Many top bureaucrats are seduced by the opportunities thrown up thanks to their location in a room adjoining a ministerial chamber. The Prime Minister's decision not to retain UPA-era officers must be seen in this light
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s directive that no Private Secretary of a UPA Government’s Minister can serve as Private Secretary to a NDA Government Minister has to be seen in its broader context. It is not a question of a witch-hunt or a vendetta against those officers who worked closely with Ministers in the previous Government. In seeking to bring new faces into the personal staff of Union Ministers and appoint fresh talent as Private Secretaries, the NDA Government has, in fact, acted judiciously.
Private Secretaries are a very important breed in New Delhi. They are close advisers to Ministers and often read and navigate them through the bureaucratic maze, the systems of Government and the voluminous files and documents that form part of a Minister’s work day. This is a very important job, especially as many Ministers are relatively inexperienced. They may be long-standing and astute MPs and politicians but are not necessarily schooled in the ways of Government and in decoding bureaucratic jargon and systems.
Inevitably, Ministers come to depend a lot on Private Secretaries. Many Private Secretaries live up to this trust. They function admirably and professionally and at the end of a three-year tenure — the usual period of secondment to a Minister’s office, though this can be extended — go back to their parent cadre or ministry. The latter could be the Ministry of External Affairs (in case of a Foreign Service officer who has been designated a Private Secretary) or a State Government (in case of an IAS or IPS officer). Such rich experience, in a key ministerial office and relatively early in one’s career, can be very useful and educative for a relatively young civil servant.
Unfortunately, some Private Secretaries stop seeing their role as executive assistants to Ministers as merely a professional one. A section of them dons a quasi-political cloak. In the hot-house atmosphere of New Delhi they quickly become gate-keepers to Ministers and use this access for their own purposes.
In a few cases, Private Secretaries — in conjunction with the Minister or a member of the Minister’s family or even the Secretary of the concerned ministry — have been implicated in corruption scandals. In other cases, an upright Secretary has been thwarted by his Minister’s Private Secretary. Though much junior in the civil service to a secretary-level officer, the Private Secretary uses his proximity to the Minister to sabotage the Secretary’s initiatives and compromise the ministry’s functioning.
All of the examples cited above have actually happened in recent years. In one egregious case, an officer-on-special-duty in the office of a former, UPA-era External Affairs Minister took extraordinary interest in which companies were given routine contracts by the External Affairs Ministry and which agencies were shortlisted by Indian missions abroad to help with the outsourcing of visa application processing. This OSD began to make wild charges against first-rate and completely honest Foreign Service officers, including Ambassadors, who came in his way.
Of course, not all Private Secretaries do things in this manner. Many are straightforward, finish their assignment in the Minister’s office and move on without any hint of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, it is also a regrettable reality that other Private Secretaries are completely seduced by the trappings of power, by the opportunities thrown up thanks to their location in a room that adjoins a ministerial chamber. They develop vested interests and rather than going back to their parent States, they try and get another job with another Minister, staying on the Private Secretary track for years to come. At the end of it, they can hope for their most recent boss to push to get them a dream posting or they may benefit by other means, or both.
This explains why, each time there is a change in Government, there is hectic lobbying by a certain type of civil servant for Private Secretary-level posts. Some of them meet incoming Ministers — using personal connections, caste and community networks, even recommendations from other politicians or colleagues of the Minister — and offer to work as a Private Secretary for the new Minister. They argue they are already experienced and schooled in the ways of the Government. Especially in the case of first-time or unsure Ministers, the temptation to have a Private Secretary who knows the corridors of power is strong. As such, the Private Secretary just stays on.
This practice has created a new cadre of officers. These are not civil servants in the States and neither are they Additional Secretaries or Secretaries who have graduated from State Governments to the Union Government and have permanently moved to New Delhi. These are younger officers who have short-circuited the system, cut themselves off from their States and become part of the New Delhi ecosystem not for a three or four-year period but for years and years to come — simply by presenting themselves as professional Private Secretaries. As such, Ministers come and go but a jaded and cynical Private Secretary culture continues in the big Government buildings of the national capital.
It is this culture Mr Modi has challenged by directing that no Private Secretary of an immediate-past Minister can simply sit put by becoming the Private Secretary of a new Minister as well. Since the UPA Government gave way to the NDA Government on May 16, what this means is no UPA-era Private Secretary can become an NDA Government Private Secretary. Yet, this is not a party or coalition specific idea. Should the BJP-led NDA be re-elected in 2019, it would be expected that Private Secretaries who served in the first term would need to move away and allow new officers to come in for the same role in a Minister’s second term in office.
Even if one presumes all Private Secretaries are absolutely honest, it stands to reason that a Private Secretary should be replaced after about three years. This will ensure cabals are not formed and more and more young or middle-level officers are given the opportunity to work in a Minister’s office, and absorb lessons in how the Union Government functions.
On their part, such people will bring fresh eyes to a ministry and its mission and in a sense renew the Union Government. Given this, Mr Modi’s decision not to retain veteran Private Secretaries but find new ones is a very welcome one.
malikashok@gmail.com