User:Prithvi Haldea/sandbox

Gajendra Haldea Born: 29.01.1949 Death: 15.01.2021

Gajendra Haldea graduated in Economics and Law at the University of Rajasthan and joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1973. He later went for a Fellowship at the London School of Economics. In his field assignments at the sub-district, district and state level, he topped at the state and national level in implementing several flagship schemes of the Government.

Among a wide array of assignments, he spent 10 years ending 1998 with the Union Finance Ministry where his portfolio included infrastructure, ADB, UNDP, economic relations with USA & Canada, World Bank projects and exchange control. He also spent 10 years ending 2014 at the erstwhile Planning Commission of India as head of the Secretariat for Infrastructure & Public Private Partnership (PPP). He has also advised several State Governments during the past two decades, besides serving on the boards of several public sector companies and Banks.

He authored the Electricity Act 2003 and the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, among other laws.

He challenged the forays of several foreign power producers, including Enron, and saved tens of thousands of crore rupees for the country by renegotiating or rejecting their contracts while serving in the Finance Ministry during the mid-1990s, when several other developing nations were contracting high cost power that later bled their economies.

He has been the architect and author of much of the institutional and policy framework as well as the standardised model documents that attracted and sustained private participation in infrastructure sectors such as power, highways, ports, airports, metro rail, storage etc. These enabled India to attain the top slot for investment in PPP during 2007-13, as per data published by the World Bank.

Government of India has published 31 books authored by him, comprising policy and regulatory frameworks, guidelines and model documents for private participation. His book "Infrastructure at Crossroads: The Challenges of Governance", (Oxford University Press) provides a rare insider view of infrastructure reforms in India.

The PPP projects based on his work include over 300 highway projects, numerous power generation and transmission projects, Hyderabad Metro Rail project, Vizhinjam Port in Kerala and a $6 billion contract for production and maintenance of locomotives, among others. All national highway projects in India are currently being built on the basis of various model documents authored by him for BOT, annuity and EPC projects. All these investments have led to creation of enormous wealth, employment and income across states and sectors.

The hallmark of his work lies in transparency, integrity and public service, which has been widely acclaimed. None of his frameworks, documents and projects have faced legitimate or sustained criticism from auditors, investigators, experts, policy makers or media. On the contrary, his relentless efforts have prevented or exposed malfeasance in scores of large projects and contracts, thus preventing potential scams and saving huge sums of public resources for the national economy.