I chose DLF over Disneyland dream, says KP Singh at his book launch

It was a theme park like none other India had seen. It would be the country’s very own Disneyland, with all kinds of rides and a sprawling ecological park. It would also have science parks, a water park with water skis, not to mention restaurants and luxury hotels. Envisioned on the Delhi-Haryana border not far from the Indira Gandhi International Airport, it was the brainchild of KP Singh, the man behind DLF, though the Haryana government would execute it.

 

“I had contacts with the Disney theme park people,” says KP Singh, speaking to Business Standard on the sidelines of the launch of his book, Why the Heck Not (co-authored with Aparna Jain), in New Delhi on Thursday evening to coincide with his 95th birthday. The Haryana government, under Om Prakash Chautala, had even gone ahead and notified 28,000 acres of land under the Land Acquisition Act for this amusement park.

 

 

This was back in the early 1990s. “Had the theme park become a reality, it would have, along with Gurugram, truly changed the face and fortunes of Haryana,” says DLF’s chairman emeritus. But that was not to be. Huge protests broke out. Haryana farmers took to the streets against the move to acquire their agricultural land. Many of them rode to Delhi on elephants and camels to protest. The proposed amusement park quickly became embroiled in political controversy. Later, the Bhajan Lal government scrapped it.

 

“I had an opportunity to do something for Haryana, for the country,” says Singh. “But the political mess around the theme park could have impacted DLF. I had to weigh between the two, and I chose DLF,” he adds, speaking about the one project that he regrets couldn’t see the light of day.

 

Pragmatic risks and the wisdom to know when to pull back or let go is something Singh speaks about passionately, both in his book and during his conversation with Pavan K Varma, diplomat and former member of Parliament, at the book launch. The book, though, is neither his biography or autobiography, which was released more than 10 years ago, in November 2011, and was titled Whatever the Odds.

 

“An autobiography is a narration of your life as you remember it,” he says. “There are no conclusions or lessons that emerge from it. Mine was a turbulent life, and its many events, which aren’t confined to business, have left me with lessons and guidance that I wanted to share.”

 

Among the lessons he speaks about are those on urban infrastructure. Singh is no town planner. He is a real estate developer. But he is also the protagonist of the story of a city that has come up, although in a piecemeal manner, to become Haryana’s financial capital. He does not mince his words when he says that the Gurugram he sees around him today isn’t how he had envisioned it. It was to be greener, more organised, and with better civic infrastructure. Instead, it is now often written about as a glaring example of how a city ought not to be planned. “It remains a developing city,” he says, but adds that if it weren’t for DLF, it might have become a giant rehabilitation colony.

 

Other major cities, too, like Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, are struggling with infrastructure issues. It is a result of myopic, short-term planning, says Singh, advocating for urban planning that takes the requirements of the next 100 years into account. He wants the prime minister to form a Cabinet-rank committee that comprises not just planners with foresight, but also environmentalists and visionaries from the private sector.

 

Meanwhile, in the book, Singh, who says circumstances forced him to enter his father-in-law’s real estate business after his army and horse breeding days, also talks about winning people over so that they would willingly part with their land. He calls it “coffee diplomacy,” and offers anecdotes of intense personal outreach initiatives and persistent relationship-building measures that helped him achieve this.

 

There are several other anecdotes, such as how he navigated the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act, 1976, which was intended to prevent the concentration of urban land in the hands of a few people. Having found a way around it, he says, he had an opportunity to become a multi-millionaire at the cost of the people he was acquiring land from. “Old-timers at DLF even advised me to do so, and when I dug my heels in against that suggestion, I was told that I wasn’t cut out for business,” he says.

 

The book, with the author’s picture painted by the artist Paresh Maity, also captures glimpses of the 20-odd page letter Singh wrote to his family after the death of wife, Indira, “the love of my life”.  “I thought nobody would know about her contribution, not even the children or the grandchildren,” he says. “So, on the third day of her passing, I sat down to write the letter at 9.30 in the night and finished at 4 in the morning”.

 

In many ways, it is from that letter “that carried the weight of his life and the lessons for those he cherished most” that this book emerged.