“Super Bazar mein sale hi sale! Har item par bhari discount paayein (Sale is on in Super Bazar. Avail of heavy discounts on each item).”

The announcement echoes across the road with an enthused frequency as the man on the microphone lets the world—in this case the crowded City Chowk in Jammu city—know about it. In the normal course, such actively insistent salespersons are treated with passive disregard by the public. But there’s something about this man that’s not easy to dismiss.

He is, indeed, no ordinary salesman, but a middle-rung bureaucrat who has magically transformed the fortunes of the Jammu Co-op Wholesale Limited Super Bazar. As general manager of the state government undertaking, Naresh Sharma has converted the Rs 1,378 cash in hand to a monthly turnover of Rs 30-35 lakh in just six months. Little wonder then that he has a message for the Jammu Kashmir Government which is striving hard to revive its ailing economy, especially the cooperative institutions and other loss-making public sector undertakings.

When Sharma took charge of the Super Bazar, its staff had not received salary for 18 months, it owed Rs 30-35 lakh to merchandise suppliers and it had not deposited the Compulsory Provident Fund (CPF)—amounting to Rs 53 lakh—of its employees with the Provident Fund Commissioner in a decade.

Today, Super Bazar has nearly Rs 7 lakh as cash in hand in its bank account and the employees get their salary, nearly Rs 3.5 lakh a month. It has also started depositing Rs 35,000 towards CPF every month, a mandatory requirement by any state government undertaking as per the existing labour laws.

... contd.