Want your city fixed? Just call Chandrashekhar

The verdict came in his favour and within 20 minutes, bulldozers and police vehicles reached the station. Within 24 hours, the area had been cleared and work to widen the pavement had begun.

Even to the most cynical, Chandrashekhar is what a bureaucrat can and should be. He changed sleepy Thane into a city with wide, clean roads. In two years, he did an encore in Nagpur.

Today, Nagpur’s revenue is up; 200 km of roads have been widened with street-lights, medians and landscaping; 2,450 unauthorised colonies housing 7 lakh people have been regularised in a scheme that the state government has now adopted as a standard; massive encroachments removed; illegal water taps regularised. Add to the list a shopping plaza, a multiplex and low-cost houses, special zones for hawkers.

The way he regularised illegal water connections is a study in innovation. He roped in plumbers to legalise water connections, offering them an incentive of Rs 100 for every illegal connection. In two months, Rs 10 crore came from 20,000 connections via a penalty.

There are the usual critics, his IAS colleagues who say he ‘‘ignores norms,’’ and ‘‘ridicules elected representatives.’’ He’s been even called a Hitler. But don’t tell that to residents of Thane.

‘‘We chose to support him as he was our only hope when the city was going from bad to worse. Unauthorised construction was mushrooming everywhere with the active support of ruling parties,’’ says Manohar Panshikar, a Thaneite who rallied behind him when politicians tried hard to remove him.

At one point, they almost succeeded. Corporators passed a resolution in December 1997 urging the government to recall him. The same evening, Thane saw hundreds of people take out a candle-light procession against the decision. Even the rickshaw union joined them. The state government over-ruled the corporation’s decision.

In the next two years, Thane became a picturesque city with six-lane roads and clean pavements. How did he pull it off in a system where red tape strangles the first breath.

Is there a Chandrashekhar effect? ‘‘Conviction, clear vision, transparency and dedication coupled with government backing,’’ says Chandrashekhar, ‘‘You have to prove that you mean business and you also have to win the people over…You bare it all before them and they will respond.’’