Leader
On September 20, 1990, Dr. Prasada Rao strode into the auditorium at the Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP) in Dehradun for his maiden speech as Director.
He was taking up an assignment so challenging that few encouraged him to accept it. IIP was an organization fraught with labor union problems so severe that prior leaders often left without farewells. The Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) was considering shutting IIP down before Dr. Prasada Rao came to the national lab.
On that September afternoon, though, Dr. Prasada Rao was imperturbably confident that he would turn IIP around. That confidence could have come from his long career in corporate R&D at IPCL and PDIL. His reputation as a catalysis “whiz kid” – that is how Devendra Lal who’d been asked by CSIR to assess IIP described him – could have been the reason behind that confidence.
But those who knew Dr. Prasada Rao could tell that the primary fount of his confidence was his deep spirituality, perennial optimism, and an enduring belief in people and their ability to rise to the occasion given the right environment. And, so, against all odds and against most advice he received, Dr. Prasada Rao took charge as Director, IIP, and within a few weeks, in another address to his staff, asked them to “just smile more at work.”
Within a few months, Dr. Prasada Rao reorganized the institution providing roles, opportunities, and challenges for each and every scientist and worker. He paid no heed to their reputations or baggage and found a way to invite everyone into his mission of transforming IIP. A key part of this effort was to expose IIP’s staff to what best-in-class looked like, and, to that end, he created opportunities for them to travel to leading companies, labs, and universities around the world. He supplemented this with a robust investment in numerous training programs conducted round the year at the institute for all staff levels.
Another major thrust of Dr. Prasada Rao’s leadership was in forging relationships with industry. Instead of waiting for refineries and petrochemical companies to contact IIP, he proactively reached out to them and invited their senior executives and leaders to visit the institute. He took great pride in IIP’s accomplishments especially with the technologies the national lab had developed. He would begin most of his presentations with a slide that showed the map of India and all the refineries and petrochemical plants that were using IIP’s technologies, and would ask for an updated version if it did not reflect the newest licensee. Dr. Prasada Rao’s approach to engaging industry was a whiff of fresh air and could not have come at a better time for IIP and CSIR, which were being challenged to demonstrate their economic independence and commercial relevance as India embarked on economic liberalization.
Dr. Prasada Rao brought a corporate approach to marketing and promoting the institute by organizing industry meets in leading cities and encouraging IIP’s scientists to visit oil & gas and chemical companies and present their capabilities. He threw out staid annual reports and replaced with colorful and breezy newsletters and reports that highlighted the progress IIP had achieved in the past year. Most importantly, he created an open culture of communicating the institute’s progress and successes with a wide range of stakeholders both within and outside India.
Dr. Prasada Rao embraced and took complete ownership of the institute right from the work it did through its facilities and labs to the employees and their families and the campus. He set high standards and shared his aspirations without worrying about how they would achieve them and instead motivated the IIP team to aim for the stars. Dr. Prasada Rao seized every opportunity that came his way. This led to an investment in the laboratory and pilot plant infrastructure at IIP using a World Bank soft loan of Rs. 15 crores that yielded a return many times over for the institute.
IIP’s accomplishments especially around technologies that had been commercialized multiplied through the 1990s under Dr. Prasada Rao’s leadership. The technologies the institute had developed and commercialized in the 1990s won IIP nine CSIR Technology Awards in the 11 years since the award had been established. The institute established partnerships with virtually every single oil & gas company in India and with a number of leading oil & gas and chemical corporations around the world. IIP also made considerable progress across other metrics such as the number of papers published, patents filed, and development of its human capital.
Dr. Prasada Rao retired from IIP on January 31, 1999 and his farewell included a major international symposium to celebrate his 60th birthday on January 20. Dr. Prasada Rao’s bonds with IIP and the IIP family only intensified over the years. He was just a phone call or Whatsapp message away for any IIP family member needing help. An enduring image of his popularity across the IIP family was the throngs of IIP colleagues he drew when he’d enter the auditorium or the beeline of guests waiting on him at the IIP guest house on visits to Dehradun.
