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By:

Abhijit Mulye

21 August 2024 at 11:29:11 am

Politics, pragmatism behind Singhal’s move to Dharavi

Mumbai: The state government’s recent appointment of senior IAS officer Vijay Singhal as the Officer on Special Duty (OSD) for the Dharavi Redevelopment Project is more than a routine bureaucratic shuffle. While it signals a major administrative push to fast-track Asia’s largest slum rehabilitation, murmurs in the corridors of power suggest the move is equally a byproduct of political maneuvering at the highest levels of the state government. For the past few years, the critical Dharavi...

Politics, pragmatism behind Singhal’s move to Dharavi

Mumbai: The state government’s recent appointment of senior IAS officer Vijay Singhal as the Officer on Special Duty (OSD) for the Dharavi Redevelopment Project is more than a routine bureaucratic shuffle. While it signals a major administrative push to fast-track Asia’s largest slum rehabilitation, murmurs in the corridors of power suggest the move is equally a byproduct of political maneuvering at the highest levels of the state government. For the past few years, the critical Dharavi redevelopment project was headed by a promotee IAS officer as an additional charge, leading to a perceived lack of momentum. The post had been visibly vacant since the retirement of SVR Srinivas last year. By bringing in a seasoned, direct-recruit 1997-batch officer like Singhal, the state government is sending a clear-cut message that the Dharavi redevelopment is now a top-tier priority. According to a senior state administration official, bringing in an officer of Singhal’s caliber is a direct indication that the government is finally taking the project seriously. His proven track record of cutting through bureaucratic inertia made him the undisputed first choice to break the logistical paralysis that has historically plagued the slum’s redevelopment. Cross Fire However, Singhal’s sudden exit from his role as Vice Chairman and Managing Director of the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) is reportedly tinged with political crossfire between Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. Singhal is known to be closely aligned with Shinde, who also holds the Urban Development (UD) portfolio. Sources indicate that the transfer serves a dual political purpose – while the Deputy CM wanted an efficient officer closely aligned with him to helm a high-stakes, high-visibility initiative like Dharavi; CM Fadnavis had his own designs for CIDCO. He reportedly wanted an officer from his own inner circle stationed at CIDCO to oversee his pet project – the ambitious “Educity” in Navi Mumbai. To facilitate Fadnavis’ wish for a loyalist at CIDCO, Singhal had to be shunted out, effectively serving the interests of both political heavyweights. The irony of the political maneuver is that Singhal laid the very groundwork for the Educity project he is now leaving behind. Spanning 100 hectares (250 acres) in Karanjade near the new Navi Mumbai International Airport, Educity was envisioned to host India’s first integrated cluster of foreign universities. Under Singhal’s leadership, CIDCO bypassed traditional delays, rapidly completing 85% of the required land acquisition and securing Rs 890 crore for site-readiness and access road tenders. Dharavi Challenge Singhal now trades the master-planned expanses of Navi Mumbai for the hyper-dense, socio-politically volatile terrain of Dharavi. His mandate shifts drastically from courting global educational institutions to managing the rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands of residents and preserving an informal economy worth billions. His past experience makes him uniquely equipped for this granular urban challenge. As a former Additional Municipal Commissioner for Solid Waste Management in the BMC, he introduced operational efficiencies that slashed Mumbai’s daily solid waste volume by 2,000 tonnes in under three months. His early-career success in crisis management will be heavily tested as he manages the sanitary and structural complexities of displacing and rehousing a massive population. Ultimately, Singhal’s appointment is a strategic intersection of politics and governance. It resolves a high-level tug-of-war over CIDCO, while placing a proven, aggressive executor at the helm of Maharashtra’s most complex urban challenge.

Red Bonds

The Masala Bond gamble that helped fuel Kerala’s infrastructure boom now lays bare the Left’s uneasy marriage with the markets.

Kerala
Kerala

For a party that built its moral brand on austerity, probity and suspicion of global finance, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has developed a striking fondness for financial alchemy. Kerala’s celebrated experiment with rupee-denominated ‘Masala Bonds’ was meant to signal modern, market-savvy governance under Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Instead, it has now become a case study in doctrinal hypocrisy and potential regulatory defiance after the Enforcement Directorate issued show-cause notices under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) to Vijayan, former finance minister T. M. Thomas Isaac and former bureaucrat K. M. Abraham.


At the heart of the matter lies Rs. 466.91 crore - part of the Rs. 2,150-crore raised through bonds listed in London and Singapore in 2019 allegedly used to buy land, an end-use the regulator says was explicitly prohibited under the RBI’s master directions of June 2018. The Left, which traditionally treats foreign finance as a moral pollutant, now finds itself accused of misusing precisely the kind of capital it once denounced as imperial excess.

The CPI(M)’s first instinct, predictably, is denial wrapped in martyrdom. The notices are “politically motivated,” say its party leaders. The timing, just ahead of local body polls, adds a layer of theatrical outrage. The ED, long accused of being Delhi’s political bludgeon, makes an unconvincing villain in Kerala’s familiar script of federal victimhood. But to hide behind the Centre is to avoid an inconvenient truth as this trail did not begin with the ED but with the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).


The CAG’s 2019 audit of Kerala’s finances raised red flags on KIIFB’s borrowing structure and constitutional propriety. That report triggered the original FEMA probe in 2021. When the RBI told the Kerala High Court that the ED indeed had the power to investigate end-use of funds, the fig leaf of institutional immunity fell away.


The Left’s defence that land was ‘acquired’ rather than ‘purchased’ is a distinction without an economic difference. One changes accounting labels; the other changes reality. External commercial borrowing rules do not care much for semantic gymnastics. What matters is whether foreign capital, raised at a hefty 9.72 percent interest rate, was diverted into real estate in contravention of explicit norms.


This exposes the deeper contradiction of Vijayan’s rule. Kerala’s model today rests not on old-style redistribution, but on leveraged growth, off-balance-sheet borrowings and an infrastructure splurge disguised through quasi-sovereign vehicles like KIIFB. In effect, the CPI(M), once suspicious of debt markets, has recreated the very financial architecture it long condemned in ‘neoliberal’ states. It borrows abroad at premium rates, bypasses conventional budgetary scrutiny, and then pleads innocence when auditors and regulators come knocking.


The political defence is just as elastic. When the ED targets opposition leaders elsewhere, the CPI(M) thunders against authoritarianism. When it targets CPI(M) leaders, the agency becomes a BJP conspirator acting in cahoots with Kerala’s enemies.


That said, a show-cause notice is not a verdict and the ED itself is no paragon of institutional purity. But politics is not a court of law; it is a court of consistency. And here the CPI(M) stands exposed. A party that once equated foreign capital with exploitation now stakes its prestige on overseas bond markets. A government that preaches clean governance now faces detailed charges of prohibited end-use. A leadership that thrives on the rhetoric of siege now confronts questions born not in Delhi but in audit reports and balance sheets.


Kerala’s voters are sophisticated enough to grasp the distinction between due process and deflection. They can also sense when outrage becomes rehearsal rather than resistance. If the Left truly believes the ED’s case is hollow, it should welcome a transparent adjudication instead of drowning it in election-season conspiracy.


For a party that once promised to change the system, the CPI (M) now seems trapped in explaining why it looks so uncomfortably like the system it once despised. 


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