Report of Indian Institute of Public Administration ... - Ministry of Power

Maharashtra
IMPACT OF DELAY IN RESTRUCTURING
It is seen that though Government of Maharashtra had decided to restructure MSEB in
August 2002 when the White Paper was published, restructuring could not take place
as scheduled. Probably absence of strong political will and due to the opposition of the
staff and unions, the schedule could not be adhered to. The Parliament Elections in
early 2004 and subsequent State Assembly elections in later part of the year caused
further delay. Thus a period of almost two years was lost in uncertainty about the
future structure of MSEB.
In such situations, when the financial health of the organisation is weak and its future
uncertain, employees start losing their sense of belonging to the organisation. Due to
paucity of funds, even minimal developmental activities have to be curtailed. Also,
deciding priorities of works and allocation of available funds to these works gets
distorted. This adversely affects the morale of the staff and their zeal to work for the
betterment of the organisation. The demoralisation of the staff leads to total inaction
and slowing down work momentum. This seems to have happened in MSEB. The new
companies will now have to make considerable effort to build up involvement and
commitment of this inherited staff, in adapting to a new consumer oriented and vibrant
work culture.
The staff and unions themselves had earlier proposed that functions of generation,
transmission, and distribution be run as separate profit centres, retaining MSEB’s
identity. Looking back, it appears that, along with maintaining the consolidated
accounts of MSEB, if separate accounts for these three entities were maintained for
working out profit/loss of the individual profit centre, a fund of valuable information
pertaining to each function for the period 2002 to 2005 would have become available
and helped the restructuring exercise as well as successor entities. This period could
also have been utilised in setting up of an efficient state-of-the-art Information
System.
SETTING UP A MODERN INFORMATION SYSTEM
The importance of quick availability of correct information in any field and its
efficient and easy handling needs hardly to be stressed. Efficient organisations of
today, spend considerable time and effort in defining an Information Policy and in
implementing a ‘state-of-the-art’ computerised information system, encompassing, not
only internal areas of operations, but also external areas such as market research,
competitors’ operations, new technologies, and so on. The system design incorporates
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