(Image source from: Bureaucrats love Modi’s iron-fist rule})
Within few days of assuming office Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ordered directives to the bureaucrats. India's civil servants have been asked by the new PM to clear clutter from all the government offices. Modi has asked the babus (bureaucrats) to throw out dusty files, remove clutter from the corridors and there are talks of 6-days week for officials.
PM Narendra Modi has issued a 10-point administrative commandments for the bureacracy. And the first commandment is to "build up confidence in the bureaucracy". The whole mechanism is unprecedented.
And how are the bureaucrats responding to it? Apparently, they are loving it!
The bureaucrats in India are reportedly happy with the changes taking place in North and South block. What if they have to work harder now. It's ironic that the top officials in government service are recruited through a tough competitive examinations, but Indian bureaucracy has been ranked among Asia's worst, according to one political risk consultancy. The entire cleansing and efficiency building could be a huge turnaround for a state apparatus that has the best talents but is not upto the mark, compared to other countries.
By his cleanliness drive, Modi has not only targeted efficiency in government officess but also hygiene. Government offices are known to be dirty places, marked by red betel nut stained walls, unclean toilets, and discarded furniture clogging corridors.
Modi has demanded "hygiene and cleanliness" in offices. The diktat called for "cleared and spruced up" offices. Each department has been asked to scrap 10 archaic rules. Also forms have to be reduced to one page.
Such is the force of Modi's iron-fist rule that dramatic changes are visible in government buildings across New Delhi. Unused files and old computers were seen dumped outside the Agriculture Ministry building, waiting to be taken to a junk yard. Missing ceiling tiles in passageways have been replaced to cover the visible loose cables.
Similar de-cluttering was visible in Health Ministry as well as in Ministry of Women and Child Development. According to a statement issued by the Health Ministry 35 steel cabinets, three water coolers and 40 chairs which were not used had been removed from its corridors. Similarly, the Women and Child Development ministry launched its cleansing activity by issuing a tender to auction "obsolete/unusable/unserviceable items".
The bureaucrats have been asked to think creatively and take risks in order to remove administrative paralysis that has set in due to the series of corruption scandals that swept over the past decade in the previous government.
Modi abolished a number of cabinet committees, concentrating all powers in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). It's also expected that Modi may overhaul the Soviet-style Planning Commission.
Modi himself works for 18 hours and to keep pace with his gruelling schedule his ministerial secretaries – top rank civil servants – are struggling to keep up.
(AW: Pratima Tigga)
