Rupert Talbot: Remembering Ken

Ken McLeod and Myra, his then wife, with his 1942 Jeep (which starred in the film 'Sea Wolves' with David Niven and Gregory Peck), New Delhi, 1975 . 

Myra is a graphic artist, now 91 and in good spirits, living in a care home in Australia.

Ken McLeod, Arun Mudgal (Richardson and Cruddas), Rupert Talbot, in a 'what to do?' moment, Coimbatore, South India, 1976. 

The collective gloom was brought about by the failure of experimental hand pump cylinders. Ken had this photo framed and gave it to me on leaving the programme

Kenneth Robert McLeod, India MK II Development Lead

Remembering Ken



Ken McLeod, who died of cancer in Cairns, Australia, on January 23rd at the age of 88, was recruited by Unicef to support India’s village water supply programme from 1974-1978, and played a pivotal role in the development of the India MK II hand pump.




The Government of India’s fourth, five year development plan (1969-1974) envisaged the ambitious goal of providing drinking water in the hard rock, drought prone regions of the country, using innovative down-the-hole-hammer drilling and deep well hand pump technology. The drill rigs were to be imported by Unicef and locally made cast iron hand pumps, supplied and maintained by Government. In 1974, at the end of the plan period, hand pump surveys concluded that 75% of some 40,000 installations were not working. The viability of the drilling and hand pump technology was in question and there was the real prospect of UNICEF, the Government of India’s main partner, withdrawing support. The programme was in serious crisis.




Water well drilling was virgin territory for Unicef in the early 1970s and Unicef’s Executive Board had been divided over the decision to invest in such costly technology in the first place. It was now faced with the hard option of either scrapping the programme - or keeping faith. It was a close run thing. Fortunately, the ‘pro’ lobby won with the eminently wise compromise of halting the supply of drill rigs until the hand pump problem was fixed. Which is where Ken McLeod comes in.




Ken was a pragmatic, no–nonsense, straight talking, tell-it-as-it-is Australian with a diverse engineering background which ranged from marine and civil engineering to blast hole and water well drilling with down-the-hole-hammers. He had an innate sense of what would probably work and what probably wouldn’t. Obstinacy was also a hallmark. A serious asset as it turned out. Once he had made up his mind it was difficult to persuade him otherwise. And he had a droll sense of humour. His repertoire of stories and anecdotes are legendary within the water well fraternity. It would seem that seriousness of purpose combined with good humour are prerequisites for successful development enterprises. Ken had both these qualities in spades.




Over the course of the next 4 years it fell to Ken to identify, coordinate, argue with and cajole, myriad organisations and individuals to develop what became known as the India MK II hand pump. This was an extraordinarily complex, collaborative venture, involving pioneering NGOs in Maharashtra, birth place of the fabricated steel Jalna, Jalvad and Sholapur pumps; WHO, who were independently trying to develop their own cast iron, so called, ‘Bangalore Pump’; The Government of India, whose programme was in dire straits and who were being prevailed upon by the country-wide hand pump industry to continue with the supply of their cast iron products (‘junk pumps,’ in McLeod Speak); and an engineering enterprise, Richardson and Cruddas, a Government of India undertaking, tasked with making prototype and then production pumps. It took a McLeod to handle all of that.




Central to this diverse mix of organisations and individuals, each with a contribution to make, a voice to be heard and a stake to claim, stood Unicef itself, unsure of the role it should play or the direction it should take with what was seen as a technical experiment and conscious of the consequence of failure. The battles within Unicef were sometimes as fierce as those with Government and external agencies.




It is getting on for 50 years since it was eventually agreed by all parties that the Sholapur pump would form the basis of a new design and we were able to make and test the first dozen prototype pumps in the deep water tables of Coimbatore, Southern India.




The fact that the India MK II then went successfully into mass production was very largely due to Ken’s clarity of vision, direction and smart technical choices. His obstinacy helped, but it was never, ever plain sailing. His notes for the record, some of which have been preserved for posterity, take your breath away with their audacious, uncompromising bluntness. You couldn’t get away with it today. Well, maybe another McLeod could.




I spoke with Ken for the last time two weeks before he died. We talked of those heady days of trying to get the MK II programme off the ground, of the internal arguments, external battles and technical problem solving in the field and in the factories.




His voice was strong and his mind as clear as a bell as he recalled people, places and events in great detail and he spoke warmly of those free spirits with their out of the box thinking who strove to make better hand pumps.




He was amazed to learn that there are now several million MK IIs in India alone and that it is exported to 40 or more countries. But dismayed that third party quality assurance procedures set up in his day and honed to perfection over the years to become the corner stone of the MK II programme under Ken Gray, had been allowed to slide and that MK II look-a-like ‘junk pumps’ are being exported from India to Africa. That, we agreed, is a great tragedy.




There were many brilliant and dedicated people involved in the development of the India MK II. Ken never claimed any credit for it himself, but we all know who led the charge. It wouldn’t have happened without him. He was the right man in the right place at the right time. It needed his force of personality, tough and uncompromising ways, solid understanding of technical issues and absolute determination to get the job done in the face of industrial strength bureaucratic wranglings. Aussie grit personified.




After Unicef, Ken McLeod worked with Shaul Arlossoroff and his UNDP-World Bank Hand Pumps Project, initially based in Nairobi then out of Australia, spending much of his time in China where I have no doubt he brought the same skills and energy to bear as he did in India.




Pragmatic and stoic to the very end he told me he hadn’t got long and was resigned to being on the ‘home stretch’ as he called it.




No funeral for Ken. No grave, no head stone, no epitaph. He wanted none of that. Instead, he has the lasting legacy of the India Mark II hand pump itself. Millions of them in fact.





Kenneth Robert McLeod, 1932 – 2020




RIP




Rupert Talbot

XUnicef



26/1/20