Security on the menu

Though Delhi is no stranger to coteries and cliques of powerful babus as well as netas, the emergence of a new power cabal in the capital has set tongues wagging. This particular Band of Babus has been meeting discretely once a month over lunch to discuss national security issues, a subject that should normally douse hunger

pangs in lesser mortals. But the power lunches are apparently quite satisfying and so are, we presume, the deliberations of weighty matters over soup right through to the soufflé.
According to sources, Cabinet secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar, national security adviser Shiv Shankar Menon, home secretary G.K. Pillai, foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, Army Chief Gen. V.K. Singh, Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik, Admiral Nirmal Verma and defence secretary Pradeep Kumar have been meeting on a regular basis now for some time for these informal discussions. Babu observers trying to read off the menu are curious about those who’ve been excluded from this gathering of gourmets. But no doubt, the luncheon party has its reasons and we will be hearing more of these lunches soon from either insiders or those getting only crumbs.

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Buying time
Adrift on the highway could be an apt way to describe the goings-on at the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). When even a year-long search failed to produce an acceptable candidate for the post of chairman of NHAI, the government bought some more time by giving a three-month extension to Brajeshwar Singh.
Sources say that the ministry of road transport and highways failed to find a suitable successor for the NHAI chief’s position, despite shortlisting candidates not once but twice. It may also be a worry for minister Kamal Nath as to why, between July 2006 and December 2008, his nodal unit NHAI has had five chairmen! That might just also explain why the government’s search for Mr Singh’s successor seems to have run aground at the moment. Something will have to give pretty soon.

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Jungle tales
In recent months the government has made concerted efforts to focus on the long-ignored Indian Forest Service (IFS, including programmes to train forest babus, and sending mid-career officers abroad for study or research. But the government may not have envisioned the lurking perils. Reports about a Chinese woman who has complained of misbehaviour against a forest official from Madhya Pradesh attending a training programme in Canada cannot but cause concern in Delhi.
But apart from this aberration, the forest babus are feeling relieved that the government has decided, for now, not to set up separate departments for forests and wildlife as recommended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which would have split the service.