I met Pradip Baijal in 1994. It was thanks to Kingshuk Nag, my bureau chief in The Times of India. Mr Nag had transferred me because many airlines invited me for junkets! Civil aviation had opened up and I felt the chief was grudging a young reporter monopolizing page1. Mr Nag won the day stating that a transfer was for my own good. Worried on how I would get stories in the power sector I knew nothing about, I confided in Probir Sen, then managing director of Indian Airlines. Mr Sen, my senior from St Stephen’s, introduced me to Mr Baijal, his compatriot from Madhya Pradesh.
I didn’t wish an introduction to the secretary. In my three years of reporting, I had cultivated a healthy respect for this unique actor in Bharat Sarkar called, “joint secretary!” He (or she, as the case may be) is the key decision maker. (Context: The day of news television hadn’t dawned. Today, a junior minister counts for more as he/she can “give ‘em a sound bite,” something no sensible JS still does).
Back to 1994, Mr Baijal was no ordinary JS – he ran large parts of the power sector. My “Page-1” reputation wilted under his bemused gaze. Meeting this JS made sense only after I had done the homework. Once, a tiny Page1 story was born as we walked between Shram Shakti Bhawan on Rafi Marg and Shastri Bhawan, two furlongs away! Finally, I felt some gratitude for my bureau chief.
I lost touch with Mr Baijal when he became additional secretary and then special secretary in power. When I moved into The Financial Express, the Vajpayee government told him to spearhead disinvestment. The job was a true-blue “shunting” posting - the disinvestment secretary’s wife officiated as his PA! The maverick saw this as opportunity to implement learnings during a year at Oxford studying British privatization.
Once when Sanjaya Baru, the FE editor, was travelling, Mr Baijal invited himself to my office to explain a nuance our FE edit writer had missed out. This disarmed my colleagues. Each argument was countered by a bemused gaze I was familiar with and a relevant stack of paper. When everyone else had left the room, Mr Baijal cheekily slipped in how he and Arun Shourie, the minister, have similarly educated an SC judge!
When Mr Baijal was chairman of the telecom regulatory authority of India (TRAI), I argued for number portability. But the chairman ruled that operators needed more time! He didn’t care what I might broadcast about TRAI being unfair to consumers. When Mr Baijal found himself in the midst of enquiries, I wasn’t surprised. He was much too bold.
Now that he’s emerged with his name and good spirits intact, here’s a plug to his practitioner’s account of three crucial sectors: power, 2G and disinvestment. The ebook has just been placed on amazon.com.** "This is an honest account of the journey of one of India's finest civil servants .... and it is a clarion call to stop the witch hunt practices, otherwise (Mr) Baijal might just be the last of his tribe to have the courage to carry out big and bold reforms. The India of today cannot afford this,” Deepak Parekh, chairman HDFC has stated in the promotional blurb.
Without taking the thunder away, I quote paras on Manmohan Singh, the original reformer, who became the antithesis of boldness (emphasis mine):
1: “I am amazed at the totally non-economic attitude of an economist Prime Minister, and a harmful (to the economy) political attitude. Dr. Manmohan Singh was the chairman of the parliamentary sub-committee of the Parliament on disinvestment. He cross-examined me in the committee once in 2002, and was very aggressively negative regarding the privatizations completed. After the meeting, I asked him why was he unhappy with me – after all I was only pursuing the liberalization policies laid down by him as Finance Minister, post 1991. He replied that he was unhappy with the strategic privatization in favor of an industrial group, because such disinvestment could lead to charges of favoritism against the Secretary/Minister. I replied that I was pursuing this route because the political government (NDA) had allowed me.”
2. “The political government in Delhi (UPA), by this time had also become very weak with the Prime Minister not exercising his powers. This led to many concurrent centres of power in Delhi. Some of the corporates also hung on to these power centres, and started exercising their own power with the help of their collaborators, and persons at crucial places in different arms/agencies of Government.”
3. “It was clear that some people in the Government obtained an adverse report from CA&AG by compromising government files given to CA&AG. It is also worrying that (A) Raja subsequently gave an affidavit, knowing that the department had obtained an adverse CA&AG report, and the department tried to play this minor irregularity (which was really not there), to suppress the massive loot by Maran and Raja, by selling spectrum to selected few, without following any rule, and with the knowledge and consent of the Finance Minister and Prime Minister.”
4. “The ruling party, instead of dealing with the corruption charges squarely and taking action to cancel the illegal licenses, chose to protect its coalition partners and subvert the corruption charge by making it a debate on policy. It argued that the policy of ‘first-come first-serve’ was started by the previous government and if indeed anyone were to blame, it was them.…The strategy was squarely to shift the blame on to the functionaries of the earlier governments. Unfortunately for me, I was caught in the cross-fire.”
(The columnist is a former editor and now group head of communications at RIl. Views here are personal. Twitter @therohitbansal. Hashtag #DailyPioneer) Notes:http://www.amazon.in/UNlEASHING-INDIAS-ENERGIES-ENTERPRISE-Practitioners-ebook/dp/B00UAlJA8W
Tail Piece: In the ebook, Mr Baijal has a detailed version of his ill-fated professional association with corporate lobbyist Niera Radia.