Economic Engineering Excellence

16/09/2026

Blogs for retired folks.- 3
Chain of Command or command change ?
During school days my mother ordered “you can not wear white pants as I can not do double laundry!" After retirement , at 70, I thought, have my way and started blogs on my computer. Then my five-year-old granddaughter Mia came and pointed to the lap top and in said stern voice : "Thatha, you are not playing with me, I see you all the time with computer. Next time, you come her the computer will be out. I looked at her serious voice. I thought the command has changed. But this time I laughed. I said” yes dear!”.i will not touch my lap top next time.

I happily dumped my ego into the trash bin. In seventy years, kings lost empires and borders shifted, but for me, only the commander changed. "Life is a joke, laugh it off" — Rajasekhar Polapragada
©[email protected]

16/09/2026

Blogs for retired folks.
Confessions of a Bathtub Loyalist
After a single cartoon about Lake Ontario nearly triggered a minor border dispute on Facebook—prompting polite algorithmic warnings about my credentials and intentions—I decided the world of international satire might be too loud. A blog felt safer. Fewer geopolitical algorithms, more kindred spirits. Which brings me to an underappreciated subject: the bathtub.
Most people view a bathtub a simple bath room affair. I view it as an intellectual workstation.
My obsession began decades ago with my very first posting at HPCL. The company allotted me a sprawling bungalow on what was supposed to be a "temporary" basis. Naturally, temporary meant nearly three glorious bachelor years. The place had a manicured lawn, a hall spacious enough for tennis wall-practice, and, reigning supreme in the ground-floor quarters, a gleaming bathtub.
Every evening, I soaked with the distinct expectation that, like Archimedes, I would stumble upon a profound law of physics, jump out dripping wet, and shout "Eureka!" across the empty corridors. The breakthrough never came, but the habit stuck. A simple shower never quite matched the dignity of horizontal contemplation.
Trouble began when I decided to bring Archimedes into domestic life.
When we built our home, I insisted on installing a bathtub attached to the bedroom. IT WAS VETOED BY MY WIFE.

A tactical compromise was attempted: what about the ground-floor guest bathroom? "And what will visiting guests do?" my wife countered swiftly. "Climb over porcelain hurdles just to take a bath?"
From then on, the obsession went mobile. Business travel and hotel bookings were vetted BY A SINGLE QUESTION : Does the bathroom have a tub?—until the tragic news of actress Sridevi’s demise IN BATH TUB IS RUMOURED TO BE NOT A SUICDIE.
Now IF I do not come out of bath room in 5 minutes, a loud knock rattled the door, followed by an urgent voice:
"Are you all right in there? Nowadays, after seventy, if you don't come out in five minutes, I get worried!"
SO I forgot Archimedes. So no Eureka, just keka ( shout) from my wife.
© “ life is joke, laugh it off” by Rajasekhar Polapragada
Write to “ [email protected]

03/09/2026

2. Name, Not Fame, Determined My Style
Before we choose a career, a career is chosen for us by our nature (Prakriti). And before our nature fully manifests, a direction is given to us by our name.
My parents named me Raja Sekhar. Raja means King.
Raja has to take care of his praja. So also I took care of my staff. I can say I took care of my subordinates and can say with pride, I am still in touch with many of them and I tried for their progress more than mine. In fact, most of them either I recommended their promotion or helped them to get better jobs. Which included some times even my bosses.
In the corporate world, I saw many Managers. They sat in Cabins. In a cabin, the door is closed. The manager uses anger to hide his ignorance. When asked "Why?", he feels threatened. In a Darbar, the door is open. I always kept my cabin door open for consultation of complaints.
Without much plan or preparation my name became the seed of my management style. I never took permissions. I followed a free, frank, and fearless approach. I used to forgive the mistakes of my staff while I trained them to be the best. I learned that anger is merely a shield for weakness. A heard an ideal Raja rules through care, not fear.
• If someone saw Arrogance in me, someone else saw Competence.
• If someone saw Indiscipline, someone else saw Dedicated Work.
• If someone did not like my Free Approach, someone else saw an Honest Employee.
I am the same person. But the viewpoint changed as I worked in different countries and under different management styles.

source: MY REFNERY CAREER ( MY LATEST BOOK.

02/09/2026

The Death of the Generalist Manager (And the Rise of Techno-Management Fusion)

For decades, the standard MBA gospel claimed that management was a universal plug-and-play science. The theory was simple: if you can read a balance sheet and run a committee, you can lead a soap company on Monday, an airline on Wednesday, and a refinery or tech giant on Friday.

The German industrial titans (Siemens, Bosch, Daimler) never bought into that myth. Their executive board members were almost always Diplom-Ingenieure—masters of the craft who spent decades on the shop floor before touching enterprise strategy.

America took longer to learn the lesson, often handing high-stakes engineering companies over to bean-counters and financial engineers. The result? Stagnation, compromised safety, and machines that stopped innovating.

Then came the modern pivot.

Steve Jobs didn’t just manage Apple; he obsessed over the fonts, the chamfered glass, and the layout of the circuit boards inside the casing. He proved that if the person in the captain’s chair cannot speak the language of the machine, the soul rots out of the enterprise.

Look at the leaders who dominate the global landscape today:

Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai didn’t rise through PowerPoint presentations; they rose through system architecture, browser engines, and cloud infrastructure.

Elon Musk famously conducts design reviews at the level of raw metallurgy and physics.

Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman sit comfortably in high-velocity CEO chairs because they understand latency, compute scaling, and code natively.

I call this Techno-Management Fusion.

Throughout my 40 years in petroleum refining—from calculating tube metal temperatures by hand to managing massive refinery complexes—I held onto one non-negotiable rule: Never surrender your technical discipline.

Titles like Manager or Vice President are costumes handed out by a corporation. They can be granted on Monday and stripped on Friday. But your technical core—the ability to look past the bureaucratic smokescreen and see how the system actually works—belongs entirely to you.

When you master Techno-Management Fusion:

You become immune to internal bluffing. Nobody can hide poor engineering behind jargon.

You earn authentic respect. Shop-floor engineers instantly know whether the executive cabin understands the furnace or is merely wearing a tie.

You make decisions with conviction. You don't need a three-tier committee consensus to tell you where the bottleneck is.

In an era driven by AI, advanced energy, and deep tech, the era of the detached caretaker CEO is officially over.

If you want to lead the enterprise of tomorrow, don't leave your engineering in the basement. Fuse the technical brain with the managerial heart.

What has been your experience? Do you prefer leaders who grew out of the craft, or those trained purely in general management?

01/09/2026

LESSONS LEARNT IN MY LIFE.
1. Harmony Over Success
Success is finite, transactional, and often breeds isolated pride. It measures what you have acquired or conquered. Harmony, on the other hand, is expansive and enduring.
In the pursuit of individual "success," people often fracture their peace, burn out their minds, and strain their surroundings. But when harmony becomes the primary filter:
• A victory that destroys peace is recognized as a defeat.
• Every action is aligned so that it creates no Ashanti (turmoil) inside you or around you.
• Effort becomes smooth and natural, rather than a violent struggle against life.
2. Relations Over Results
When you value the result over the relation, people become mere tools to achieve an end. But when you value the relation over the result:
• You would rather yield an argument to preserve a bond with a parent or a child.
• You perform your duty fully (Karthavya) without demanding that others bend to your expectations.
• The outcome is left to Prasada (grace), while the love and connection remain untarnished.
Team work vs individual
Success−Harmony=Isolation
Effort + Relations=Completeness
The Difference Between Prosperity and Peace
What you are experiencing now, sitting at home reading the morning paper, is the realization that material abundance without rootedness is just high-speed motion.
• The Outer World Focuses on Prosperity: The West and many global centers excel at creating efficiency, individual freedom, and material standards. But that often comes at the cost of hyper-individualism, isolation, and a constant, restless drive for "more."
• The Indian Ethos Focuses on Sambandhi (Connectedness): The high purchasing power parity in India makes life comfortable, but the real luxury is the relational ecosystem. The neighborhood network, the family ties, the cultural rhythm, and the shared values create a social safety net for the soul.
Why my Father Was Right
I was abroad for 2 decades, my father used to ask, "When do you come back and enjoy what you earned?" he wasn't asking about spending money. He was asking when you were going to convert your hard-earned security into time, presence, and inner quiet.
You can buy a ticket to any country, but you cannot buy the warm familiarity of your own soil, the effortless ease of living among people who share your roots, or the deep peace that comes from stepping off the endless treadmill of achievement.
Peace Over Prosperity
Modern societies suffer from a deep poverty of connection. They treat life as a transaction rather than a web of relationships.
It took 10 years of convincing my mother, so that I can pick up a job in middle east which is nearer than USA and no body can settle in Gulf . But that waiting time was not wasted—but convincing my mother is more important than my desire to go abroad. it gave me the satisfaction that I proved my father's wisdom not to force others . He never told me not to go abroad though I now think he did not approve it either.
Now, as i sit back and take in the morning, I am not just reading the newspaper; I am living the simple, complete life my father envisioned for me . That is the lesson I learnt.
Summary :
Success gives you a place to stand; harmony gives you a place to belong. Results fill your pockets; relations fill our life. I spent years chasing results across many countries, only to prove to my self what my father already knew: the highest achievement is simply to live at peace among those you love. He used to say what is thee in Newyork or Singapore, except Roads and Buildings. He is right. Btu it took 7 decades for me to arrive at same truth.
There is a story, when a hunter lays a net tot catch the birds. All the birds unitedly took the net and flew in to the sky. Same way we have to take our folks and progress not just alone. This is the lesson I learnt.
Author: Rajasekhar Polapragada
Copy right : [email protected]

30/08/2026

i started EEE when i noticed a refinery project which i made feasibility report costed USD 13 billion. Later refinery project of same capacity, i was process head was done at the cost of USD 5 billion. so i started comparing costs of projects across coutnries and i found the cost varied from a factor of 1- 5.
so i thought any project i can get it done at half the cost. that is who my EE started.

30/08/2026

source: my latest book ; Refinery career
The Purification of Fire
(1980-1990)
At HPCL- Bombay
We laughed, we ate, and we worked in between meals. Food was our fuel, our joy, and our weakness. Fresh from IIT, we were confident, work was a pleasure, we did not think it was burden.it was extension of our college days. Our boss Rao was a great person, soft, intelligent, hard working and guiding us yet leaving our independence. A typical American management, “show me results not your efforts”.
1. The First Fruit: 1300N Yield
My daily rounds (Parikrama) and chats (Satsang) with the operators started to bear fruit. We weren't just running the plant; we were listening to it. We made small, crucial changes to the process and improved the yield of a product called 1300 N (a Vacuum Gas Oil used for Lubricants) .
It brought dollars to the refinery. Slowly, the "Awe" in the operators' eyes turned into genuine Respect. I still recalled the first day from IIT, I was asked to take over control of FCC unit in the automatic (all analytical instruments ) control board. I joined refinery thinking i am a passenger to enjoy flying but suddenly i was asked to pilot the flight. After few months in refinery, now the feeling in me is more like a " I am not a passive Passenger who was afraid of the control panel , but i am mastering the skills of flying and enjoying flying.
The lesson I learnt was Lesson in HPCL L**e refinery , where I was posted initially was Operators are not only my friends but also my ears and eyes. I used to spend after office hours with them learning the ropes of circus game called Refining.
2. The Crisis: The Vacuum Furnace
Then, the beast woke up. The Vacuum Furnace—the heart of the unit—developed a chronic illness. The bottom tubes were overheating and cracking. They were thinning fast .


In a refinery, a furnace tube failure is not a small leak. It is a catastrophe—fire, explosion, and potential death. The standard industry solution was simple but expensive: Shut down the plant and replace the tubes. This would cost millions in lost production and required expensive Nickel-Molybdenum alloy tubes .
3. The TMT Duel (Man vs. Math)
I realized we didn't need to replace them yet; we just needed to predict exactly when they would fail. I dove into TMT (Tube Metal Temperature) calculations. Remember, this was the late 1970s. IBM PCs had not yet entered India (they came in 1980). I didn't have a spreadsheet. I didn't have simulation software .
I had a scientific calculator, a pencil, and the Exxon Design Practices.
Our General Manager was a sharp man, a Science Graduate trained by Exxon Research & Engineering in New Jersey. He knew his numbers. He grilled me daily. "Raja, show me the calculation. Are you sure?" It was a Duel of Numbers. If I was wrong, people could die. If I was right, we could save the shutdown .
4. The Solution: Porous Coke vs. Hard Coke
This is where my IIT research experience became my weapon. I proposed the "Porous Coke Theory" (which was later published in technical journals).
• The Standard Belief: Coke (carbon deposit) is hard and conducts heat poorly.
• My Finding: The coke forming in our tubes was "Porous." It trapped hydrogen gas inside its pores. This acted like a high-grade insulator .
Because it insulated the fluid, the tube metal had to get hotter and hotter to transfer heat to the oil. This unusual rise in temperature was causing the cracks. My recommendation wasn't "Replace the tubes." It was an operational change: Frequent De-coking. We needed to burn the coke off using a controlled steam-air process before it got too thick.
The Corporate culture unlike IIT people, didn't care about my "International Paper." They asked one question: "Will it save the shutdown?" I said, "Yes." We implemented it. The furnace survived. The shutdown was averted.

07/07/2026

nothing is more satisfying than losing chess game to grandson. any doubts ?

13/01/2026

many say do not photograph in temples. reason not known. but i say take any photos pf Sun , his power will mot change. so is God.

గోవిందా గోవిందా 🙏అ తండ్రి అనుగ్రహం ఉంటేనే ఈ వీడియో మీ వరకు చేరుతుంది #...

13/01/2026

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