Performance pain
Wonder how this will sit with finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s renewed austerity drive. Mounting government expenditure has made Pranabda issue a circular on austerity to be observed by Central government ministries, a
throwback to the situation in 2008-09. But it’s not clear whether the austerity drive will now put a stop to performance review activities of ministries.
According to sources, the government has discovered that the review of performances of ministries is a rather expensive affair. Apparently, every meeting of the ad hoc task force set up for the purpose costs several lakhs of rupees. In fact, the government specially created a department for performance management in the Cabinet Secretariat to review ministries. Babu watchers are closely watching to see if Mr Mukherjee’s call for fiscal discipline will affect the department’s functioning. Any guesses?
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Tainted record
Against the backdrop of the eruption of public protests over rampant corruption, the Prime Minister’s Office disclosed in Parliament that since 2008 the CBI has nabbed 955 Central government babus for accepting bribes. Interestingly, it transpires, that the railways is the most corrupt department in the government, with as many as 156 of their babus in the CBI net, followed by officials of public sector banks and revenue and customs and Central excise departments.
Still, veteran babu watchers are sceptical about the PMO’s figures since some other obviously corrupt departments seem to have been given a clean chit by the CBI. Besides, these numbers only reflect the cases being investigated by the CBI, whose own image of conducting an independent inquiry is suspect in the eyes of many.
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Twiddling thumbs
Several senior positions in Maharashtra are vacant because of the government’s current go-slow policy. According to sources, on an average, babus have to wait for one to three months for a new assignment. Additional chief secretary J.S. Sahani, an IAS officer of the 1976 batch, has been waiting for his new assignment for more than a month, as is former Pune municipal commissioner Mahesh Zagde (1993 IAS batch) who was relieved on June 7. State pollution control board member-secretary Radheshyam Mopalwar, too, was relieved of his duties in June and is awaiting his next posting.
In such an atmosphere, resentment is palpable, especially when, by the government’s own admission, at least 50 senior posts are vacant.
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