Toranagallu Diary-1

Ramesh Kumar

Honestly I never heard of Toranagallu until my  colleague Selvan Dasaraj at TransportMitra spoke of it almost a year ago. Barring a few superb images shot with his Blackberry and loads of talk of this town or village by him post visit, I knew nothing. Yes, my only source of information was him, notwithstanding that my relatives even today live at Tungabhadra Dam and I did visit them a quarter century ago. The aforementioned Dam is hardly 40 km away from Tornagallu. 

How and why Toranagallu became a part of my lexicon? This warrants a dive into the origin of Transport Mitra, a for-profit business enterprise. Two of us - Selvan and self - met in 2013 due to our common interest in studying the lives of long haul truck driver and their families. He is a logistician with more than a quarter century past and me, a business journalist with specialization  in supply chain and logistics. (To know more about our "coming together", check out http://bit.ly/2otPWo8).

In 2016, he heard about Toranagallu from a mutual friend and .... also about the huge industrial township of JSW Steel Limited in the heart of Sandur mining zone. However big or small the enterprise be, truck driver is one of  the key supplychain element. The JSW Steel Limited's India's largest integrated steel plant is no different.

Steel plants are 24x7x365 type operations and warrants a non-stop supply of raw material - iron ore from the pithead to the plant. The Toranagallu plant has to access iron ore deposits from the 40-50 km distance Donamalai Hills near Sandur, the mining zilla, leased out from the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), a state enterprise.

Almost two-thirds of iron ore from this zone  is mined by JSW Steel for captive consumption. The mined iron ore is transported from pitheads to the plant via the nearest railway siding and also directly by  fully concretized two lane state highway 40 to the JSW Steel plant situated at Toranagallu.

When I talk about transportation, yes, I mean trucks and therefore truck drivers. Here, our  focus is on  inbound which is mighty huge. We are not even glancing at outbound of moving finished products this plant to all parts of India.

Talking about JSW Steel, I had a past relationship. At the height of mining dispute that reached the portals  of Supreme Court around 2012, I used to research a lot for a crisis management team in Delhi as an external consultant. I never imagined that I would land up  at this Ground Zero few years down the line. During that period, my reference was to the crisis at Hospet & Bellary and somehow, the name Toranagallu did not surface at all.

(Left to Right): Selvan Dasaraj, Mohamed Rafi, Subash Parida(JSW) and self

Talking of truck drivers in Toranagallu or any where in India, the framework is the same: absolutely no basic driving training. 100% self taught. Even Truck manufacturers seldom gave importance to imparting basic driving skills and all their interest was selling, selling and selling their wares. Naturally, this meant, even several decade long truck drivers in this mining zone had no clue about safety of their vehicle, cargo and themselves. It was a jungle raj and it continues to be. A fact vouchsafed by Toranagallu Sub Inspector Mohamed Rafi, the winner of Karnataka Chief Minister's Meritorious Award 2016.

Back to Selvan. Sensing a business opportunity, he broached the subject of enhancing the skill sets of the Tornagallu truck drivers and help improve road safety practices in this massive township built and nurtured by JSW Steel with the higher ups and  thus landed up with a 3-month project to study the behavior of 200 company-owned truck's drivers as the first step beginning from April.

Well, that sets the stage of Transport Mitra's Tryst with Toranagallu.

(To continue)