HE MAY appear to be sitting on a high perch away from the daily humdrum, often moving from location to location across Maharashtra to head as many as four major urban entities of the State Government. However, Shravan Hardikar, Managing Director of MahaMetro, is always close at hand to monitor even a minute detail if the need be. His finger is always on the pulse and his eyes fixated on the organisational targets that play a critical role in the State’s urban transport. Acting as the critical human pivot of a complex organisation operating on massive scale, his leadership is making MahaMetro look like running smoothly on an eternal automode. But watch Shravan P. Hardikar, the genial officer of the 2005 batch of the Indian Administrative Service, even for a while, and you would know that no matter his location at a given moment, he knows what is happening in any corner of the vast and ever-expanding network of Metro Rail in Nagpur, Pune, Thane, and Navi Mumbai.

 

From his electronic dashboard, he monitors the progress of all the projects -- down to Pillar Number 47, for example, on a certain route (from its foundation to its rise to whatever height). Nothing misses his keen eye, nothing - - good or bad -- goes unnoticed -- without his signature smile leaving him ever. Urban transport has been Shravan Hardikar’s subject of speciality. He devoted much of his energy and time studying not just the rudiments but also the fine nuances of what constitutes the totality of urban transport. So, way back when he was Nagpur’s Municipal Commissioner, Shravan Hardikar won the Best Project Award from the SUTP-World Bank for revamping the bus transport of Maharashtra’s Second Capital. Of course, in his illustrious career, Shravan Hardikar has won many other honours in diverse domains -- starting from the Reena Sandhu Memorial Gold Medal for Best Probationer at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussorrie. In 2011-12, he won the Best Collector of the Year Award for implementing eTenders in auctions of sand ghat mining rights in Yavatmal; and the National Award for e-Governance - Gold for Citizen Service Delivery in 2022. As Nagpur’s Municipal Commissioner, Shravan Hardikar was associated with MahaMetro in his official capacity.

 

Thus, he has known the nuts and bolts of the massive project that seeks to reorient public transport of the city -- now in its subsequent phases. As he deals with the details as MahaMetro’s Managing Director, he is conscious that he is presiding over a project that seeks to inject sort of a cultural change in Nagpur -- and also in Pune, Thane and Navi Mumbai (where MahaMetro handles the operational side of the original CIDCO project). For, it is certainly a leadership task to make a whole city’s population accept public transport mode in increasing proportions. The process has to be slow and patient. But then, patience is the real strength of a public administrator. At the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, the probationer learns that quality in high doses. In tune with that core training, the credo is: Listen to the people, don’t over-react, don’t jump to conclusion, understand the issue, try to resolve it amicably, take time, but don’t waste time. All that has helped Shravan Hardikar throughout his career. By way of education, he is an Instrumentation Engineer. That helps him deconstruct a complex issue in a simple configuration -- which helps in arriving at a reasonable solution. But as he deals with problems and people, what helps Shravan Hardikar the most is his connect with literature. For his Union Public Service Commission examination, he chose Marathi Literature as a subject (since Instrumentation Engineering was not a subject on offer). As a child in a Marathi home, he was fortunate to have got a fair and endearing introduction to Marathi literature’s different modes. He often loved reading fiction.

 

hat has helped him to understand finer nuances of human nature -- which helps him establish a reasonable connect with the persons (common public and his own colleagues or peers). That has remained Shravan Hardikar’s strength. As it is with other professionals, sparing time for himself is often Shravan Hardikar’s personal challenge. But whenever it is possible, he resorts to reading, sketching, bird-watching and wild-life watching, listening to music, playing sports such as tennis, badminton, cricket. “That time with myself has its own value,” he says. Maharashtra’s urban landscape is changing rapidly. Public transport will play a great role in the changing scenario, and Shravan Hardikar is adding much value to it as a leader of the State’s biggest such project outside Mumbai. But what is the most critical leadership virtue and value? To this question, Shravan Hardikar leans a little forward and says, “Look, creating a shared vision, and giving the members of the organisation a purpose to achieve, is the most critical of the tasks the leader has to perform -- all the time, beyond himself.” That does leave much scope to discuss the subject of leadership with Shravan Hardikar -- with an engineering mind tempered with literature. But then comes a series of meetings and appointments he must respect !