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My Days With Dr. Kalam - Lessons in Range Safety | VK Saraswat

This is the second part of my series on my days with Dr. Kalam. As someone who’s spent a huge chunk of my career working with him on various of India’s missile missions , I have been lucky to know him, work with him and see him in action.

October 15th was the first posthumous birth anniversary of Dr. Kalam, it was a nostalgic time for those of us who worked with him. He would never ask for any showy gifts or ceremonies on his birthdays, I remember. To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal, He would always say. That takes me back to our time at SHAR where we worked in Dr. Kalam’s team and learned Range Safety in the development of missiles.

In this post I speak about lessons in Range Safety. Range Safety is an integral part of missile testing and is a prerequisite to the development of missile. During 1972-79, I had participated in many flight tests of Devil (SAM-2) missiles as part of the indigenous development of SAM-2 but was never exposed to the requirement of Range Safety and Mission Safety.

During the prep stage of the surface to surface missile version of SAM-II (SA-45) to evaluate strap down navigation system in 1983-84, a pet project of Late Shri P. Banerjee, Dr. Kalam insisted on having a review of all aspects of Range Safety and expressed concern about handling of propellants, pyros and high pressure systems in the missile.

DRDL had never paid much attention to these aspects.  I do not know why, but he nominated me to interact with the SHAR team and to work out the details in consultation with them.  During this campaign, I learned all about Mission Safety and came to establish a good working relationship with SHAR Safety Chief Shri Shankar.

But this wasn’t the situation initially. We were a new team at SHAR and observed that the approach to certain procedures at SHAR was different than what we were accustomed to at DRDL.  Many conflicting situations arose due to differences in approach to safety in DRDL and that at SHAR.  Dr. Kalam keenly observed my approach particularly when Shankar followed the attitude of a big brother reducing the DRDL to an object of ridicule on more than one occasion.  Since we were a new team at SHAR, this wasn’t very motivating for us neither did we feel very welcomed. But, Dr. Kalam’s presence and win-win approach to conflict resolution helped resolve all our crises. His quiet manner and calm demeanor stood superior to any differences of opinions, he showed us how to plan our approaches for the best results. For me it wasn’t just a crash course in “Safety Engineering” but also a huge one in Conflict Management and People Management.

This is how Dr. Kalam trained us as a  team from DRDL to take up leadership in a multi-organisational Integrated Guided Missile Programme. Opinions often differ when many different-minded individuals work on a project, but Dr. Kalam showed us how the success of the team and focussing on the end goal is bigger than any other differences, big or small.

Kudos to this man, his memory will always live on in our lives every time we think of these little lessons that made us better scientists, better planners and better individuals.

-84 years of Dr. Kalam.

Comments

  1. Unknown29 October 2015 at 00:01

    Sir you are lucky that you work with such great personality

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown29 October 2015 at 00:03

    Sir really you are lucky that you work with such a great percenalty

    ReplyDelete
  3. DeepThought29 October 2015 at 10:55

    Thanks sir for sharing the experience, it is one such example that brings out the great leadership and human qualities that make Dr Kalam sir unique

    ReplyDelete

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