The Teflon Mr Pawar

The "breaking news'' on TV was flashing Sharad Pawar's appointment as president of the International Cricket Council (ICC) when my wife came and whacked me on the head with the shopping bag. As I almost fell off the chair, she screamed, "French beans Rs 100 a kg, green peas at Rs 160 a kg, dal Rs 100 a kg. Does he now expect us to eat cricket balls?'' she vented her frustration at India's agriculture minister, whose wide grin seemed somehow larger on the 37-inch LCD.

Surely, Pawarsaheb understands the travails of the common man, I assured her. After all, hasn't he already approached the Prime Minister to relieve him of some of his ministerial duties now that he has more weighty issues to worry about -- like world cricket. The Maratha leader with a strong political base in the farming community knows a thing or two about crop patterns and food-grain prices. And as a farmer himself, Pawar ‘worships’ land (and not necessarily the agricultural kind).

The Mr Teflon of Indian politics has had a long and often controversial association with matters pertaining to real estate. Those who tried to stick charges against him found the going tough. Like the former deputy commissioner of Mumbai's municipal corporation, G R Khairnar, who soon found himself suspended after leveling serious charges of corruption against Pawar, who was then Maharashtra's powerful chief minister in the mid-1990s. (The truckload of evidence that Khairnar had promised to produce never came, although the allegations saw the Congress government lose power in the state.)

If Pawar's current tenure as Union agriculture minister has left the Congress squirming (the alleged wheat scam that took place under his tutelage and rising foodgrain prices), his earlier avatar as Maharashtra's chief minister in the late 1980s witnessed a humungous 'land dereservation scam' in Mumbai. As many as 285 plots earmarked for various public amenities like parks, gardens, schools, hospitals and markets were dereserved by the Pawar government, leading to a major public uproar and charges of nepotism against the chief minister. The plots were to be parcelled off to builders for commercial exploitation. This was perhaps Pawar's first major brush with Mumbai's lucrative real estate and land deals. But more were to follow. When he was defence minister in the Narasihma Rao government, there was an audacious move to exploit the sprawling cantonment land in Pune for commercial purposes. Fortunately, it was nixed after the Army strongly opposed it.

Within Mumbai's building industry and in the corridors of power, Pawarsaheb's proximity to some developers and mega-projects is something that is widely spoken of. Among the most talked about connections is that with Lavasa, touted as India's most ambitious lake city complex up near Pune. Pawar's son-in-law, Sadanand Sule, had at one point in time held redeemable preference shares of Lavasa Corporation. Subsequently, the Sules got out of the project, but tongues still continued to wag despite strong denials about the family's involvement.

However, the latest revelation exposed Pawar's direct link with the Pune-based City Corporation -- his family hold a 16% stake in the construction company controlled by his close aide Aniruddha Deshpande. Interestingly, in 2007 the Democratic Front government in Maharashtra, of which Pawar's NCP is a junior partner, came up with an innovative Special Township Policy. Not surprisingly, the first project to be approved by the government was the 400-acre Amanora Park township in Pune, which is promoted by none other than City Corporation. In Mumbai, the 5,500 acres of eco-sensitive salt pan lands are already seen having a huge real estate development potential despite vociferous protests by environmentalists. And guess who heads the group of ministers examining the unlocking of salt pan lands for commercial exploitation! The Teflon Mr Pawar himself.

By : Nauzer K Bharucha, 07 July 2010, 10:35 AM IST
Nauzer K Bharucha is a senior assistant editor at The Times of India in Mumbai and has been with the Times Group for close to two decades. He has been a hardcore reporter with a ringside view of the functioning of the government and its various agencies. He has exposed a number of scams mainly involving public land and award of multi-crore civic projects. He currently covers the real estate beat, issues pertaining to urban development and environment.