And while the day would see them work from 6 am to 6 pm with two small breaks, the nights would ring with music, sound of feet on the dance floor and laughter from the bar.

Armed with wireless in cars, water-tight deadlines, strict hire and fire polices and a tremendous commitment to the job, these Europeans worked without a holiday with 300 Indian engineers and 4,000 workers to complete a project which few thought would ever materialise: A 480-MW project at Uri, about 100 km west of Srinagar and a stone's throw from the Line of Control.

It had all the excuses for failure. Militancy, kidnappings, death threats, remote location, difficult terrain. But the 480-MW power project came up ahead of schedule in May1997. In a country where cost and time over-run of projects is routine, the Uri Power Station of National Hydroelectric Power Corporation set new standards in meeting deadlines.

The project suffered periodic shelling from across the Pakistan border, kidnapping of two Swedish engineers in 1991 and three-four months of incessant rains and heavy snowfalls every year. While there was no respite from the elements, man-made risks were thwarted by the presence of 650 armed personnel of the Central Industrial Security Force. The Army was busy answering enemy gunfire from the mountains. The cost of providing security to the project was about Rs 6 crore a year.

NHPC awarded the project to a European Consortium (called Uri Civil) led by Skanska of Sweden in October 1989 for execution on a turnkey basis. The project took less than the 72 months it was allowed. This excludes an 18 month stoppage of work when two Swedish engineers were kidnapped in 1991, the burning of Charar-e-Sharif and the Hazratbal siege.

Acombination of factors contributed to the success of the project. The commitment and expertise of Uri Civil as well as some smart thinking by the project managers. More than 2,000 residents of Uri, Baramulla and other strife-torn areas in the neighbourhood were employed for the project. The minimum salary for an unskilled worker was Rs 5,000 a month. This step alone earned the undying gratitude of the local populace which was close to economic ruin because of militancy. While reward was high, so was the punishment.

The project managers ran a tight ship and had a strict hire and fire policy. Mistakes and delays were not tolerated. After two warnings, the erring worker or engineer was shown the door. ``In this the militancy helped,'' say engineers who worked in this project. ``The President's rule and militancy in J&K ensured that there was no interference in the project from either the local politicians or from Delhi Ministers. No one tried to influence the decision taken by project managers as everyone wastoo scared to visit the site.'' (In fact, though the project was completed in May 1997 the first group of journalists were taken last week.)

The Rs 3,300-crore Uri project involves a barrage built on the Jhelum river which diverts water through a 10-km tunnel though the mountains. The water then falls 200 meters on four turbines which run generators and produce power. The entire power plant has been built underground with state of the art technology. The movement of water at the barrage can be controlled from the underground power plant control room ten kilometers away thanks to an optical fibre link.

The project feeds the northern states with the bulk going to J&K. And while the state is still short of power, Uri has made a difference. Says V K Kanjlia, General Manager of NHPC at Uri: ``Earlier the voltage was so low that the residents of Srinagar and the Valley needed a candle to look for a lit bulb. Now its the other way round.''