Vol. 6 | issue 7 | August 2012
FIRST STIRRINGS
ajit nimbalkar
A Maratha with finesse
Senior Maharashtra IAS officer Ajit Nimbalkar is the epitome of a development-oriented bureaucrat.
The
ultimate dream of any bureaucrat is to retire as Secretary in the
Central Government or as Chief Secretary of a State. At 68 years of age,
Ajit Nimbalkar, a retired Maharashtra cadre Indian Administrative
Service Officer of the 1967 batch, has had the satisfaction of having
experienced it all. He retired as Chief Secretary of Maharashtra in 2004
and prior to that he was the Secretary, Defense Production in New
Delhi.
All
through, it has been a long and eventful journey, which has seen him in
the forefront of action in a variety of ways at the Centre or the
State. He saw action from the closest quarters as Secretary to two of
the most powerful Chief Ministers of Maharashtra – Vasant Dada Patil and
Sharad Pawar. This apart, he was Chief Secretary of Maharashtra during
the terms of Vilas Rao Deshmukh and Sushil Kumar Shinde. In fact,
Deshmukh as Chief Minister pitched for him to be brought back to the
State as Chief Secretary.
Whether
it was a question of dealing with the textile strike called by
belligerent trade-union leader Dutta Samant as the Commissioner of
Labour, initiating the first-ever dialogue with Enron for private
investment in the power sector in Maharashtra or starting the initial
negotiations with the Bodo militants in North East as the Special
Secretary (Home) in the Government of India, there has never been a dull
moment in his life. This apart as Joint Secretary and DG (Employment
and Vocational Training), he brought in the first World Bank vocational
training project, developed roads from the Ghat to the Deccan Plateau as
part of the Road Development Corporation, set up new power stations as
the head of the State Electricity Board and distributed natural gas to
reluctant buyers on behalf of Mahanagar Gas Ltd.
Early
in life as the director of sugar factories in Maharashtra, Nimbalkar
helped groups of farmers without any previous experience of running an
industry to come together to start as many as 86 factories. It was the
peak period of development of cooperative sugar factories in the State.
It was also a period when he was able to assemble a group of farmers not
knowing how to run an industry to come together. They needed to be
helped first in drafting the proposal, getting it cleared at the State
level and to get a license from the Central Government. Then came the
question of arranging finances. As the director of sugar factories, he
had to appear on behalf of the farmers. “It was almost like setting up
multiple new units. I learnt a lot how leadership from rural areas can
take such positive steps given proper guidance. They may have started
with sugar factories but afterwards they became growth centres… schools,
colleges, hospitals, roads. Overnight, the rural areas became centres
of development,” he says.
His
stint as Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Maharashtra State Road
Development Corporation saw him chasing deadlines to complete the
Mumbai-Pune Expressway and the Bandra-Worli sea link. He also served as
the first Chairman of the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory
Authority, a qausi-judicial post after retirement and is now a
non-official part-time Director on the Board of NTPC.............READ MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment