(Image source from: Have a groundbreaking idea E-mail Modi})
For long, the country has had leaders who have been inaccessible and ineffectual and a slave to archaic rules of governance. The Secretaries of the Ministries and senior officers of the Departments of the Government of India were looked down as second fiddle, and were barely heard or given any importance in the workings of the government. But all that is to change now.
Accustomed to senior civil servants and ministers pushing aside their ideas, the mid-level babus have finally found a willing audience in Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi's initiative to simplify and streamline the administrative rules and procedures by making them people-friendly and putting a freewheeling interaction in place by knocking down a few barriers and involving bureaucracy seems to be paying off.
Keeping up on his agenda of “minimum government and maximum governance,” Modi had declared that bureaucrats will be key to the functioning of the government. Doing away with the archaic rules and procedures that barred the secretaries and other mid-level bureaucrats from expressing their free, frank and innovative flow of ideas and thoughts fearlessly, the new PM of India has opened direct line of communication for all officials, encouraging them to approach him directly with their inputs and ideas.
As senior bureaucrat Amitabh Kant, an IAS officer who has walked down various corridors of power and served several governments and prime minister, says that the meeting with Modi was unlike anything he had witnessed in the long three decades of his career.
After all, Modi has been pulling out one after another surprise after being anointed the PM of India — from extending invitation to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to asking BJP MPs to stop touching the feet of party leaders to opening direct lines of communication for the secretaries of the state — Modi is ushering in unexpected new but positive changes in the government.
Opening gateways of communication and making himself accessible to the babus, he told the officials that they can approach him any day, anytime directly over phone or email — an unusual thing in a protocol-heavy bureaucratic set-up in Delhi's corridors.
The move, however, raises several important questions like — Would it diminish the ministers' clout over their own babus if a bridge is built directly to the PM? Will one such mechanism lead to over-centralization of power as smarter officials may seize the moment and toe the line which the PM?
Notwithstanding such doubts, Modi's early interaction with bureaucracy signals that the prime minister is serious about engineering changes in India's babudom.
Being the chief minister of Gujarat for nearly 13 years, Modi's formula of betting big on bureaucrats more than ministers have reaped rich dividends, fast-tracked decision-making and speedy implementation of big-ticket projects as well as helped the state emerge as a frontrunner among the most developed states in the country.
Empowering bureaucrats, at the risk of encroaching his ministers' domains, could be the hallmark of the Modi sarkar in the national capital as well. That said, it would be a ball and chain for the new government to crack the policy logjam seen in the last two years of the UPA-II regime, unless the top bureaucrats willingly take risks without worrying about the future.
Just recently, a mid-level officer in infrastructure ministry mailed the PM sharing ideas on how to develop Indian cities to cater to the growing population.
Accustomed to getting his out-of-the-box ideas being shot down by his superior officials, the officer was thrilled to receive a response from the PM in mere three days.
Modi not only lauded his idea, but also said ensured that it would discussed extensively in the next meeting.
“I never thought that the PM would respond. It’s so motivating to know that you have a PM who is involved with your work and you can reach him directly if you have some innovative suggestion,” said the officer who spoke on conditions of anonymity.
But he is not the only lucky one. Several other mid-ranking officials across ministries have or were planning to email him their ideas and inputs as well.
Not just that, a group of officials are also planning to present their grievances to Modi and let him know how the government had been unfair to them.
While bringing the babus to the center-stage of his governance won't be a cakewalk for the new Prime Minister, given the visionary he is, we can't help but hope that the transparency and accountability is his government will usher in a new dawn for the country. Fingers-crossed!
AW: Suchorita Choudhury
