Sometimes, ‘Pain is Gain.’ In the case of Reena Arya, Additional Director General, Vigilance, Department of Customs & Central Excise, North Zone unit, Delhi, it was her knee pain that got her her future husband.
The incident took place during a trek, while she was at the two-year officers’ training course for civil service officers at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie. The 15-day trekking camp was at the Indo-Tibetan border, base camp Sonam. One of her batch mates, Dr. Ajoy Kumar, a passionate sprinter, was concerned that Reena could not keep up with the others, as she suffered from knee effusion, colloquially known as water on the knee. He curtailed his pace, walked along with her and helped her overcome any hurdles that came her way. The seed of mutual affection which got sowed then, fructified into a happy marriage.
The trekking camp participants comprised ten officers from their batch of 1986, four of them women. Reena says, “It was a pretty intense and long trekking experience. Ajoy and I got to know each other well during those 15 days.’’ Dr. Ajoy’s MBBS degree had come in handy in breaking the ice.. Dr. Ajoy Kumar, now a Congress spokesperson, who often appears as a panelist, vociferously debating on television news channels. He first graduated in medicine from Puducherry, but opted for the civil services, and became an IPS officer from the Bihar cadre; had a stint with the Tatas as Executive Director; is a former MP of the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha and is now the official spokesperson of the Congress party. He is also an entrepreneur, the CEO of Max Neeman Medical International Ltd. Phew!
Love blossoms and continues to bloomThe Kumars who reside in an upper crust residential neighbourhood on a hilly plateau of Faridabad, have a charming and cosy bungalow where they live with their two teenage sons, Aditya and Shantanu. Two four legged ‘scientists’, Newton and Edison also thrive cheerfully here. Reena and Dr. Ajoy come from diverse family backgrounds. Says Reena, a post-graduate in History, and ‘the cool, composed and shy’ of the two, “I am from Aligarh, and come from an agricultural background. My father left his job and took to farming on a land that he owned, growing wheat, sugarcane and rice. We are a big family, I have five sisters and two brothers, and all of us are working professionals. The credit goes to my mother. She was very particular, not only that all of us had a career, but also insisted that Recalling his tenure as ASP under training, where he received the police medal, Ajoy states, “During the eight months that I was in Rajpur, there was no electricity, no water, no bathrooms -- you had to go the fields to answer nature’s call and you had to have cold water bath even during winter. I had never seen such a kind of life. Big gangs of 50 used to come on horses. It was like we see in the movies, but even the silver screen version is quite subdued in comparison with what I had to deal with, on the ground. These gangs carried duffle bags on their backs loaded with bullets, and fired from horseback. At one time, we fought a big gang and got surrounded by them. We survived and finally managed to kill its leader.” Did she worry? Quips Ajoy, “Not really, because we were not married then, and in those days communication was terrible.” However, after marriage, throughout his ten year stint as an IPS officer in the Bihar cadre, when he had to go on raids leading sometimes to encounters with criminal gangs, Reena used to be distressed. Says she, “Whenever he went for any encounter, I couldn’t sleep. Our little children were at home. I would always be under tension. I told him after some time not to inform me when he was going on such operations. Otherwise, Patna wasn’t industrially developed. I was busy bringing up the children and life was comfortable.” Adds Ajoy, she was happiest when he quit the police.
Dr. Ajoy’s first posting in the Bihar cadre was in Danapur in Patna, as Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP). Reena was posted as Assistant Commissioner in Patna, which was 12 kms from Dhanapur. So they were together and remained so for the rest of their career. Elaborates Reena, none of us got married unless we had a proper job.” Quite admirably, three of Reena’s sisters are in the civil services. One of them, Nishi Singh, is presently the Director General, Systems, Department of Income Tax, Pune. Her husband was also with the Income Tax Department but took voluntary retirement and is now a partner one of the big four audit firms, Deloitte. Another of her sisters is a Professor of Pathology at Kanpur Medical College. Her other sister is a Professor of History at IGNOU and her other bother is a scientist with the Government of India. In sharp contrast, Dr. Ajoy’s father was in the Indian Foreign Services, and retired as the Head of the Mission in Jordan. Says Dr. Ajoy, “So, as a child, I travelled all over the world, having stayed for several years in Japan and Moscow. I did some of my schooling in Delhi and finally finished my 12th Std in a wonderful school – the Hyderabad Public school.” Thereafter, he opted for medicine. He got admission into the prestigious AFMC College in Pune, but chose to join JIPMER college in Puducherry.
Why did he decide to take up medicine? Says Dr. Ajoy, “You needed to pursue a professional degree. I loved the medical stream and wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon.” Then what made him attempt the civil services examination after having passed his MBBS? Says he, “That’s because my dad was in the civil services and in any case at that age of 21-22 years, you are not sure what you want to do, so you keep dabbling in familiar careers.’’ Although he had opted for the IFS as his first choice, he got selected into the IPS cadre, so he was not sure whether to take it up. It was Reena who helped him decide. Says Dr. Ajoy, “I did not know anything about a career in the police force, nor had I visited any police station in my life. Reena had a better idea about an IPS career, as her uncle , G S Arya, was posted as the first Inspector General of Mizoram in 1975. He was the first IPS officer to be killed by terrorists and his statue adorns the National Police Academy, Hyderabad.” Reena says it was Dr. Ajoy’s ‘‘simplicity, charming smile and sense of humour’’ that won her heart, and Reena’s ‘clear thinking’ that appealed to Dr. Ajoy and inspired him to join the IPS. Says he, “As we got more and more familiar, we realized we shared common interests like politics, development and so on.”
Narrating more elaborately as to what clicked for them, Ajoy, the more vocal of the two says, “She is a very chilled-out person and knows what she wants to do. Also, a government career is pretty stable, so once you find your partner with similar interests, and chemistry is established between the two, you don’t hesitate about getting married. It is not like a management career where both have to struggle and the future is unsure. We both knew we were in a career that was stable and would lead to a better future.” They decided to get married after the probation period (the last eight months of training comprises a posting). During the probation period, Dr. Ajoy was at the Sardar Vallabhai Patel National Police Academy in Hyderabad and Reena, at the Director General of Income Tax Training Institute in Mumbai, since Reena had got into the Indian Revenue Service. They were married on 12th October, 1988. Says Dr. Ajoy, “We postponed our wedding for eight months after we finished our probation, as my father got badly injured and cut his Achilles heel, following which, he had a kidney shutdown. He however recovered well.”
Subsequent to marriage, Reena maintained her original surname – Arya. But she states, jocularly, “No, it has nothing to do with feminism...only the convenience of not having to change my surname in government records, which would have been quite tedious.”
The best part about government service is that the government is very accommodating -- something the private sector should learn. Right from the time we got married, we have never stayed separately, we have always been together. - Reena Arya
The government job factorRecalling his tenure as ASP under training, where he received the police medal, Ajoy states, “During the eight months that I was in Rajpur, there was no electricity, no water, no bathrooms -- you had to go the fields to answer nature’s call and you had to have cold water bath even during winter. I had never seen such a kind of life. Big gangs of 50 used to come on horses. It was like we see in the movies, but even the silver screen version is quite subdued in comparison with what I had to deal with, on the ground. These gangs carried duffle bags on their backs loaded with bullets, and fired from horseback. At one time, we fought a big gang and got surrounded by them. We survived and finally managed to kill its leader.” Did she worry? Quips Ajoy, “Not really, because we were not married then, and in those days communication was terrible.” However, after marriage, throughout his ten year stint as an IPS officer in the Bihar cadre, when he had to go on raids leading sometimes to encounters with criminal gangs, Reena used to be distressed. Says she, “Whenever he went for any encounter, I couldn’t sleep. Our little children were at home. I would always be under tension. I told him after some time not to inform me when he was going on such operations. Otherwise, Patna wasn’t industrially developed. I was busy bringing up the children and life was comfortable.” Adds Ajoy, she was happiest when he quit the police.
Dr. Ajoy’s first posting in the Bihar cadre was in Danapur in Patna, as Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP). Reena was posted as Assistant Commissioner in Patna, which was 12 kms from Dhanapur. So they were together and remained so for the rest of their career. Elaborates Reena, “The best part about government service is that the government is very accommodating -- something the private sector should learn. Right from the time we got married, we have never stayed separately, we have always been together. I was always given a transfer to the place that Ajoy was posted to. Besides, a job in the government is very comfortable in terms of timings and holidays. You have to work hard, but I do not remember getting stressed.’’ Adds Ajoy, “the government adjusted her posting to wherever I went - Patna, Jamshedpur, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi and even Pune, when I was appointed as Chief Executive, Cummins.’’
The best part about government service is that the government is very accommodating -- something the private sector should learn. Right from the time we got married, we have never stayed separately, we have always been together. - Reena Arya
Money is a relevant wordSays Reena, “One didn’t get paid much in the police force. In 1994-95 our salary used to be Rs 5,000 per month and when Ajoy quit from the IPS, we only had Rs 3000 in the bank. Can you imagine that?’’ Adds Ajoy, “When I got my job with the Tatas, after I quit IPS in 1996, Mr Ratan Tata handed me the offer letter. What I thought was the annual take home, was actually the monthly take home -- and I was pretty happy with it. It was a huge amount those days– eight to ten times higher than what the government paid. It was significant.”
Hence, says Ajoy, the concept of money has to be seen in the proper perspective, depending on where you are working – in the government, or the corporate sector. “If you are a civil servant, your concept of CTC (Cost To Company) is limited, but on the other hand you get all the facilities. An SP gets a big house. We lived in style as we were put up at the best residential addresses. In Patna we lived in a house set on a sprawling 10 acre land which was located in Gandhi Maidan, one of the prime areas where they are now pulling down heritage structures and making multi-storeyed apartments. My house was at the edge of the Ganges. It was an old British house with lots of fire places. So it was pretty fancy – from the perspective of accommodation and infrastructure, it was a classy life. Money was never short because you could eat well, you could send your children to a decent school.”
Adds Reena, “You lived well, but you couldn’t save money, or buy or invest...and we did not see the need to save money because we both have pensionable jobs and government pension is pretty good. You were sure that after you retired you would get 50 per cent of what you earned.’’ Ajoy further elaborates, “To get the kind of pension that Reena will get when she retires, you need a corpus close to 5-6 crore rupees. So, if, at the time of retirement, you were earning a monthly salary of Rs 1 lakh, you get Rs 50, 000 to Rs 60, 000 per month as pension for the rest of your life, and then the spouse also gets it, and then the surviving member. But in the private sector, when you retire, there is no money. Though, the Tatas do have a system in place, and some others in the corporate sector too now offer retirement benefits these days...”
Highlighting the income disparity issue, Ajoy observes, “In the government, salary structures are reasonable. The corporate sector should understand that if the CEO takes X and the last person in the company takes one by millionth of X, the disconnect is huge from a political and social perspective, I am stunned by this inequality.”
Entry into the corporate sector
“At that time I was still the SP of Patna. However, Jamshedpur was facing violence from the mafia. Tata Steel was one of India’s largest corporates then. That year was a bad year for the Tatas. The General Managers of Tata Steel and Tata Motors had got killed.
“Mr. Tata came to meet Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav, the then Bihar chief minister, to request him to address the issue of the mafia urgently, or he would be forced to shift the Tata Steel plant from Jamshedpur, as the law and order situation was not conducive to running such a big company. He was concerned about the killings and kidnappings. The then chief minister called me, apprised me of the situation, and transferred me as SP, Jamshedpur, overnight. He also called Mr. Tata and assured him that he was sending the best SP to bring the situation under control.”
Dr. Ajoy got his act together within a fortnight and successfully dealt with the mafia. He explains, “For 10 to 15 days I got all the policemen together, and after a month or so the town was completely rid of the mafia. We actually reduced crime rate by some 900-1000 per cent, but all that we did was basic policing – executing warrants, completing investigations on time, conducting trials promptly and giving punishment, ensuring that constables and sub-inspectors had the proper resources and security, an assurance that they would be transferred only if they did something wrong. And they were sure that I would take the risk along with them.” Ajoy admirably also dissolved the communal tension in Jamshedpur which would flare up on the days of Ram Navami and Moharram.
Adds Ajoy, “At the time when I joined as SP in Jamshedpur, no one came on the streets after 6 p.m. for fear of robberies, kidnappings and killings. After three months we said we wanted to see people having ice cream at night at the Jubilee junction till 2 a.m. Within one month, it happened.”
Just as Ajoy was about to join XLRI, he met Mr. Rawal and Ratan Tata who were very impressed with Ajoy Kumar’s handling of the Jamshedpur situation. Says he, “Jamshed Irani was a very good friend of ours and he arranged a meeting with them. I had planned to take two years study leave, do the course, and go back to the government. Then I met Mr. Tata and he said instead of doing a business degree, you can study and work with us. I told him I would think about it. After the second meeting, where I spoke to him for half an hour, I came and told my wife I was quitting. She was shocked. To resign from the IPS is a big decision. But it took me only half an hour to decide. But then subsequently, all the constables, the whole town came to me, crying.”
Throughout his ten year stint as an IPS officer, he had to go on raids leading to encounters with criminal gangs. I told him after some time not to inform me when he was going on such operations - Reena Arya
The Boss factor in government vs. corporate“Being in the police force was fun, no doubt - the ability to achieve goals, to work in teams, was all part of police life. In the government, you have considerable freedom to act. Whereas in the corporate sector, how you think and act depends quite a lot on your boss’s attitude. In the government, if I am honest and want to achieve my goal, what my boss thinks about it is not so material. If you are a senior police officer (an IPS officer), based on your experience, the freedom and ability to act is greater. In the corporate sector, you have to look over your shoulder and see what the boss is saying.” Adds Reena: “In the government, the system works and protects you.
There are at least 30 per cent people supporting you, but in the private sector, it is only one – one who recruits you, or the boss. So that’s why, in the government, despite everything, people reach the age of retirement and finally retire from their responsibilities.’’ She also feels that the public sector in India can become the most enlightened employer if politicians do not interfere. “When you have the protection of social security of a public sector entity with the independence to act, you can imagine what a potent recipe for good management that can be.”
Made for each otherSo, do Reena and Ajoy discuss or consult each other on their respective work? Yes, says Ajoy, “We give our perspective to each other. If she is investigating as a DG, my experience in the police force helps, and I give her my views. Similarly, when I want to have clarity of thought on any subject, I take her advice.”
Reena denies she had had a roller coaster ride, even though Dr. Ajoy switched from the government to the corporate and then plunged into politics. What did she think when he decided to enter this field? Reena says with a smile, “He always wanted to be in politics. He likes people and politics is a natural outcome for those who like to be with people. I didn’t mind because with every change, Ajoy gave me a better life. I believe in God and get most of the strength from him. My family is very close knit, they absorb a lot of pressure.”
Ajoy is only intrigued about his defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. A sitting MP, he lost his seat thanks to the Modi wave, but still won four lakh votes. Says he, “Guys like me cannot reconcile to the phenomenon of a wave when I spent all my time in my constituency – working 18 hours a day, visiting all the villages and meeting several lakhs of people, got solar light to villages -- so logically there was no reason for me to lose. Across political parties everybody said I had worked like a dog, but the wave went against me. If you are sinc+Rere and hardworking, the formula normally works; in politics it does not work. It was the first time in my life when my basic understanding of what constitutes success was challenged.”
Advice to young managers“You need to continuously educate yourself. I read a lot. I try to read one book a week. For a long time I don’t touch political topics, but after a long time I have begun reading Rajdeep Sardesai’s ‘Elections 2014’ because that is relevant to my job. Before that, I read an exceptional book, Amateurs by David Halberstam. I have a very simple formula – life is too short to waste reading crappy books or watching lousy movies. So, I only read books which are highly recommended. The Economist is a good source for books. This magazine has fantastic book reviews – you can’t go wrong, as reviews are very clinical.
“On the subject of leadership I would recommend reading Jim Collins. On strategies, you should read Michael Porter, or Kotler, on marketing.” “Secondly, you must understand your job from the basics. Remove all the clutter. I was Julio Ribeiro’s escort officer when he was the Director General in Punjab. He told me something interesting. He was a tough cop. He said, ‘Ajoy I used to be very action oriented. A good policeman catches a criminal when he is having a drink in the bar and not when you meet him on the road and he shoots.’ Even in business, you must understand the basics.”
But Reena cautions youngsters, “Take your career seriously, but do not identify your job with yourself too much, because remember tomorrow your replacement would be found faster than you can imagine and you won’t find a job that fast. So you have to be a bit of a Zen Master – you have to be a Yogi. Even CEOs take themselves too seriously. Even corporate leaders - if they cut their nails and bleed a little, they get upset. But they don’t mind chopping off the hands of the next guy. So that is where there is a disconnect.’’
Reena adds, ”I always recommend to youngsters to go to a smaller city to work. Most of them have ambitions to work in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. In smaller towns, commuting time is less, the quality of life is better, you can spend more time with the family, you are known in that town, unlike in the city where you are barely known. As you go higher up you can look out for jobs in bigger cities.”
Balancing work and family
Says Reena, “Whatever your professional achievement, the family should be given top priority. I will give you a small example. Recently I visited a friend whose parents who I have known since childhood were also present. Both of them are in their 80s now, and it was so delightful to see them so happy with their grandchildren. Professional happiness gives you a different kick, but if you want happiness with stability then the family is the factor. They absorb so much for you.” Adds Ajoy, “During a shootout -- I once struggled with a criminal who was about to shoot me dead. Whenever you have a life-threatening experience, you don’t remember you are a CEO – you only remember your mother, father, wife, children. That is the only thing that matters. And we spend 99 per cent of the time with the other stuff.”
Doing simple things together, such as seeing movies together during leisure time and caring for each other in day to day life is the secret of their happy life. Reena points out, “He sees me off to the car.’’ Both feel that as couples, when you are young, you argue about dumb stuff. “We believe that you need not buy expensive stuff for your house to impress your relatives and friends, but you should ensure that your daily life is comfortable.”
. Fitness and healthAjoy, who is as fit as a fiddle, runs 11 kms on the treadmill while watching his favourite crime serial, putting it on mute while his iPhone belts out the latest rock music. Ever since 1978 this has been his routine. Earlier, he ran on the road, but now he says “With age and new technology I prefer the machine.” This is followed by ‘Suryanamaskar’ and crunches, so it is a 1.5 hour workout every day.
Whenever you have a life-threatening experience, you don’t remember you are a CEO – you only remember your mother, father, wife, children...and we spend 99 per cent of the time with the other stuff -Dr Ajoy Kumar
Adopting an amiable work cultureAjoy believes asking women to work from home two days a week increases productivity. Says he, “In an industry which has 50-60 percent attrition rate, we, at the Max Neeman Medical International Ltd, have less than 3-4 percent. That’s because, as a rule, we make everyone feel like family and make the other person comfortable. There was a boy who joined us in the Statistics department. This boy came from Burdwan and used to travel two and a half hours each way, from home to the workplace. He joined us and on the very second day someone in the company put him up in his house, as he lived close to the workplace. If you are able to create that kind of environment and sustain it, it would create a happy working environment
Future plans?Says Ajoy cheekily, “Since Reena has a top job that is secure, I have my safety net. So I can take risks and dabble in politics, or the company that I run. Reena says, “My dream is to do horticulture.’’ The colourful spread of flowers at the entrance of their bungalow reflects her passion for landscape gardening.
What about their sons? Says Reena, “Both like reading and both did not want to take up Science, but are inclined towards Law. My elder son is at the National Law School, Bangalore. My younger son too dreams on the same lines.
By Vinita Deshmukh
