Sunil Jain: Against the grain

BACKSTAGE

Bureaucrats, in general, prefer to remain out of the limelight, but for one reason or the other the 1973 IAS batch Gajendra Haldea, who is currently an advisor in the Planning Commission, has managed to be in the arc lights. Right now, he's the sole opposition from within the government to the privatisation process of the Delhi and Mumbai airports, as a result of which, even the Empowered Group of Ministers has not been able to take a decision. Haldea's argument is simple: while nine bidders were shortlisted on technical grounds over a year ago, the new technical shortlisting that has been done by ABN Amro is uncalled for and is arbitrary "" so, he says, call all the bidders who qualified a year ago and evaluate their financial bids, instead of just Reliance and the GMR group who meet the new criterion.

While Haldea can be very rigid, even rude, once he's made up his mind, even his detractors admit he's proved right often enough. In the mid-90s, during the days the government was pushing the fast track power projects, the then power minister was on record saying that one person stood between India and sufficient power, and that was Gajendra Haldea. A point made by most private sector players. Yet Haldea stood his ground and whittled away Enron's concessions given by the Central government "" finally, when Dabhol blew up a few years ago, and the company wanted billions in compensation, the total liability of the Central government was just $300 million in the worst-case scenario "" which is why, when the previous Attorney General was preparing to fight the arbitration in London, he insisted Haldea be present there.

Haldea objected to the manner in which DVB was being privatised and argued that the creation of private monopolies (for which he sued the Delhi government) would either raise tariffs or force the Delhi government to hike the subsidy since the loss reduction targets agreed to were too liberal. Events have proved him right. Which is why, whether you agree with him or not, no major infrastructure initiative (Haldea drafted the Electricity Bill that was passed by Parliament in 2003) gets taken without this bureaucrat being a part of it.