Pankaj Kumar Bansal, after 25 years of active service in Tamil Nadu, has shifted to Delhi to take charge as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Cooperation. He will also be heading the National Cooperative Development Bank. This can be a shot in the arm for the department needing restructure and reforms.
Bansal has brought about massive, welcome changes in every portfolio he handled. I cite a few:
- As Additional Collector of Ooty, he focused on the Hill Area Development Programme which impacted on sustainable development and welfare of the tribals. Well-known TV journalist Sanjay Pinto wrote: “handpicked to deal with naxal issues in Dharmapuri, Bansal decided to ‘counter it with development.’ He focused on water supply, schools, building motorable roads and food for tribal areas. He stuck to his credo to create an impact.”
- Tamil Nadu’s comprehensive health insurance scheme for large sections of the population. It started with offering mediclaim facilities meeting the cost of expensive surgeries costing up to Rs 1.5 lakh each (later this was the base for the Union government’s Ayushman Bharat). Bansal as Special Secretary, Health, focused on improving the efficacy of this precious scheme and helped upgrade the facilities and equipment in government hospitals and expanded the benefits to government doctors and nurses that resulted in a huge step up in custom for government hospitals.
TN’S METRO MAN…
Bansal, hailing from UP, is a B.Tech from IIT-Varanasi, M Tech from IIT-Delhi and entered the IAS in 1997. His term as the head of Chennai Metro Rail Ltd (CMRL) is renowned for the remarkable economies achieved by re-designing and re-engineering the systems both for carriageways and underground stations. These helped achieve handsome savings in costs by eliminating redundancies in land requirements and space for railway platforms. These mattered even more: the huge cost estimates and their increases threatened drastic cuts in original plans. I remember his bold decision to reduce the length of platforms from 240 meters by nearly 100 meters.
The economist in this engineer questioned the need for acquiring large land areas for the over-head railway stations. With the high cost of land in Chennai metro, such economies mattered much. For the expansion through three new lines linking extended areas of the metro the suggestion to drastically reduce land acquisition for the railway stations and the suggestion to lease much of these for the period of construction meant savings of hundreds of crores of rupees.
OVER 100 JVs AT TIDCO…
Such innovation also helped expand the range and extent of the services by the premier development corporation, Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation Limited (TIDCO) which he headed till shifting to Delhi.
“We are working in agriculture, infrastructure, industry… and we have more than 100 JVs. In all these
JVs, we remain silent and allow the private partner to be recognised, like in Titan, TRIL, Ascendas, Tidel Park…,” said Bansal in his address at a recent IE seminar. He collaborated pointing to the setting up of Tidel Parks in Tier II and Tier III cities, Centres of Excellence in cooperation with Siemens, Dassault Systems and GE and the Common Facility Centre at Tiruchi, equipped with high-value equipment that can be accessed by MSMEs.
Bansal also pointed to a venture capital fund of Rs 500 crore and to the projects planned in the areas of aviation, defence and logistics. A second airport for Chennai and one for Hosur are among the latest focus areas of TIDCO.
Bansal can be expected to create similar impact in the cooperative department that needs it most. Coming under the powerful Amit Shah, he has large scope for continuing with his yen for innovation and impact.
