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Anju Banerjee,
Chairman EdCIL is a bureaucrat who knows her onions and is confident
of transforming systems
Cdr (retd) Sandeepan Banerjee met his future wife,
Anju when she was studying at Oak Grove School in Dehradun.
“Sandeepan’s sister was my classmate and both our parents were
officials in the railways. I met him when I was 13. He used to come to
our school on the pretext of meeting his sister,” laughs Anju. In 1973
she passed out from school, and Sandeepan joined NDA, he occasionally
sent her letters. He proposed to her the same year and from then on a
sort of commitment was made.
He got commissioned in 1977 as Sub Lieutenant in
the Indian Navy and the couple tied the knot in 1980. Meanwhile Anju
after graduating from Loreto College, Kolkata enrolled at Jadhavpur
University for her MA in International Relations. “I topped the
course. But I was more interested in following a career in civil
services. Though in 1980, I failed to clear the Civil Services exam, I
got through in GOA civil services where I served from 1981-82,”
recounts Anju.
Not one to give up, she reappeared for the civil
services exam in 1981 and cleared it, joining the Indian railways
personnel service. After taking voluntary retirement in November 2005,
she took up the job at EdCIL as Chairman and Managing director. EdCIL
is a public sector unit providing quality services at a reasonable
cost in the education sector, has diversified in other areas of social
sector (health, agriculture and rural development) and is a preferred
organisation for undertaking consultancy assignments.
At the helm at EdCL, Anju has brought about changes
which will set systems in place. “I do not believe in pushing people
to achieve targets. I feel that in any organisation the most important
task one has to undertake as a leader is to develop and design systems
that would help run it in a smooth fashion. No organisation should be
based on individuals alone, systems have to be created to ensure that
even if one person is absent the work should not get hampered. This is
exactly what my endeavour is at EdCIL,” she opines. And this shows,
the company has increased its turnover from 33 crores in 2006 to 54
crores in 2008 under her leadership and has also acquired ISO
certification.
 Unlike
other government offices EdCIL is a well maintained, spic and span
office where things appear to be moving in clockwork precision. “My
effort is always to take things to a logical conclusion, if you start
something don’t leave it halfway is what I believe in,” adds Anju.
On being asked how difficult it has been to manage
her prefessional and personal life she takes a deep breath and
candidly admits, “Juggling between home and work has been a tough
task. Sandeepan’s job in the Indian Navy and now as a shippie and my
work in the railways kept us apart . It was always tough managing two
daughters without the presence of a husband at home. We used to wait
for holidays to be together as a family. To our kids Sandeepan has
been a Santa Claus. There were moments when I would be on edge. But
then as time passed by, I learnt to manage things and draw the best
from our life that we had consciously chosen to lead.”
They devised their own method of celebrating
festivals and birthdays in advance to match with Sandeepan’s presence
at home. And Anju’s parents helped a lot. “Both of us have sacrificed
to provide our daughters with the best of education. My elder daughter
Shweta studied at Mayo college and then did her post graduation at
Cambridge and went on to work for World Bank. She is now married to an
American who is doing his doctoral work in Sanskrit Bengali Philosophy
in New York. My younger daughter is doing her MBA in hospitality
management from Switzerland,” adds the proud mother.
Anju is also a keen golfer. Golf has helped her
maintain equanimity and poise. On being asked as to what needs to be
done to improve the quality of education in India, Anju says, “What is
most important is to improve the infrastructure in our educational
institutes. If our kids are taught in world class classrooms, they
will learn to maintain the same standards when they walk into their
professional lives. If we provide them with shoddy canteens and
toilets, ill maintained libraries then that is what they are going to
give back to the system. Secondly, our system must encourage
creativity at all levels. The proposal to do away with 10th board
exams is also a good idea, which we need to adopt to promote
creativity,” believes Anju.
Khurshid Dinshaw |
