Coast Railways for a wonderful day.
S.Parthasarathy
1st February 2005
Copyright © 2005 FA & CAO, Southern Railway All rights reserved.