The rewards to Kishor are much more handsome than just being elevated to cabinet rank in Bihar.
At the spanking new state construction corporation office in Patna's very own Lutyens' zone called Rajbansi Nagar, a small corner room seats two officials confabulating about job applications for recruitment to 328 posts for the Bihar Vikas Mission. The applications on their tables are of MBAs and IT professionals with over five years of work experience. All of them will be hired for salaries ranging between Rs 1 lakh to Rs 1.5 lakh a month. This private army of MBAs is being hired to be part of a team supervised by none other than Prashant Kishor – the man credited for winning India for Narendra Modi in 2014 and Bihar for Nitish Kumar in 2016.
Kishor, who became Nitish's blue-eyed boy after helping him reclaim Bihar was appointed the chief minister's advisor. Even while enjoying cabinet minister status in the Nitish government, Kishor is working to ensure a Congress win in the Punjab elections scheduled in early 2017.
The rewards to Kishor are much more handsome than just being elevated to cabinet rank in Bihar.
Estimates suggest that the salaries and perks of the professionals who will work under Kishor to implement the Bihar Vikas Mission will cost the tax payer Rs 165 crore over the five years. And these are only the salaries of 328 professionals without counting in annual pay hikes. Reports suggest that Kishor intends to hire a team of over 1,000 private professionals, working at various levels of the Bihar government, to implement the mission.
Kishor was made a member of the governing body to oversee the Bihar Vikas Mission, an ambitious programme that seeks to achieve the 'seven resolves' promised by Nitish during his election campaign. The 'seven resolves' include increasing youth employment, improving higher education and providing universal access to electricity. A gazette notification published on January 28, 2016 gives the mission powers to ensure implementation of virtually every facet of Nitish's development vision for Bihar, including an "agricultural road map", "human development mission", and "infrastructure development" under Bihar's Rs 1.44 lakh budget.
One of the first ideas seeing the light of the day under the mission is setting up of district registration and counselling centres (DRCCs) in each of Bihar's 38 districts. Each district will have a manager with an annual salary of Rs 9.6 lakh. An MBA degree holder with five years' experience and IT proficiency is being sought. An assistant manager to handle accounts and four assistant managers in each district to deal with various government schemes are being recruited. These too will be MBA degree holders. They command an annual salary of Rs 7.2 lakh with an assured increment of 10% a year.
The salaries for each district manager supervised by Kishor would be much higher than what a district collector can hope to earn after many years of service. A district collector, usually an IAS officer, in the senior time scale pay band receives a grade pay of Rs 6,600 a month and has salary cap of Rs 39,100 a month.
Officials at the district level have been told to start preparing the necessary infrastructure for setting up DRCCs. "I was told to get things ready for a DRCC in my district. So we have got the land and a building will be ready in the next 3 months," says Deepak Anand, the district magistrate of Saran district.
At the district level across Bihar, there is still a lot of ambiguity on what exactly will be the role of the private recruits. "The district magistrate will always have the final call in matters of implementation of government schemes. The system cannot be changed overnight. I am not yet aware of the exact responsibilities of the private recruits, but this seems to be a measure to decentralise administration," says Ajay Kumar, a state cadre officer in the district of Vaishali.
The recruitment for the mission in Patna is being done on an even bigger scale. A total of 12 project leads with a monthly salary of Rs 1.5 lakh are being recruited. Resembling a corporate setup, these project leads will be specialists in business analytics, advocacy and finance.
Various other positions like management associates, finance associates and programme analysts – each with a monthly salary of Rs 1.25 lakh a month – are being filled up.
Bihar government officials maintain that the role of this parallel 'technocracy' is no more than facilitating interaction between district officials and the cabinet secretariat in Patna. A district official who didn't wish to be named explained, "Earlier we used to make the government aware of various problems and they used to address it by floating tenders. Now these people will do the job. If they don't perform they will be shown the door."
Sunil Kumar, deputy district collector of Saran district says, "Their role will be that of technical advisors. The power of implementation will be with the same people it was before."
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