This agency was to be appointed by the State Level Nodal Agency. Of course there was a toolkit for making such an appointment. The engineers of IRMA had to visit every project and report on various aspects.
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Their fee was indexed to the number of visits — more times they visit, more the fee. This fee was reimbursed by the National Government. The second and subsequent instalments for projects were not released unless issues raised by IRMA were cleared in the projects. Typically the entire payment was made through four equal instalments.
For release of last instalments however, the Government of India started insisting on the completion of reforms. Initially, to encourage competitiveness amongst cities, the projects were considered on first-come-first-serve basis. Cities started lining up their projects and getting them approved. But in , the National Government realized that while aggressive states and cities have been successful in getting many projects approved, other states and cities had much lesser projects sanctioned.
The National Government then decided to insist on the distribution of the financial assistance to each of the states proportional to the population in their selected cities. Each state was then asked to prioritize the projects from across cities and send them. Though, Nanded was provided much more financial assistance than other cities as compared to its population, and though many other cities had lined up several projects; Government of Maharastra in decided to include projects from Nanded for the final list of approvals by Government of India.
Whatever the reason, Nanded got an additional set of projects sanctioned. Such was the influence of Nanded. There was always a need for small supplies like diaries, small stationary, books, quick exhibitions, banners, models, etc. Usually there was never any time to go through an elaborate tendering process for small procurements. At the Metropolitan office, whenever, there was such a requirement, everyone called Chadda.
He had some five companies all doing a variety of things — printing, selling stationary, event management, etc. Whenever Chadda received such a call, he would be ready with three quotations from three of his companies signed by different people on different letter-heads. However, Chadda also ensured that only he would supply and no one else was called. His journey of becoming an infrastructure consultant started when he was called to get some quick surveys done of Mithi River, which flooded in The floods had caused havoc in Mumbai and there was an outrage against the government for loss of life and property.
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Chadda was putting up stalls for an interior design exhibition when he was summoned to get the surveys done. He had never done anything like this before, but figured out quickly that the Metropolitan Authority office wanted some numbers to prove that the illegitimate occupiers along the river were the cause of the floods. Chadda hired some surveyors and a couple of planners to do the job. A drawing was made and numbers were gathered within no time. Chadda had become an overnight star. Slowly he started undertaking sub-contracts for different kinds of surveys — headcounts, number of houses, number of families in a locality, traffic counts, etc.
Chadda was very quick at delivering results and everyone at the Metropolitan office wanted that. Along with sensing the value of primary data, he also figured out that it was quite simple to organize such data. All he needed was some social worker or a planner to make questionnaires and some literate people to go on field and fill them up.
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But to get the money, the cities required a clear plan with a set of priority projects and a detailed project report on each of these priority projects. The kitty of the Government was finite and cities were to compete with each other to get the money — whichever city could make good detailed project reports and manage to get them approved early enough by the national scrutiny agencies would get the money. The Government expected that this would push the cities to plan and build their capacities in planning projects.
The cities on the contrary appointed consultants. Suddenly there was a large increase in the number of consultants in the country. Chadda had also joined the bandwagon. He hired some engineers and planners and started his own consultancy company.
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Since he had already done large number of surveys in the metropolitan region of Mumbai, he had an advantage over other consultants in the region. The first project he got involved in was to make a detailed project report to develop a solid waste system for a small city near Mumbai.
He quickly understood that such reports were quite standard and could be easily made with available data. The bigger problem was to get them approved through the various stages of approvals and city officials generally struggled very hard to get them approved at various stages.
These had to be approved by the local municipal representatives, then by the State Level Nodal Agency, then by the parliamentary and state legislature representatives, then by the evaluation and scrutiny agencies set up by the National Government and finally the national level committee of senior bureaucrats. One had to navigate through tough political, technocratic and bureaucratic systems to get the projects approved. Chadda understood the weakness of the city officials in getting the project approved and decided to build his niche by specialising in this task of obtaining approvals.
It was not difficult to get approvals from the political representatives as they saw these projects as large contracts from where kickbacks can be earned through the contractors — and they were quite experienced in that. Getting bureaucratic approvals were also fairly easy: with lower level officials, petty gifts like I-Phones, silverware — usually a small silver idol of Ganesh, gold coins, winter wear for children, etc. In case of mid-level officials, a foreign study tour or expensive gadgets for their children was usually the strategy.
In one occasion, a trip to Bangkok for a State Government official and his family also worked.
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The higher level officials had to be paid in cash usually through a middleman. The most difficult was to get approvals from the technocrats — the sincere types. Generally, a good engineering or planning argument worked with these technocrats, but sometimes political or bureaucratic pressure had to be used. This made them feel a little indebted towards him — and Chadda knew this very well. His strength was not in making good detailed project reports, but rather on getting these reports approved. In JNNURM, consultants were required for everything — to prepare comprehensive development plans; to prepare the memorandum of agreement between the City, State and the National Governments; to prepare detailed project reports; to get the reports approved by various state and national level agencies; to prepare monthly and quarterly reports; to answer parliamentary and assembly questions; to make presentations; to make promotional materials; to make claim documents for instalments and reimbursements; to make tender documents; to monitor project implementation; to deal with inspection agencies; and many more.
There was also a special allotment of funds for hiring consultants for various purposes. Chadda was most useful to lubricate difficult processes. Different governments would use him to get their work through. Chadda was useful as he could manage both. Also, there were always times when petty requirements had to be fulfilled — a flight ticket to Delhi was the most annoying one — this would require special permission and in the context of hurried processes, there was never time to get approval for such flight tickets, which were exorbitantly priced at the last moment. At these times, Chadda would not only arrange for flight tickets, but also make pick-up and drop-off arrangements.
Moreover, there were always awkward times, when officers from Delhi and their family members had to be entertained when they visited cities. Here again, Chadda would arrange for everything — visits to temples, malls, cars with drivers, hotel arrangements, bar visits, and many more things as desired by the officers.
During times when officers came for inspections, Chadda would set up special teams for hospitality. For cities and State Government agencies, Chadda was a boon — he was able to handle all these demanding situations. Chadda started doing all kinds of project reports — water supply, sanitation, drainage, housing, transportation and even e-governance.
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He not only competes with international consultants for projects but even manages to get them. He is one of the twelve consultants empanelled by the National Government to advice it and take up projects across the country in the e-governance sector. Today, his office employs more than 30 engineers and 20 planners — mostly with post graduate degrees from US universities. He has also offered jobs to several MMA officers.
But with all this growth, Chadda still prints visiting cards, diaries and banners for the MMA office. He has deputed Raju, his old-time lieutenant for these jobs. Raju on the other hand is not sophisticated and tries to cut corners and sometimes make money from the bribes, gifts and favours that he has to carry out.
Sometime in September , Ramesh Rathod received a phone call from an Under Secretary in the Government of Maharashtra asking Rathod about his business. The Under Secretary said that the government was in the process of issuing an order to large municipalities in the state to undertake water audits in their cities and wanted to empanel a group of consultants who could provide their expertise for this purpose. The government was of the opinion that cities produce substantial amount of water for their population, but a large quantity of this water is either stolen or wasted through leaks.
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The government wanted the consultants to do three things — calculate the quantity of unaccounted water; identify the specific reasons for it being unaccounted; and make suggestions to decrease the quantity of such water. He helped industries to consume less energy by identifying energy loss points in their systems and suggesting efficient methods for energy usage. Industries saw this not only as an effective way to decrease their losses and improve revenues, but also as an opportunity for displaying their environmental concerns.
Rathod on the other hand believed that concerns of environmental improvement and profit making are not exclusive opposites — they work best when made to complement each other. Earlier in , the Municipal Commissioner of Nagpur, Sumanth Arya had realized that a substantial part of the municipal revenue was being periodically paid to a State Government agency, Maharastra Jeevan Pradhikaran MJP for regular augmentation of water supply system in the city. The Municipal Corporation was completely dependent upon MJP, which had a monopoly in providing such services.
Arya decided that he would build capacity of his staff to undertake implementation of water supply projects. He sent his water engineer, Umesh Kaware to Japan for training and also involved an infrastructure consultant, Shresta Consultancy Services SCS to develop a long-term master plan for water supply in Nagpur.
After a quick study, SCS identified that a lot of water was getting wasted in leakages. They also estimated the water requirements for the future and developed a water supply master-plan for Nagpur. Kaware and his staff were actively involved in the study as well as in the preparation of the master-plan. But Arya was transferred in mid and the water project came to a halt, until Satyavrat Tripathi took over as the Municipal Commissioner of Nagpur in Satyavrat Tripathi, the Municipal Commissioner wanted to meet Rathod.
Being a tech savvy engineer himself, Tripathi had immense faith on new technologies, engineering solutions and efficient management. He believed that an effective implementation of these would address urban problems. He asked Rathod to develop a project for Nagpur.
The municipal engineers, bureaucrats and politicians were shocked and refused to accept this. Rathod then presented his evidence — municipal revenue records. The Municipal Corporation would buy raw water from the Irrigation Department, treat it and then supply it to the citizens. Rathod compared data from two places — the invoices of the Irrigation department where the amount of water bought by the Municipal Corporation was recorded; and the bills of the consumers, which showed the amount of water that was being finally provided to the citizens.
Rathod had not done any surveys or created any new data, but had proved his point using the data from the Municipal Corporation itself.