KhoobSurat secret: No cellphones

Rao, erstwhile municipal commissioner of Surat, is effectively its chief architect, credited with the demolition plan that transformed a plague-infested city from the country’s filthiest urban centre to the second-cleanest city (next only to Chandigarh), as certified by INTACH.

‘‘The one big advantage I had was that there were no cellphones,’’ grins Rao-saheb, as he came to be known during his Surat stint. ‘‘There was no way I could be tracked down at a demolition site. I was hardly ever at a landline, and if there were any angry or desperate calls on the wireless, I didn’t take them.

‘‘And the ones that I did take, I would say, ‘Hello, there is disturbance on the line, please speak loudly. Hello, I can’t hear you, I’ll get back.’ I seldom did.’’

It wasn’t as if Rao always had his way: In fact, like most bureaucrats at the time, he didn’t even want to be posted in Surat. But once in the hot seat, he took just eight months to widen 250 km of arterial roads, clear three lakh sq ft of decades-old shops and commercial establishments and reclaim 200 km of new roads from encroachments.

‘‘The first commercial property we demolished belonged to an affluent diamond merchant. The second belonged to then Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel’s son-in-law’s father,’’ he recalls.

What he doesn’t say: 98 of the 99 Surat municipal corporators belonged to the BJP, 90 per cent of them were builders. In fact, Patel had a two-third majority in the Assembly.

‘‘(But) I had the support of the 14,999 SMC staff. I was the 15,000th and I went on to win an avalanche of public support,’’ Rao, now the principal secretary with the Gujarat government, says.

The support didn’t come easy. Surat residents still remember the confrontation between Rao and Independent MLA (and underworld strongman) Manubhai Pithavdiwala, who ran a virtual empire of unauthorised construction in Surat’s Varachha area. When Rao’s bulldozers closed in on his buildings, an inebriated Pithavdiwala targeted the frail civic chief with a revolver. Rao slapped him hard on the face, knocking the gun out of his hand, and had him arrested.

‘‘It was a psychological war,’’ Rao says, cutting through the fog. ‘‘We worked to a plan. If you target the poor and the weak, they will react and resist. Target the powerful minority and the majority will believe in you. We went top-down, starting with the commercial and industrial interests. The people began to understand and cooperate.’’

The cooperation was truly unbelievable. This reporter, in early 1995, was witness to hundreds of cases of voluntary demolition, even by those who had taken out protective court orders.

‘‘There came a point,’’ remembers Rao’s former deputy Ashwin Mehta, ‘‘when all our staff had to do was chalk-mark the unauthorised part of a construction; the owner took care of the rest.’’

Rao got the Padma Bhushan for his effort. And Surat, as he can rattle off a decade down the line, got ‘‘five 250-ft wide roads, two dozen 150-ft roads, five dozen 100-ft roads’’.

That wasn’t all. ‘‘It’s not only roads that emerge from under unauthorised constructions. Sixty-five per cent of Surat had no drainage, 40 per cent had no piped water supply because there were commercial establishments and industrial units on the lines. Today, the coverage is cent per cent. Surat then had the state’s highest incidence of water-borne diseases, now it’s down by 75 per cent.’’

Rao sold Surat a dream, and the dream came true. At 52, the demolition man shrugs off the accolades: ‘‘It cannot be a singular effort. I just helped the people believe the system can work for the poor as well.’’