Adarsh: Window to a politician-bureaucrat-builder nexus

The media (both print and electronic) really went to town on this because there is nothing that it loves better than to tear a person’s reputation to shreds and the truth be damned. If armed forces officers are involved, the ferocity of the attack is worse because they can, in addition, sully the uniform and the institution, since the politician and the bureaucrat are impervious. And as they say, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall!”
The “housing for widows of the ‘martyrs’ of Kargil” is a media creation because the scheme was never meant for them nor was the plot reserved in their name. No government, however magnanimous, would have allotted such a prohibitively expensive plot in a prime location to Kargil heroes or their widows. A more likely place would have been in the satellite town of Navi Mumbai, or in Nagpur or Nasik, where land is available aplenty.

The project was never promoted as a housing project for the ‘widows of Kargil’; but the Kargil conflict itself was used as a ploy to get the land transferred to the society with the active connivance of Defence Estate Officers, one of who became a promoter. Because of its location on the boundary of defence land and was in the physical possession of the Army, it had no commercial potential for a civilian project. It was the brain child of Maj Gen A R Kumar, Area Cdr/GOC (1999-2000), when the Kargil war was in progress and his deputy Brig T K Kaul. Subsequently, all Area Cdrs and Sub-area Cdrs from 2000 to 2010 have been allotted flats in the building as a quid pro quo apparently to buy their silence. The Navy had no role to play in giving clearances at that time but top naval brass were offered flats all the same as one of the promoters was a naval officer. They were probably offered the ‘right of first refusal’ but refused to refuse the offer. The other lower ranked officers (including a Petty Officer) either got it courtesy of one or other of the promoters or they just got lucky. No one looks a gift horse in the mouth!

The Adarsh plot is not located in far away Yeotmal or Aurangabad but in tiny South Bombay (So Bo, as it is called) where property prices are the highest in the world and there is little vacant land left. It is just a stone’s throw away from and in full view of the headquarters of the Maharashtra government, ‘Mantralaya’, the BMC headquarters and the headquarters of the GOC, M&G Area. The building did not come up surreptitiously but grew in stature under the benign gaze of the worthies who occupy these hallowed premises and had their blessings.

The seed

The problems really started when the revenue minister (now former chief minister) Ashok Chavan demanded 40 per cent of the flats for civilians (read politicians and bureaucrats). A modest housing project of six floors slowly expanded to 31 floors to accommodate the swelling demand from these big wigs who highjacked the project and colluded with the builder to break every rule in the statute book with impunity. The building is a monument to deceit to all the people of Maharashtra/Mumbai/India and not just the Kargil heroes/widows, most of whom have already got houses in New Delhi in the Dwarka project. This project never had any link to “war veterans and/or widows of Kargil” who were the invisible pawns in the game. We have only been compelled by the media to think that way. In fact, membership was restricted to Maharashtrians and those who could prove domicile in Maharashtra — so much so even the two former Army chiefs did not just walk in — they had to get exemption from the highest levels of the government, even though this is not a government project.

This was a scandal that was waiting to happen — it is neither the first, nor is it the last in an unending series of such scams that have dotted the Maharashtra landscape. Because of its location, Adarsh is very visible but it is just the tip of the iceberg; what of the innumerable Adarshes across the country which is driven by the greed of the rapacious builder-politician- bureaucrat nexus? The armed forces personnel, serving and retired are guilty by association and of impropriety and collusion. They will definitely face justice of one kind or another but will the politician and the bureaucrat be touched? We have seen what happens to them post 26/11.

About 55 per cent of Mumbai’s population of 15 million live in slums or on the streets while 13 per cent live in ownership flats. No less than 70 per cent of the rest live in one-room tenements, some of which are crumbling. In a scenario of such abject deprivation, Adarsh is a monument of shame.

Let us not drag the names of Kargil heroes into this filth even by association, which the media (Arnab Goswami and Rajdeep Sardesai) insists on doing. I cannot ask retired officers to stop appearing on TV talk shows, but I wish they would because they make asses of themselves.

[The writer is a Commander (retired) in the Indian Navy]