The title is my daughters’. No doubt about that. And this came up during the execution of the project at PACT, Lucknow. The project was to be finished in six months but has carried on for nearly a year and is still not complete. The bottomline being that the specifications were not clear at all. A meeting was called when the project was awarded to us (to the disappointment of a lot of people who had clearly vested interests with the some other vendor) and all present were presenting only the problems to us. How we were geographically not close to lucknow (as if that matters in the global market today), how we did not really know what needed to be done(as if they knew) and so on. The atmosphere was full of negativity and it was with great difficulty that we tried to bring their focus to the possible solutions.
Data was provided to us from four different sources, in different formats and at different scales. No clarity was provided on what was exactly required and what information needed to be picked up from which source.
The text was another story altogether. The nomenclature was different in all the sources. When I suggested to the Chief Engineer that before the actual project could be executed, a certain amount of data mining was needed which was actually another project, he completely ignored the suggestion(of course, I was a service provider=servant and a woman!).
Since the specs were not clear, at every submission, there were fresh suggestions and we ended up printing and rectifying each map four times and our costs went haywire. In the last round, our team discovered that there was a small text mistake and to save on time and cost, they prepared a sticker to cover the same and sent the maps for submission.
The next couple of days were a nightmare. I was called to the PACT office and degraded and humiliated. I was told that we were a fraud company, that an FIR would be lodged against us, that we were cheating them. I said that like all other times, they could reject the maps and we would re-do the entire thing like all other times. But I guess they were looking for a reason to raise a hue and cry and finally they found something to nail us. I sat there feeling like shit. I got all the maps packed up and said that we would re-do and re-print the entire lot. The statistician, Mr. Ashish Sinha was adamant on holding back one map. He said that we would need it as a sample to file a complaint against us. I really lost my cool and told him that if his ‘drama’ was over, then I could leave. I think that really got his goat.
I cried in the flight that night. This was me (a la’ creme of IIT Kanpur, proud of my honesty, self respect, integrity, what have you and this is what it had come to). I mean an FIR against the company for a sticker, it was not making any sense to me. But a lot of stuff has not been making any sense to me since I started this company and I have also lost a lot in the process, relationships, money and last but not the least, my waist (I am eating and thinking, well mostly).
And since then, our woes have multiplied hundred fold. Every submission and its subsequent payment has been a struggle. He has made sure that every communication with PACT is painful. That every team member who goes there is unable to resolve the issue. And to think that the first letter ‘P’ in the name ‘PACT” means ‘Participatory’. And there is anything but participation in the entire office. So much for a name.
So we refer to the ‘PACT project’ as ‘Ego ka daldal’. A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.
