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Tight rein on babus, tighter on ministers

Ever since Modi assumed office, many have charged PMO of excessive centralisation of power.

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Modi often talks to secretaries directly, asking them o shun self-publicity
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Just days after Narendra Modi took over as the Prime Minister in 2014, Secretary of the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), Madhav Lal, was thrown into a tizzy. Lal had been informed that the PM was heading straight to Udyog Bhawan, the seat of the MSME ministry, to meet him.

As per protocol, he immediately rushed to the minister, senior UP BJP leader Kalraj Mishra, to inform him about the call from the PMO and to confirm whether somebody played a prank on him. Mishra enquired and was told that the PM was indeed on his way to Udyog Bhawan, not to meet the minister, however, but the Secretary.

Umpteen such anecdotes routinely make rounds of the corridors of power, showcasing Modi's attitude and his style of communication with the bureaucracy — the steel frame of the Indian establishment.

In another such incident, on July 21, 2016, an official posted in Tripora got a call from Modi at 10 pm. At first, he, too, thought it was a prank. But as he recognised the PM's voice, the official was left stunned — Modi was asking for his help to repair the National Highway (NH) 208.

In fact, Modi often talks to the secretaries directly. They have been asked to shun self-publicity. Perceiving themselves to be constantly on radar, many secretaries have stopped giving interviews to journalists altogether. Their foreign trips have been restricted to four times a year. And, the secretaries have also been advised to not move out of Delhi, a rule that was earlier applicable only to Cabinet Secretaries.

Ever since Modi assumed office, many have charged PMO of excessive centralisation of power. The hallmark of this process is that many times, in cases of appointments or transfers of even senior bureaucrats, even ministers are left in the dark. With the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) releasing reshuffle or transfer orders late at night — a phenomenon dubbed as 'midnight-massacres' — bureaucrats have been losing their sleep.

For instance, Rajiv Mehrishi, now the Home Secretary, was moved from his post as the Chief Secretary in the Vasundhara Raje government. Similarly, nobody had anticipated Durga Prasad's removal from the post of Special Protection GrouP (SPG) Chief, while he was still in Nepal, handling the Prime Minister's security arrangements. Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh had also not expected her sudden exit last year, soon after she anchored US President Barack Obama's visit.

Then recently, during a meeting to discuss his ambitious multi-purpose and multi-modal platform for proactive governance and timely implementation (PRAGATI), the PM gave a stern and definite warning to bureaucrats against creating any impediments in the roll out of the government scheme.

Short of reading out the Riot Act, Modi also took up 26 complaints registered against the officials of the Central Customs and Excise Department. Though the nature of these complaints was not clear, reportedly most of them pertained to the conduct of these officials at airports and sea ports. When a top Customs official tried a defend his department, arguing that "there are close circuit television cameras in all these places", the PM shot back saying: "CCTV is not an answer to the problem. There are reports that officials deliberately take people away from the cameras to strike deals."

In unambiguous terms, the PM is also learnt to have asked all secretaries to weed out those against whom public grievances have been piling up. Apparently, the reason for many top officials being reluctant to take decisions is that they are wary of getting embroiled in corruption cases later.

Sources in the government, however, pointed out that a section of lazy bureaucracy has been deliberately creating a smokescreen of "persecution" to justify its conduct.

At the same time, there are enough indications to suggest that the government's implementation of its schemes has been falling short of expectations. At the last Civil Services Day, Modi claimed that he had exhorted the bureaucrats to work together as a team to transform the country. But the follow-up action to these words has been missing. For instances, there have been instances where bureaucrats such as Ashok Khemka in Haryana and Sajjiv Chaturvedi, the Chief Vigilance Officer in AIIMS, have been removed because of differences with their political bosses.

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