“Chahal and his team at the MCGM have done an outstanding job under very difficult circumstances.Each day, our meetings and calls assured me that he was fully in control of the situation…Be it decentralisation of ward rooms, ambulance fleet management, medicine management of Covid, or the natural disasters that we faced while battling Covid, Chahal has stood rock solid with me as an able team member who is willing to take responsibility and deliver what is promised.”

― Maharashtra Chief Minister, Shri Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray

In the most devastating public health emergency in a century, the Covid-19 pandemic has killed millions around the world. As one of the world’s most densely populated urban agglomerations, Mumbai was especially vulnerable to the coronavirus and its multiple mutations. This riveting book reveals for the first time the exclusive inside story of how the Commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), Iqbal Singh Chahal, along with his team, tackled the Covid-19 pandemic successfully with a series of innovations acclaimed globally as the “Mumbai Model”. The MCGM’s success in controlling the pandemic, including in Asia’s biggest slum Dharavi where physical distancing is impossible, has drawn praise from among others, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the US Congress.

Minhaz Merchant was given unrivalled access to contemporary and archival documents. The author interviewed Commissioner Chahal in more than a dozen exclusive sessions stretching to three hours each in order to distil the strategy he and his team employed to control the pandemic through the several waves that swept the city.

From setting up 24 war rooms to creating Jumbo field hospitals, Chahal’s work as commissioner, which began in May 2020 at the start of the pandemic, is the story of extraordinary courage, resilience and innovation.