The War Room

By Shruta P.

With the presence of multiple agencies delaying infrastructure projects in Mumbai, the concept of having a war room stemmed from the need to bring them all on one platform and pin accountability.

The CM’s war room was set up after Mumbai First, a voluntary organisation of private sector individuals, and global consultancy firm McKinsey gave a detailed presentation to Fadnavis on the need to bring Mumbai’s multiple agencies on one platform in November 2014. The first war room meeting took place in May 2015. The two organisations helped the government run it and set processes in place over the first six months.

The CM’s office reviewed projects initiated by the previous government, chose which ones to put on fast-track and added a few new ones to draw up a list of about 30 projects that the war room would monitor.

A special mobile application was developed for the CM to keep track of these projects on the go. If a project flashes red, it means that it has some immediate hurdles in which case the CM can call or text the officer-in-charge directly. If the project shows green, it signals that its path is clear.

Set up on the seventh floor of Mantralaya, the state secretariat in south Mumbai, the war room is now managed by Dhavse and Pardeshi with a team of about 10-12 young engineers and MBA graduates who are a part of the CM’s internship programme.

“There was some resistance in the initial phase. However, once they started realising that their projects are getting faster approvals, 80 per cent of officers were happy,” Dhavse said.

Shishir Joshi, former chief executive of MumbaiFirst, who was actively involved in setting up the war room, said, “A number of decisions that ideally involve senior bureaucrats from across departments have started getting cleared in the war room. It has become a quasi decision-making body and a power centre within itself.”

• ·     From clearing green hurdles for the Mumbai Metro project to settling land compensation disputes, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has taken several critical decisions behind the closed doors of his ‘war room’.
• ·     The ‘war room’ was set up to push key infrastructure projects in the state and to ensure their completion within a set time-frame.
• ·     In six of the meetings held between October 2015 and 2017, Fadnavis reviewed and fast-tracked nearly 30 infrastructure projects.
• ·    “All the decisions have been taken in the interest of strategic infrastructure projects that require a push,” Kaustubh Dhavse, officer on special duty to the CM.
• ·     “The war room became a great administrative platform for the CM. It has broken the mechanism of files meandering between departments for a decision.”

A few bold decisions

• In the Metro project, the CM has taken some quick decisions to resolve issues pertaining to a 33.5-km Colaba-SEEPZ underground line, which has faced opposition from politicians and activists, especially over the proposed car depot in Mumbai’s green lung of Aarey Colony. Tunneling for the project is now underway with officials optimistically chasing a 2021 deadline.
• The CM also settled a conflict between two projects — a coastal road and a sea link — to be implemented by two different agencies by accommodating both and hammering out a financial model to implement both.

-Gargi J., SYBA.