In a rather out of the box exercise, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed about 77 top bureaucrats and senior echelons as his first formal interaction with the administrative cadres of high authority. This type of interaction has come after an interval of eight years. Of course, the tenor of this interaction could not be the same as of previous ones held during the regime that has been replaced. The reason is that Modi administration has some cut and dried agenda that has been spelt out in the course of his election campaign.
New Government’s stress is on change. Change is not only in the functioning of the ministries and administrative system. Change has to be brought about in the very mindset of our top bureaucrats. We agree with senior bureaucrats that the previous regime had almost discouraged the initiative and innovative faculty of the senior echelons just because it was somehow denied the freedom to do so. Senior bureaucrats are the cream of society; they go through the mill before they are entrusted with administrative responsibilities. They are highly conscious of their duties and once used to be called the steel frame of the administration. In a culture of corruption, scams and bribery let loose by politicians and their cronies, the dedicated bureaucracy became the first casualty. It was forced to adopt the response of uncertainty and practised the art of passing the buck. The out-gone regime acted somewhat authoritatively and the interests of the larger sections of society became a casualty.
What the Prime Minister’s interaction aimed at was first of all to restore confidence among senior bureaucrats. They have been exhorted to cast aside archaic rules that are more an obstruction than a facility. They are further prompted to take their decision and be assured that the Prime Minister would support and uphold the right decision taken with all sincerity. Not only that, the Prime Minister has even gone to the length of telling them they would have access to him in case they had any new ideas to put forth or any difficulty in which they needed his intervention. This is a method of creating sense of confidence and responsibility. After all, new ideas and initiatives have to come from the bureaucrats and there have to be takers. This is what has been assured to them by the Prime Minister.
It is highly relevant that the Prime Minister has interacted with the most powerful organ of the administration and taken it into confidence. His message in essence is that the administration has to be responsive to the aspirations of the people. There is a need of changing the mindset. The bureaucrats need to assert and make things go. The Prime Minister does not want matters of high priority getting enmeshed in red tape. That is why he wants obsolete rules and regulations to be dropped. An important policy matter on which he has given great emphasis is the use of modern technology in discharging the duties of administration. The secretaries and other senior officers who have great responsibility are advised to work as a cohesive team. Earlier the Prime Minister had desired secretary of each department to make a ten minute concise power point presentation of the priority issues with respective ministries. Through this instrumentality many matters of utmost importance were clarified and ground situation has made clear.
Establishing rapport of sorts with the higher echelons of bureaucracy gives the Prime Minister very vivid and clear picture of the priorities he has to fix and address in time bound manner. After all he is in the driver’s seat and all the wheels and clogs of the machine have to move accordingly. In particular, he wants to be precise in the areas of development. He has already interacted with the members of the Council of Ministers and explained to them how he wants to run the administration. Thus we see he is galvanising all instruments of administration into action. A new work culture has to be created in which all Government functionaries feel that they have a responsibility to shoulder and a task to perform. Happily the Prime Minister has avoided making a negative approach which is generally the bane of bad administrators. He has not talked to them about accountability, or invoking laws of punitive punishment for dereliction of duty. That is not needed because the audience is the cream of society and is more conscious of its responsibility. In short the Prime Minister has tried to remove the undesirable impression from the minds of the administrative authorities and in place of that infuse them with nationalist urge to do something good for the nation that has suffered under the iron heels of oligarchy of sorts.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel