Top bureaucrat Gajendra Haldea wore many hats: most notably the Father of Infrastructure in India and the Father of Public Private Partnerships.
And on a cold, rainy Sunday evening, the warmth of his the IAS officer’s legacy drew Lutyen’s Delhi to the India International Center to celebrate his life with the launch of the book The Difficulty of Being Gajendra Haldea: Reflections on His Life and Legacy, on 29 January — what would have been Haldea’s 74th birthday.
The event was attended by top bureaucrats including Najeeb Jung, the former Lt. Governor of Delhi, and Vinod Rai, ex-Comptroller and Auditor General of India
“Can you combine the virtues of flexibility and persistence with no whiff of insubordination? Hence, ‘the difficulty of Gajendra Haldea’ in being able to combine these attributes, which I consider to be contradictory,” said guest of honour N.K. Singh, chairman of the 15th Finance Commission and president of the Indian Institute of Economic Growth, commenting on the book’s title.
“An alternative caption would have been not the difficulty of being Gajendra Haldea, but the importance of being Gajendra Haldea,” continued Singh.
Haldea, a 1973 batch IAS officer, who died in January 2021, has left an indelible impact on India’s policy framework for sustained private participation in public infrastructure projects. He is known for his contributions to massive infrastructure projects across India, as well as his policy governance and his strategies for public private partnerships (PPP). He also drafted important legislation such as the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, and the Electricity Act, 2003.
“What he did resulted in durable change,” said Prof. Sebastian Morris, professor at Goa Institute of Management and editor of the book, calling Haldea a “master of detail” who had a knack for getting the government to “do the right thing.” Published by Bloomsbury, the book contains essays on Haldea and his work by civil servants, academics, journalists and consultants.
“Everybody who came today came because they had a connection with him or the family — this was not an official function or an obligation. It’s very touching to see,” said Haldea’s brother, Prithvi Haldea, to ThePrint.
“You’ll find hundreds of reasons not to do something. But if you want to do something, you’ll do it — and this rainy evening is proof of that,” he added.
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Powers of persuasion
While the event commemorated the impact Haldea’s work had on India’s development over the last few decades, it was also a celebration of the bureaucrat’s friendships.
“The magic of the man was enormous,” said Najeeb Jung recollecting ed his times with Haldea at the academy in Mussoorie in 1973.
He drew attention to Haldea’s abilities to get the unexpected done: once Haldea was able to convince a particularly difficult deputy director — notorious for not loosening up in front of students — to attend a social function. Haldea slipped a chit to Jung, who was compering the event: “Mr. Kapila will sing”. Disbelievingly and reluctantly, Jung read the chit out — it was one thing to convince him to attend the event, another to expect him to perform in front of students at the academy. But the difficult deputy director ended up singing two ghazals and playing the harmonium.
A few months later, the actor Manoj Kumar was visiting Mussoorie. Haldea was keen to meet him, but his friends scoffed at the idea that Kumar would deign to meet them. The next day, Jung received a phone call summoning him to the Savoy Hotel and instructing him to ask for Manoj Kumar’s suite.
When he entered, he saw Kumar and Haldea playing table tennis. Such was the power of Haldea’s persuasion, said Jung.
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The ‘T’s of being Haldea
Before the book was officially launched, some of the contributors to the book — including N.K. Singh — recollected their memories of Haldea.
Apart from friends and colleagues, Haldea’s family was also in attendance. The audience stood in respect when Haldea’s 94-year-old mother, Kaurani Laxmi Haldea, was wheeled onto the stage to launch the book along with his daughter, Rohini Haldea, wife Rukmini Haldea, and brother Prithvi Haldea.
The launch was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Subhomoy Bhattacharjee of Business Standard with panelists Najeeb Jung, Ashok Lavasa, vice-president for private sector operations and public-private partnerships (VPPP) at the Asian Development Bank, Sebastian Morris, and Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of ThePrint.
Lavasa said that there are three Ts to describe Haldea: tark (logic), tariqa(method), and tassali (satisfaction). Gupta later quipped that Lavasa had forgotten a fourth T: tact. Lavasa then added tenacity and truthfulness to his list.
Echoing Singh’s comments in the opening remarks, Lavasa said that some of these qualities are often contradictory attributes. And Haldea was engaged in what seems like an impossible balancing act: protecting the government from the private sector and vice versa, all while keeping his eye focused on public value.
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Pioneer of PPP
The topic of the panel discussion was the relevance of Haldea’s legacy, and much of it centered around his pioneering of PPP.
“The hallmark of Mr. Haldea was his transparency,” said Lavasa. “In order for this collaborative relationship to work, Mr. Haldea insisted it should always be transparent and governed by law, regulations, and policies. And it all needs to be translated into a contractual, legally binding relationship in order to avoid loading excessive risk on either the private sector or the government.”
Gupta spoke about butting heads with Haldea, despite them both being deeply committed to the idea of infrastructural development in India — he has criticised Haldea for losing valuable time and delaying projects in his search for the perfect world. “For me, he’s truly one of the great sons of India — without whom this great infrastructural revolution would not have taken place,” said Gupta.
Jung was able to squeeze in a last-minute anecdote about Haldea as the panel ran short on time. He talked about how he was in regular touch with Haldea on both phone and email in the last three weeks of his life, but Haldea never mentioned being unwell. “My admiration for the man is absolutely unending. We have many good people in the civil service, but a man with such courage of conviction, integrity, and the ability to withstand pressure with politeness is absolutely exceptional.”
“Many of us tonight wanted our books to be signed by him,” said Lavasa, as the panel discussion wrapped up. “But the power of his intellect was such that he could probably give you ten solutions for how you could get this book signed by him!”
Several members of the audience — which included figures like Vinod Rai and Prashant Saran — later went up to Prithvi Haldea and other members of Haldea’s family to share their memories. The emcee noted the absence of Haldea’s former colleague Montek Singh Ahluwalia who could not make it to the event as he was unwell. Complimentary copies of the book were distributed after the event.
“I just wanted to say goodnight — and that I never realised how amazing your brother is,” said one guest to Prithvi Haldea at the end of the night, holding her complimentary copy.
Haldea, who’d gotten emotional while thanking the audience at the end of the event, smiled. “I could talk about him endlessly,” he said. “Being the man that he was, he took on the role of a father figure for us. And we all looked up to him. So this is very touching to see.”
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)