Beyond profits and losses

Kalpana was only 12 when her life took an abrupt turn. She was like any other girls of her age. She went to school, had fun with her friends. She even aspired to become a school teacher someday.  When in the fifth standard, ill-fate struck her; she was married to a 22 year old slum dweller in Mumbai, where her she was tormented regularly by her in-laws.

Nearly forty years down the line, Kalpana Saroj finds herself seated in a sprawling office in Ballard Estate, Mumbai. Today, she is the CEO of Kamani Tubes ltd- a company that was sick and facing liquidation, which she nursed back to health.

Founded in 1956 by Ramjibhai Kamani, a famous entrepreneur from Gujarat in newly independent India, Kamani Tubes Ltd, which manufactured copper and alloy tubes, was closed since 1988. Saroj took over the sick company in 2006. Today KTL is a profit making body with an annual turnover of Rs. 300 crores as it spreads itself across countries.

Born untouchable and tattered by society, Saroj went on to become the chairman of a Rs.3000 crore business enterprise and the first ever Dalit business-woman of the country.

The Kamani Tubes Ltd, one of Ramjibhai Kamani’s three projects (Kamani Metals and Kamani engineering being the other two) succumbed to prolonged legal battles in 1987, leaving its large workforce jobless. The company was handed over to a worker’s co-operative society in 1998, under the rehabilitation scheme by the Board for Industrial and Financial Research (BIFR). However, the new ownership did not work out and the KTL was locked out again in 1998.

It was at this time of turmoil some of the workers (many of them Dalits) living in a slum next to her residence visited her and urged her to take up the company. Saroj, then riding high on her stint in real estate, offered help. “The situation was very bad. Many were without payment for months and they were not having money for square meals and medicines. I felt I should do something,” she recollects.

Saroj led a team of experts who visited the wretched company in 2000. The board asked her to be on board and be a part of the company’s day to day affairs, to understand the quandary. The more Saroj dug deeper into company’s affairs, the greater was her despair. “The company had no assets and was under a debt of Rs.116 crores. 140 cases of litigations were against it and there were two warring unions. There wasn’t any money to arrange for security guards to protect the machinery which were being stolen by the employees themselves, only to be sold as scrap to pay for food. It faced liquidation as no one was interested in buying it as IDBI (the monitoring agency) frantically searched for one” she adds.

Then a board member, Saroj had to earn the trust of workers, creditors and lending agencies. She moved mountains as she went office to office asking for help (raising money). Finally, a prolonged legal hassle that ran for over six years ended in taking over the ailing Kamani Tubes by Kalpana Saroj and associates. Saroj cleared the outstanding dues. 560 employees were given their pending salaries and Provident Funds along-with ex-gratia payment of Rs. 90 lakhs. She relocated the factory in Wada, some 75 km from Mumbai where it was inaugurated in 2009.

Reports surfaced in newspapers last year about her meeting with Navinbhai Kamani, the former owner of KTL, in his rented house in Worli. Now in his 80’s, the old man was handed a cheque of Rs 51 lakhs by Saroj, which included his dues and Provident funds as a part of the reconstruction of KTL.

The KTL has come out of the sick condition in 2011. In the fiscal year 2012, the company amassed Rs. 300 crores as annual turnover. The company’s profit books might look undersized, but supplies great demands in Dubai and the middle –east, thanks to the huge demand in water supply and sanitation.

The Kalpana Saroj group of companies, which spreads out in several ventures flaunts an asset of Rs. 3000 crores. Now she also spreads out in different ventures with initial investments for a steel plant (100 tonnes per day capacity) and reportedly a bauxite mining in Maharashtra. When asked about her future projects, Saroj refuses to spill the beans but fuels speculation saying, “It is too early to disclose things”.

Saroj’s is a story of a successful industrialist, but life hasn’t been a bed of roses all the way through. The only Dalit business-woman in the country who never had a high school degree –Saroj’s success becomes phenomenal when one looks back at her painful past.

Hailing from Akur; a small village resided by the Marathi Dalits in Akola district, some 600 km east of Mumbai, Saroj battled grinding poverty all her life. Born to a Havildar (police constable) father and an illiterate mother, Saroj wanted to study. “My father ignored the red eye of our society and inducted me to a school,” she recollects. When in 5^th standard, her life hit a rocky patch as she was pulled out of school and married off to a 22 year old man dwelling in the slums of Mumbai. Life at her in-laws’ residence was miserable for the 12 year old as she was abused and tortured regularly. Devastated by hunger and abasement, she returned to her parents.

Once back, she tried joining the police force when she was merely 13, but failed. Dejected, Saroj tried hands in nursing and other odd jobs before  getting herself a sewing machine, only to become her own bread winner. She stitched three blouses a day for a mere Rs.10. But she wanted to study and returned back to school, where she graduated to the 9^th standard.

Her dreams to bag a ‘sarkaari naukri’ (government job) withered away with increased resistance from her community. She swooped into an all-time low when she tried to kill herself by drinking pesticide. “The villagers taunted me since I left my in-laws. They thought I was guilty. I asked myself – should I live?” she reflects.

Today Saroj repents her hasty decision, but considers her narrow escape from death to be the turner in her life. Shortly after this incident, she migrated to Mumbai and managed a job in a hosiery factory, where she earned Rs.2 a day. She married again and started a beauty parlour and in no time moved into furniture business. However it was her decision to enter the real estate business that rolled the dice. She continued to ride the reality boom and went on to buy stakes in a sugar factory in Ahmadabad.

If Jamshetji Tata goes into history books as the pioneer Indian industrialist, Kalpana Saroj becomes the queen of Dalit aspirations. Women of her community live in a wretched state – far flung from the lights of education, suffering from poverty and malnutrition yet raising children and taking over the role of bread winners from their drunkard husbands. Saroj offers her bit by arranging several development programmes for them.

As her company takes small yet confident strides forward, Saroj often finds herself amid the likes of Ratan Tata and Mukhesh Ambani. “Stalwarts like Ratan Ji, Mukesh Ji (Mukhesh Ambani) and Adi Ji (Adi Godrej) have always given me a warm response. They appreciate my work and encourage me to strive forward. I aspire to be like them someday,” she adds.

Saroj fight against odds to become emerged victorious has been honoured by the government. In 2007, Saroj was conferred the Rajiv Gandhi award. Many awards, both national and international were conferred since then. And in 2013 she has been shortlisted for the Padma Shree awards in Trade and Industry. “I feel humbled,” she adds.

She moved mountains, inspired many. But her success story isn’t indicative of the progress of Dalit women as a whole. For Nivedita Menon, the feminist scholar and political theorist, Kalpana Saroj’s success “is a story of individual grit and determination in the face of enormous odds,” but her success “isn’t indicative of any progress for Dalit women as a whole”. “Ms Saroj's success is a story of individual grit and determination in the face of enormous odds. For Dalits and Dalit women as a whole to make the best of their lives, there need to be serious structural interventions (such as educational opportunities, health and nutrition interventions, end of impunity for caste-based discrimination and violence) so that it's not only the odd individual who ‘makes it’,” she says. 

Mother to a pilot (son) and a hotel management student (daughter), this gorgeous and captivating lady feels that ‘doors open up itself when one is resolute’. “Agar aapke iraade buland ho to kudrat bhi aap ka saath deti hai”- she says. Her thought reminds of a famous dialogue from the romantic comedy Om Shanti Om, but one can borrow the title of  2009 Oscar winning movie to describe her journey- the original Slumdog Millionaire.