Fear the farmer

Farmer suicides are treated only as a nuisance, but when cities are threatened, then only is Dilli worried about farmers on the rampage. Whether Mayawati’s reconciliatory moves will appease angry UP farmers whose land is being acquired for the Yamuna expressway project still remains to be seen, but the threat will be diffused quickly, is the current assessment.

Ever since Nandigram, few governments are keen to arm-twist farmers into giving up their land, but Mayawati obvio .....

Mission unaccomplished

In the end, the much-hyped “Meter Jam” campaign flopped in the three metros – Mumbai, Bangalore and Dilli – but the organisers aren’t ready to write it off either. Going by the response on Facebook and other social networking sites, the campaign to “teach auto and cab drivers a lesson” certainly helped to create awareness. Understandably, it made a greater splash in Mumbai where some commuters chose to ride a bus to work and back than take an auto or cab. In Bangalore, .....

Way to go

In one fell sweep, three Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers have been compulsorily retired for an unsatisfactory service record. This could well be the thin end of the wedge, if the trend catches on. Himachal Pradesh chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal has given marching orders to two senior IAS officers in the state - Dr Desh Deepak (1983 batch) and Vijender Kumar (1987 batch). The third IAS babu to be sent packing is Shalini Vashishth of the Tamil Nadu cadre.

According t .....

Way to go

In one fell sweep, three Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers have been compulsorily retired for an unsatisfactory service record. This could well be the thin end of the wedge, if the trend catches on. Himachal Pradesh chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal has given marching orders to two senior IAS officers in the state - Dr Desh Deepak (1983 batch) and Vijender Kumar (1987 batch). The third IAS babu to be sent packing is Shalini Vashishth of the Tamil Nadu cadre.

According t .....

Sibal’s babus

Human Resourcea Development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal’s zeal for reform is not limited to changing the examination system and educational institutions, where his efforts have elicited a mixed response. He is equally keen on reforming babus in his own ministry- where his attempts have hit a wall too.

Mr Sibal has now got the vigilance department of the HRD ministry to write to senior officials complaining about the low priority given to investigating corruption cases. Apparen .....

Wages of privilege

In the aftermath of the destructive Bharat Bandh, cynicism about political parties and parliamentarians is specially high. So every time MPs propose pay hikes for themselves, it’s the government that has to calibrate its response to make the salary hike more palatable to the public. They (the aadmis, I mean) quite rightly believe that MPs should work hard for their money, like everyone else. This time too, in accepting the recommendations of the joint parliamentary committe .....

A bill to reform

Many retired bureaucrats looking for reemployment with one or the regulatory authority may have reason to worry over Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s remarks that retiring secretaries should not become regulators of industries they had overseen while in service. Mr Ahluwalia, during a discussion on the bill for regulatory reform, suggested that licenses must be taken from ministers and given to regulators to ensure more accountability and transpare .....

Roaring forties?

Dilli is starved of First Family fodder but obsesses about every sliver that’s available. So the big question now is: what’s with Rahul Gandhi and his 40th birthday trip? Flying commercial seems a hazard for him now. Besides the obvious security snafus, he has had a double whammy this trip. First his Virgin Air flight gets tarmac marooned in Delhi for over an hour. And on his return, the invaluable local mobile gets flicked from his check-in bag (albeit from another trip). No .....

Common goal

Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar’s unprecedented one year extension put paid to the hopes of two batches of aspirants for the post. But it is an indication of the high comfort level Mr Chandrasekhar enjoys with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that a tweak in the rules ensured the Cabinet Secretary remains in saddle until June next year.

Sources say, the debate has now shifted to 2011 with murmurs about Pulok Chatterji, a 1974 batch Indian Administrative Service officer presen .....

A babu’s legacy

With the Ambani brothers no longer at war, will the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) breathe easy? It had received some unwelcome attention during the tenure of its former chief V.K. Sibal. Though Mr Sibal has now gone back, the spotlight has remained fixed on the organization, with the Central Vigilance Commission and the Central Bureau of Investigation continuing investigations into various allegations against Mr Sibal even now. One obvious fall-out is the growing r .....

Market player

Trend spotters in the corridors of power have noted an interesting correlation between markets and babus ensconced in certain ministries in the capital. Apparently, many senior bureaucrats like others more market-vulnerable, dedicatedly follow the business news channels in their offices when the markets are open for business. So sometimes a bureaucratic pronouncement is carefully calibrated for maximum media impact and market influence is a factor that decides its timing.

But .....

Spot of bother

Besides the soaring mercury, Dilli is also simmering about Canada denying visas to several retired and serving defence officers. The episode has created a serious diplomatic incident as inquiries have revealed many more such instances in the past when Indian citizens were refused visas on grounds that their organisations were “engaging in violence and subversive activities”.

With an agitated Home Ministry now threatening a tit-for-tat response and Foreign Secretary Nirupama .....

Promoting fair play

The government is keen to rectify an action which had resulted in several babus losing their chance for promotion. In the recent past at least 50 joint secretary-rank babus had to approach the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) after losing out on their promotion and being forced to work under junior officers because they did not have access to their annual confidential reports.

Sources say that the ministry for personnel, public grievances and pensions has now decid .....

Gill’s googly

Stoic Manmohan has his methods in his silence. The row triggered by Sports Minister M.S. Gill’s order on fixing the tenure of members of the various sports federations and the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) may have escalated to the Prime Minister’s Office but there is no give there. Having cast the first stone, Gill expected a high-level backlash from the high-flying sports czars whose wings he is trying to clip. Gill and Suresh Kalmadi, president of IOA and head of the Games .....

Emergency ward

The only thing surprising about the arrest of Ketan Desai, the supra-babu type president of the Medical Council of India (MCI) really was why the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took so long to arrest this man. Over the years information had been pouring in from all over to the CBI against Desai. He had monopolized all powers to approve new medical colleges through a set of babu-like inspectors who were only his men. Desai had everyone on his payroll. Luckily, the health .....

Second thought

Union Human resource development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal apparently has abandoned his rather reasoned opposition to the appointment of career babus to top positions in education. Until last year, the HRD minister was convinced that he preferred educationists in education over bureaucrats, but in recommending Avinash Dikshit, a 1986 batch officer of the rather off-beat Indian Defence Accounts Service, for appointment as commissioner of the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, he has .....

Staffing issues

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet decided to set a ceiling for the number of years officials can work on the personal staff of ministers. According to the new rule a ceiling of 10 years has been prescribed beyond which an official may not be permitted to be appointed in the personal staff of ministers, irrespective of level. This ceiling would be adhered to while processing cases for appointment of All India Service officers as personal secretaries or officers on speci .....

Nervous at the top

The UPA has had a good run so far in its second avatar. But, inevitably, as we have seen in the past, the Prime Minister’s long foreign trips often throw up local fracases. His healing type of no-comment very often douses flames before they become conflagrations.

Digvijay’s comments from America, while on a personal visit, on Chidambaram’s anti-Maoist policy was one such. It showed the Congress ranks in disarray just a day before and even during Parliament’s discussion .....

Bye to austerity?

The austerity drive that forced mantris and babus to give up comforts like executive class travel and five-star facilities is being wound up. Sources say that the government, buoyed no doubt by the receding recession, is now preparing to loosen its purse strings. Apparently, Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrashekar, has already informally briefed mantris about the coming amendments.

Most observers expect the government to withdraw at least some austerity measures soon. Certai .....

Agents of insurance

Delhi and specially Congresswallahs know that behind every successful man is a woman. This saying now holds true especially in the case of babus from Madhya Pradesh who were nabbed by income-tax sleuths recently. In many cases, the sleuths discovered, the wives of the babus were working as insurance agents, a useful occupation for investing “surplus” wealth of their husbands. These wives invested the ‘surplus’ from their husbands and their seniors, including Indian Adminis .....

A spot of grease

Sarthak Behuria, who retired as chairman of Indian Oil Corporation last month after being denied an extension, has now joined another state-owned joint venture, Petronet LNG, as an advisor, a post which did not exist until now. Naturally, the buzz surrounding the affair has not died down.

Informed sources say that Mr Behurai is the third head of a navratna PSU since 2006 to be disallowed from reaching the age of superannuation. Earlier, Subir Raha of Oil and Natural Gas Co .....

Babus prepare to clam up

Even as transparency and accountability make inroads into babudom, thanks to activists armed with the Right to Information Act (RTI), senior babus are now preparing to batten down the hatches to protect themselves from “frivolous” complaints. Apparently, Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar has set up a screening committee to look at all complaints against secretary-level babus to decide whether they are worthy of the government’s time and energy.

The move, some fe .....

Boom time for IPS

The Indian Police Service (IPS) officers have long vied for parity with their Indian Administrative Service (IAS) counterparts and the inter-service rivalry is one of the long-running battles in Indian babudom. However, the police babus may find they have less to complain about against their rival service in the present Manmohan Singh dispensation. According to babu-watchers, the United Progressive Alliance government has been particularly partial to IPS officers of the ret .....

No babus for Nilekani

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) may have got underway with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointing former Infosys chief Nandan Nilekani to head the ambitious project, but my favourite tribesmen apparently are less than enthused about it. According to sources, Mr Nilekani who had said he preferred to have Indian Administrative Service officers in positions of responsibility instead of denizens from the corporate world, as was widely expected from a .....

Blow hot, blow cold!

Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram is itching to implement the new internal security architecture that he’s worked out. But he has plenty to worry about on a shared resolve to fight the Naxal menace as there is a nascent challenge to his plans developing in Jharkhand. All signs emanating from the state seem to suggest that newly elected chief minister Shibu Soren has already gone soft on Maoists. What is causing anxiety in Dilli is that Jharkhand is in the heart of Naxal .....

Best laid plans…

After raising hopes, and much heat and dust, about hiring professional talent from outside the government sector, the government seems to be giving this particular idea a quiet burial. For when push comes to shove, especially while hiring heads of public sector undertakings or the regulatory institutions, the government has fallen back on the ubiquitous babu or ex-babu, as seen in some instances.

Considering that the idea was vigorously flourished when the Competition Co .....

Security and speculation

Speculation on the major move of the all-powerful National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan to a gubernatorial position refuses to die down. This has been a subject of discussion several times before. Mr Narayanan has been a powerful aide of the Prime Minister and there are some who worry that this move may enfeeble the well-balanced structure of the highest office in the land. Is the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) the victim, they ask.

But reports of sniper attacks .....

Clean-up time

Mumbaikars, you’d better not sweep this under the carpet or raise a holy stink! It’s time to come clean. The recently launched nationwide campaign on urban sanitation will place 441 class-I cities under the scanner of sanitary inspectors. They will be judged on the basis of their sanitation standards.

We Dilliwalas have a head start over the rest of the nation, since we hosting the Commonwealth Games next year. It wouldn’t do to assail the sensitive nervous systems of the ex .....

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

Tigers going extinct, is and ought to be our major national concern. And a visit to Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan restores one’s realization that conserving nature and preserving our nature needs to be the highest priority for many reasons.

Sighting a tiger in the wild, is a magnificent sight that you cannot forget. The Jaisal and Anjali Singh owned Sher Bagh with its luxurious tented accommodation and some of the most experienced forest drivers is cle .....

Even as Dilli and the rest of the country mulls over a recent World Bank report that many Indian cities will run dry by 2020, Mumbaikars already have got a whiff of what’s in store. The decision of the Maharashtra government of not providing water to new high rise buildings in Mumbai until 2012 puts a dampener on many real estate developers’ plans but Dilli hasn’t yet opted to go this way. According to the World Bank study, among Asian cities, Dilli and Chennai have the worst record in terms of .....