The Planning Commission, that is home to bureaucrats and more, is now a kind of mammoth relic of the Nehruvian era. But it is gearing up for a major revamp to be accomplished over the next couple of years. And it couldn’t happen sooner — for its critics, and there seem to be many, have declared an open season for lambasting the planning panel and its deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia for being unacquainted with the ground realities.
Road transport minister Kamal Nath initiated the most recent charge by accusing the panel of being just an “armchair adviser”. Senior Congress leader Anil Shastri too joined the chorus and now even food secretary Alka Sirohi has taken on Dr Ahluwalia on the issue of using information technology to reform the public distribution system.
The tirade against Dr Ahluwalia is, of course, being seen as an assault on the institution itself. The proposed revamp, as envisioned by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, includes a change in nomenclature — to the Systems Reform Commission. Arun Maira, formerly with Boston Consulting Group and now a Planning Commission member, has been assigned to restructure the commission into a larger network with think-tanks producing thought papers at a faster pace and communicating more lucidly with polity.
But that is in the future. Meantime critics are having a field day at Dr Ahluwalia’s expense and babus are taking shelter on both sides.
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Plugging holes
The northeast has long been an anathema for babus who exploit every rule in the book to avoid serving in the region. Babus usually cite insurgency, lack of good educational facilities and promotional opportunities for not wishing to serve in these states. But the new rules affect Union Territory cadre officers, thereby also affecting Delhi babus. Home minister P. Chidambaram has decided to tighten the rules of transfer for Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Police Service officers of the Assam, Goa and Mizoram (AGMU) cadre to ensure that these babus serve their mandatory tenures in their parent states.
According to sources, IAS officers entitled to hold senior time-scale posts would serve only six years in Delhi, five years in hard areas such as Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram and the remaining three of the 14 years in category B territories such as Goa, Chandigarh and Puducherry. The first babus on target obviously are those who have been in Delhi for long on deputation. So we can expect some large-scale movement of babus very soon.
Links:
[1] http://archive.asianage.com/content/dilip-cherian
