From Mob Violence to "Part of a Family"

How a Port in Orissa Went from Its Worst Day to a Transformation Verified by IIT Bombay

On 15th August 2017 — India's Independence Day — a mob violence incident broke out inside the premises of Dhamra Port in Orissa.

Not outside the gates. Not in the surrounding villages. Inside the port. Where ships are loaded, cargo is moved, and hundreds of workers show up every day expecting to go home in one piece.

Dhamra Port is operated by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited (APSEZ), India's largest port developer, handling 24% of the country's port capacity. Dhamra itself was in the middle of a Phase II expansion that would make it one of the largest ports in India. This was not a facility that could afford chaos on the shop floor.

Akshay Londhe, the HR Officer at Dhamra, put it simply: "This was the trigger point and then we thought to rope in Art of Living."

But the mob violence was a symptom. The underlying problems ran deeper and had been building for years.

Dhamra Port sits 215 kilometres from Bhubaneswar, in a region with its own cultural rhythms, language, food habits, and religious practices. The port had changed hands — it carried the legacy cultures of Tata and L&T from previous ownership. Old employees needed to be assimilated into the Adani way of working. There were land acquisition issues, which meant some workers came from families that had lost land to the very port they now worked at. "Son of the soil" discontent was real. Work ethics were uneven. And all of this was playing out in a workforce where the daily language of operation was not the language of corporate India.

The challenges the study documented were blunt: work ethics, lifestyle differences, language barriers, food, land acquisition grievances, past ownership culture, and the seamless assimilation of old employees. This was not a single HR problem. It was a tangle of identity, history, resentment, and cultural distance.

The Adani Group was not new to the Art of Living's corporate programs. Senior officers at Dhamra already knew the efficacy of these programs at a personal level. For middle and senior management, Adani had been running programs internally branded as I-POD and I-PAD — these were essentially the APEX Empower and Art of Silence programs, focused on leadership, organisational perspective, and risk-taking.

But the Dhamra problem was not a leadership problem. It was a shop-floor problem. The people who needed to be reached were blue-collared workers — the ones operating cranes, handling cargo, maintaining equipment. They spoke Odia, not English. They were not going to sit through a corporate training module designed for managers in air-conditioned conference rooms.

So the intervention was designed differently.

The Harmony Programme started on 11th December 2017. It ran for six days per batch, three hours per day. The content was a blend of meditation, breathing techniques, motivational sessions, group games, case study discussions on behaviour and attitude, and — at the end of each session — group singing of motivational and devotional songs. Community service was part of the design, though kept lighter for blue-collar workers who already did physical work daily.

Everything was delivered in the local language. The facilitators were not professional corporate trainers. The program ran on company time, not personal time. And crucially, the operational team supported this even though it meant fewer available working hours.

By 25th March 2018 — barely four months after the first batch — 14 batches had been completed. 374 workers had gone through the program. And the program included not just Dhamra's own employees but also blue-collar workers from support companies and contractors working at the port.

Professor Ashish Pandey and Aditya Agrawal from IIT Bombay conducted a formal study of the intervention's effectiveness. They interviewed senior managers, supervisors, and the training recipients themselves. The line manager feedback was collected systematically and the numbers were clear.

94% of line managers agreed that their subordinates' energy levels had increased after the Harmony programme. 94% agreed that their attitude had changed in a positive direction. 74% reported improvement in time management. 74% reported improvement in the quality of work output. 80% said their trust in their subordinates had increased.

At the team and organizational level: 80% reported improved interpersonal skills among subordinates. 79% said their subordinates could now relate better to organizational objectives. And 94% agreed that after the Harmony programme, there was a sense of being part of a family.

That last number deserves a pause. This is a port where, four months earlier, there had been mob violence. And now 94% of line managers were reporting a sense of family.

On overall assessment: 94% of line managers agreed the programme was worth the time and effort. 88% believed their subordinates would feel a greater sense of indebtedness towards the organisation. And 100% — every single respondent — agreed that organizing programmes like Harmony showcases that the company cares about the well-being of its employees.

The qualitative feedback from line managers, recorded as exact quotes in the study, fills in what the numbers cannot.

The head of the Dredging department said the Harmony programme "brings down the ego level" and "improves interpersonal relations" in a way that "enables an individual to achieve organizational goals."

Port Operations reported it "creates more bonding with colleagues" and "should continue with regular interval."

The Engineering department called it "a very good programme helping individuals to overcome the negativity and promote team camaraderie."

One Industrial Relations manager called it "an excellent tool to build a humane workforce."

Another IR manager went further: "It develops a person from internal soul. Person will get mind peace, physically feeling better to perform in a positive attitude in organization. On a personal basis I get a lot of benefits. Physically, mentally, I get technique how to handle every situation to solve the issue in a better manner. I develop myself a lot in talking, behaviour to others, listening skill etc."

The Environment department's assessment was the simplest and perhaps the most telling: "Its a nice program and leads to relax of mind and body. Every body should attend this program."

The IIT Bombay researchers were thorough. They considered whether other initiatives — CSR activities like the Adani DAV Public School nearby, medical camps, volleyball competitions, skill development plans — might have been responsible for the improvement rather than the Harmony programme itself.

They asked the line managers directly. 13 out of 16 rejected the idea that CSR initiatives were better than Harmony. Many said the comparison itself was inappropriate — that the two were complementary. As one HR respondent put it: "Community activities are basically with respect to facilities provided and Harmony is a soft skill intervention using meditation and other techniques." The Dredging head said both "complement each other and transform the individual workers to an elevated level as a human being."

In other words, building a school and building a volleyball court are good things. But they do not reach inside a person the way three hours a day of breathing, reflection, and shared singing does.

Here is what makes the Dhamra story remarkable.

This was not a program for executives at an offsite in a resort. This was for crane operators, cargo handlers, and maintenance workers — many of whom came from families that had lost their land to the port, in a region with its own deep cultural identity, speaking a language that corporate India largely ignores. The intervention was mob violence, not declining quarterly numbers. The timeline was four months from first batch to IIT Bombay study. And the results — verified independently by one of India's premier technical institutions — showed that a simple, sustained, culturally respectful program of breathing, reflection, and human connection could shift a workforce from violence to family.

Not every corporate problem needs a consultant's PowerPoint. Sometimes it needs someone who will sit with people in their own language and teach them to breathe.

The Harmony Programme at Dhamra Port was conducted by the Art of Living Corporate Programs (APEX) and formally studied by Professor Ashish Pandey and Aditya Agrawal of IIT Bombay. The full study report covers methodology, quantitative results, qualitative line-manager feedback, and comparative analysis with complementary CSR initiatives.