Practice, don’t preach

Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Wajahat Habibullah is moving on to a World Bank assignment next month and will perform the same job there, along the lines of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. But he is leaving the commission with some unresolved issues. Credibility is one issue which has come to the fore, ironically through an RTI inquiry by an activist.

Apparently, the information commissioners do not practice what they preach. Even as the transparency watchdog directs ministers and babus to make their assets public, the commissioners themselves are refusing to divulge the list of their assets. According to sources, only Shailesh Gandhi has made his list of assets public so far. Clearly, the disclosure issue indicates an internal rift within the commission which may now probably be resolved only by Mr Habibullah’s successor.

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Paying the price
It is rare for babus, especially those in the upper echelons of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), to talk out of turn, especially to the media. But when they do, retribution is quick. RBI deputy governor K.C. Chakrabarty has paid the price for speaking his mind by being stripped of all his key portfolios. Clearly, criticising his bank’s stance on monetary policy is no way to win accolades or friends.
Babu-watchers say Mr Chakrabarty has a reputation as a “motor-mouth”. As chairman of Punjab National Bank he did not hesitate to criticise even the finance ministry. He moved to the RBI last year as deputy governor but given his current “pariah” status with the powers that be, he’ll be rooting around in lowly assignments for a while. Maybe that’ll teach babus to look before they speak!

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Successor search
Irrespective of the fact that she has five more months as foreign secretary, ministry of external affairs (MEA) mandarins are already vying for Nirupama Rao’s slot. Even rumours that the government may give an extension to Ms Rao, a la Cabinet secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar, has not deterred these hopefuls. Among the mandarins who’ve thrown their hat into the ring, sources name Ranjan Mathai, a 1974 Indian Foreign Service batch officer and India’s current envoy to France, Alok Prasad, the deputy national security adviser, Hardeep Puri, the permanent envoy to UN, Nalin Surie, the high commissioner to UK, and Sharat Sabharwal, the high commissioner to Pakistan. Another name doing the rounds is that of Meera Shankar, currently India’s ambassador in Washington, D.C., who has also done a stint at the Prime Minister’s Office.
In the past, however, apparently only one foreign secretary has managed to get an extension. But these are early days and any prediction about Ms Rao’s future would be premature.