Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Sanjay Kumar Panda: Meet the secretary who talked about “zero defect” in a book two decades ago

OVER two decades ago, present textile secretary and 1980 batch Manipur-Tripura cadre IAS Dr Sanjay Kumar Panda published an Oriya book on handloom where he talked about “zero defect”, a phrase that has now caught the imagination of everyone after prime minister Narendra Modi made the “zero defect, zero effect” a national slogan so as to pursue quality in manufacturing. First, let’s see how Panda argued about production of handloom without any defect (zero defect)…
in the booklet that was published in 1994. The translation of an excerpt of the book is as follows:  “In any commercial transaction, choice of customers is most critical for success. In handloom, the production without any defect (zero defect) as per the liking of customer holds the key to success. Handloom weavers must make products which power-loom can’t, and which is liked by the customer so as to survive in the competitive market.” An English version of the book is likely to come up soon.
Panda who became Tripura chief secretary before joining as union secretary last year, has been associated with textiles for decades now. In fact, it was for his study on Mulberry sericulture in non-traditional areas, Panda was awarded PhD in economics by Odisha’s Utkal University. Later, as the managing director of Odisha State Tassar and Silk Society and director of textiles, Odisha, Panda carried out the implementation of the Bivoltine sericulture development project and the national sericulture project in non-traditional area for five years (1989-94). As the principal secretary (2005-09) and later as the chief secretary of the government of Tripura, Panda continued his work on promoting sericulture.
Last year, Panda teamed up with a select bureaucrats, bankers and academics to produce a book titled, “Making One plus One Eleven- Some Innovative Experiences with Tripura”, in which he highlighted some unique achievements of the state of Tripura. For example, Tripura achieving a literacy rate of over 95% is not known to many. And in 2013 assembly elections, Tripura set a record when as high as 93% of voters voted, with women outnumbering the men.

2 comments:

  1. “Making One plus One Eleven- Some Innovative Experiences with Tripura”, is the clear cut example that he is having several such innovative ideas.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Why do you unduly boast as if Zero defect policy is invented by an IAS officer, entire world knows about Quality Management guru Edward Deming who not only just spoke about it but showed the world how to implement and achieve it. Japanese are good example of achieving it, all these have happened in late 70s and early 80s. Why IAS unduly boast, and take credit which is not due to them.

    ReplyDelete