From digging wells to setting up India’s first co-operative cyber park

“How can a labour-contract society that builds small roads and culverts set up a cyber park which requires hundreds of crores of rupees?”

This highly negative question from a senior bureaucrat acted as a trigger for the Uralunkal Labour Contract Co-operative Society Ltd to build the Rs 210-crore UL Cyber Park at Kozhikode. The first IT special economic zone in the co-operative sector in India, which is coming up on a 25-acre site at Kozhikode, is due for commissioning in a couple of months.

Dream project

“The insult hurt our esteem,” recalls P. Rameshan, President of the society. “But it helped to solidify the determination to build our dream project.”

That capacity to dream big and turn negatives into positive energy, says Rameshan, has been the lifeline of the Uralunkal society all along.

The society was born back in 1925 at the Uralunkal in Kerala’s Kozhikode district in response to a social boycott threat to farm workers of the backward Thiyya community. A few farm hands had joined the social reform movement Athma Vidya Sangham set up by Vagbhadananda Guru.

It campaigned against casteism, superstitions and idol worship. Incensed by this, local upper-caste landlords refused to employ Sangham members.

Unnerved, Vagbhadanandan asked the sangham to form a ‘co-operative society of coolies’ with the specific task of finding work for the Thiyya workers. The society initially took up contract work of digging open wells and ponds, building compound walls and laying dirt roads. Years later, it started building paved roads and culverts.

More than eight decades on, it now takes on large projects such as road bridges and national highway stretches. The NH bypass road and E.K. Nayanar flyover in Kozhikode brought laurels to the society. It is now the most-preferred contracting company for panchayats, municipalities, and projects sponsored by MLA-MP funds.

“Right now, we have works worth over Rs 300 crore on hand and over 2,000 workers,” Rameshan told Business Line in an interview. “We have our own design wing and building-materials manufacturing facilities.” On-time completion of projects and high-quality work were Uranlunkal’s unique-selling propositions, Rameshan claims. In 2008, the society won the national award for the best labour-contract co-operative society award of the National Cooperative Development Corporation.

“But, why a cyber park?”

“In the first place, we wanted to diversify,” Rameshan replies. “Secondly, we needed to find jobs for the educated children of our workers.” Moreover, there was a huge scope for an IT special economic zone in the booming, ancient, seaside city of Kozhikode. Already, ULCCS’s subsidiary, UL Technology Solutions, is running successfully at Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram.

Employing modern management practices even while taking care of the workers’ welfare helped the society become a co-operative success story.

Most of the workers are members of the society. Only workers are elected to the board of directors (Rameshan himself was a skilled worker). Each project and each work site is supervised by an assigned director.

About 15 per cent of the total workforce is migrant labourers from North and North-East — 200 of whom will soon be made C-class members of the society.

‘A role model’

According to the economist and former Kerala Finance Minister, T.M. Thomas Issac, ULCCS is a “rare role model” for the total involvement of workers in the ownership, in management and at workplace in India’s industrial arena.

In the next five years, the society plans to achieve a turnover of Rs 2,000 crore. “Our confidence, determination and hard work will make it possible,” Rameshan says.

>basheer.kpm@thehindu.co.in