How the PMO dismantled the sleazy nexus of power, cash and influence at the heart of the Delhi Durbar.
By Uday Mahurkar
PM Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
with secretaries to the Central government in New Delhi.
A little over a year ago, the marbled lobbies of five-star
hotels and colonial clubs in the heart of Lutyens' Delhi buzzed with
businessmen eyeing government contracts, liaison men dangling favours, and
government servants seeking lucrative postings. A cozy nexus of cash, influence
and favours that greased the wheels which ran India's capital. Today, these
antechambers to the erstwhile Delhi Durbar have fallen silent, the result of a
clean-up by the Narendra Modi government and the setting up of a new
mechanism in the top bureaucracy to eliminate nepotism and bring in honest
bureaucrats. This new system, insiders say, has posted nearly 450 joint
secretaries, additional secretaries, secretaries to ministries and government
departments, and around 300 officers in banks and public sector undertakings
(PSUs) in the past 18 months. The only two criteria for selecting officials,
according to PMO officials, are honesty and efficiency.
"When people talk about the PM not delivering on his
promises they forget that he has delivered on his assurance of clean
governance," says a senior government official.
Modi runs the most powerful, centralised PMO in decades. His
government has reshuffled the bureaucracy three times in the past 18 months,
fired the foreign and home secretaries, and shifted out a second home
secretary. Ministers can no longer pick and choose their bureaucrats. That task
is done by the PMO.
This is why Vinod Rai, former Comptroller and Auditor General
(CAG) of India, calls the new system "exemplary". "The earlier
practice of allowing ministers to choose their key officials, in fact,
destroyed the civil services because it led to massive lobbying at the
ministerial level for extraneous considerations," he says.
A reshuffle in the finance and home departments this August
demonstrated the government was judicious to retain officers irrespective of
their affiliations with the previous government. But the process of screening
saw five officers in the finance ministry posted out for various undisclosed
reasons. Finance Secretary Ratan Watal, though, was retained, and a new revenue
secretary, Hasmukh Adhia, a Gujarat cadre IAS officer who was earlier the
finance secretary in Gujarat, was appointed. The process also pushed a relative
outsider, Shaktikanta Das, an IAS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre, into the
department of economic affairs to help expedite the government's agenda of
bringing back black money.
In the home department, the old structure underwent lesser but
significant changes. In August this year, the then finance secretary, Rajiv
Mehrishi, replaced L.C. Goyal, who was appointed as the chairman of the India
Trade Promotion Organisation. Goyal was brought in February this year after his
predecessor, Anil Goswami, was shown the door for allegedly trying to protect
politician Matang Sinh from arrest. IPS officer Satyendra Garg, who worked on
streamlining the traffic in Delhi, was posted as joint secretary, home.
Men in the middle
Many believe that the downfall of the Indian bureaucracy started
in 1980 with the dramatic return to power of Indira Gandhi as prime minister.
"She made personal loyalty the sole criterion of her selection in politics
as well as bureaucracy. This decision instituted a 'patronage raj' in the
ruling party which in turn led to the birth and then the rise of a
transfer-posting industry," says Ahmedabad-based political analyst Vidyut
Thakar.
In August last year, PM Modi took on a raft of powers relating
to cadre management. Among the most significant ones were that the PM would
clear posting and transfers of officers of the rank of joint secretary (what an
IAS officer with 16 years of service is promoted to) and above.
The plan to clean up the bureaucracy began with the induction of
P.K. Mishra into the PMO as additional principal secretary in June 2014.
Mishra, a retired Gujarat cadre IAS officer, had served between 2001 and 2004
as principal secretary to Modi when he was Gujarat chief minister. Modi and
Mishra shared an excellent chemistry. It was Mishra who literally initiated
Modi into the complex world of bureaucracy and public administration.
Mishra got two helping hands-West Bengal cadre IAS officer
Bhaskar Khulbe was appointed additional secretary, while Jharkhand cadre IAS
officer Rajiv Kumar was named establishment officer (EO). Mishra's selection
troubles were compounded by a 2007 Supreme Court judgment, which made it
mandatory for a senior officer writing his junior's confidential report (CR) to
show him the comments. Few senior officials were willing to invite the wrath of
their juniors. The result: an explosion in "outstanding CRs" from 30
per cent to almost 70 per cent.
Mishra, Kulbe and Kumar came up with an old-fashioned method to
rate officers-they would personally carry out background checks on each
officer. They were joined by P.K. Sinha, who was appointed cabinet secretary in
June 2015.
Background checks
The system the PMO officers evolved meant making about 12 to 15
phone calls to assess an officer's reputation. The calls would go to the
officer's batchmates, seniors and juniors. Besides, a 360-degree scrutiny would
start soon after an officer applied for a posting in Delhi. The Cadre
Controlling Authority (CCA) now sends the proposal to the establishment officer
(see graphic) who reports to the cabinet secretary but is also the secretary to
the Appointment Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by the PM.
"I was surprised when some of my colleagues told me that
they were contacted by the PMO and the cabinet secretariat officers to find
about my service record," says A.K. Mittal, who was appointed Indian
Railway Board chairman in December 2014.
Once an officer's name is cleared, it enters a retention pool
for a suitable posting. Names are readied in advance and adjusted against the
vacancies. Next, the name is sent to the Central Services Board (CSB) to match
the candidate's profile with job opening. At this stage, the secretaries of the
departments are also involved along with the EO and cabinet secretary.
Once the name has been finalised, the CSB sends it to the ACC,
which clears it within 24 hours. The process, government officials say, earlier
used to take almost three months, giving lobbyists, ministers and middlemen
plenty of time to manipulate selections.
PMO officials say the new system has brought deserving officers
in plum positions in Delhi. Ashok Dongre, a Tamil Nadu cadre IAS officer, for
instance, had never worked in Delhi but was appointed joint secretary
(establishment) in the defence ministry.
TSR Subramanian who was cabinet secretary between 1996 and 1998
says what is now being done is the restoration of an earlier system of checks
and balances where the PMO and cabinet secretary worked hard to ensure
bureaucrats and ministers did not become "too familiar with each
other". "This system went away in the past few years when ministers
freely chose their secretaries and joint secretaries," he says.
Some recent postings by the government
demonstrate judiciousness in retaining good officers irrespective of their
affiliations with the previous government.
The rise of non-IAS officers
One of the unintended consequences of this new policy has been
the end of the primacy of the IAS officers in all posts in Delhi. For the first
time in recent years, officers from across central government services are
being inducted to posts that were earlier "exclusively reserved" for
IAS officers. The 89 non-IAS officers out of the 269 joint secretary-level
posts at the Centre are believed to be the highest ever. Indian Revenue Service
officer Aniruddha Kumar was appointed joint secretary, power; Indian Forest
Service officer Amitabh Gautam was named joint secretary, agriculture; Darshana
Momaya Dabral, officer of Indian Posts & Telecommunication Accounts and
Finance Service, is now joint secretary and finance adviser to Ministry of Human Resource Development.
Interestingly, two significant examples of such innovations in
postings were brought into the Air India and the department of commerce. Indian
Railway Service officer of 1980 batch, Ashwani Lohani was made Air India chief
and was tasked with turning around the loss-making venture. When Indian Railway
Service officer Sanjay Chadha gave a good example of his understanding of
commerce as a member of the committee on railway restructuring under Bibek
Debroy, he was posted as joint secretary, commerce.
"Our single-minded pursuit is to get the best possible
officers in terms of integrity and delivery wherever we can find them,"
says cabinet secretary Sinha.
Bank and PSU appointments have also seen major changes with the
newly floated Bank Board Bureau (BBB) appointing bank officers. The six-member
BBB conducts three interviews of an applicant before taking the final call.
Critics within the bureaucracy warn that this new centralised
PMO is creating instability in departments through frequent changes and warn of
power being concentrated in the hands of a few officials. Others say that the
centralised PMO has led to an exodus of bureaucrats from Delhi. PMO officials
counter this by saying that there are 150 applicants jostling for 26 joint
secretary-level vacancies at present. Only 45 officers have chosen to revert to
their parent cadre in the past 18 months. Twenty-six of them are those who
returned for better postings-either as chief secretary or for a stint in the
chief minister's secretariat. As a deterrent against corruption, the government
has either dismissed or compulsorily retired as many as 45 officers of the rank
of principal secretary and above.
The end of the transfer raj has caused considerable
consternation within the BJP as well. Political recommendations for transfers
and postings were powerful tools for ruling political parties to dispense
patronage. With Modi keeping his partymen at arm's length from the government, miffed
BJP workers say the 'transfer raj' has been replaced by 'babu raj'. "Many
of our leaders think genuine workers cannot influence the government because
the bureaucrats owe their posts to no one," says a party insider. On the
flip side, the government says, it's for the good of the people.
The information provided and the views expressed are authors
own.
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