HUDA ADMINISTRATOR  Praveen Kumar is reportedly a big-time movie buff - to an extent that he watches Anil Kapoor’s Nayak (he played one day Chief Minster to cleanse the system) movie before going to bed every night. Well, this was on a lighter note but rightly so, Kumar is seen as a real life ‘Nayak or Ek din ka CM. People have even started to draw parallels between Kumar and former iconic Chief Minister of Haryana Bansi Lal who is seen as a pioneer of modern Haryana.

In a latest bizarre but a genuine move, Kumar has decided to give a test to engineers and field officers after he had a feeling that they were ignorant about the road development methodologies. According to The Times of India, Kumar asked them about the differences between crumb rubber bitumen and polymer bitumen, and to his surprise nobody came up with a satisfactory answer.

Under the scrutiny of video cameras, the civic engineers shall write the test, whose dates are yet to be finalised. Before appearing in the objective-type test, they will be provided with study material so that they can they can do their homework properly. “There are 25 denominators to determine the quality of the road. Now, I am sure that no one here has any clue about them.”

Outcome of the test will influence their postings and Kumar has threatened that he will retain only the competent ones transferring rest to other branches of HUDA. He shot to popularity after slapping himself with his shoes as the crowd was growing restive while he along with team was busy carrying out late-night demolition last month in Gurgaon. He slapped a peon, reportedly for conspiring against him. He personally inspects the work being done across the city and has been spotted as early as five in the morning inspecting the cleaning work.

It is generally believed that lack of sincere administrators has been hampering the growth of Gurgaon, India’s Millennium City but after Kumar took charge, hope has returned to the hopeless residents. His upfront and on-spot decisions have led to a change in mindset and work-culture of HUDA officials and even sweepers and cleaners make sure that they clean the roads well before time.

In an open Darbar, he solved few decades-old cases and relieved the families who had been suffering due to apathetic and lazy attitude of HUDA management. He is going beyond the set and traditional ways of management, and has even visited MDI Gurgaon to get ideas from students to manage traffic in the city. He has even proposed to set up a think tank where intellectuals of the city will brainstorm and propose ideas for the development of the city.

Well, besides all this aplomb and style, there would be many bottlenecks and hindrances, which could decelerate his pace of sincere and result-oriented work. He, on his own can’t change the system but hopefully would try to all other stakeholders on board so that his job becomes easier.