Nervous babus

Nemesis is catching up with tainted babus. Former chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh Neera Yadav, now out on bail, did go to jail for a land allotment scam, while several senior officials of the telecom ministry linked to A. Raja are facing Central Bureau of Investigation heat in the 2G scam. They include former telecom secretary Siddharth Behuria, K. Sridhar, A.K. Srivastava and R.K. Chandola.

Though babus have every reason to be nervous, it may still be early days to state that we are witnessing the dawn of a new era of accountability in the government. The reputation of the civil services, as well as of the political class, is plumbing new depths. Remember, it took seven years before Ms Yadav got her comeuppance. It may take as long, if not longer, to bring the culprits in the 2G and other scams to justice, if ever.

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Successor woes
J&K chief secretary, Sham Singh Kapur, slated to retire next month, may well get an extension, since the state government hasn’t found a successor. Naveed Masood, a 1977 batch Union Territory cadre officer, who was to replace Mr Kapur, has turned down the offer for untold reasons. Sources say that the state government has a problem placing officials at senior positions.
Besides Mr Kapur, at least two senior babus — S.M. Sahni and Samuel Verghese — are on the verge of retirement. Apparently the government has only two babus belonging to the 1977 batch — Madhav Lal and Parvez Dewan — to consider for the top post. A desperate government is now considering recalling Mr Dewan, who is on study leave, but no decision has been taken so far.

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Tweeting blues
In these times of WikiLeaks, cyber attacks and phone-tapping, governments are in shutdown mode. Early this year the Indian government had barred babus from using their private email accounts and social media networks for official work. Nevertheless, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) clearly wants to take the debate on foreign policy public.
Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao addressed a seminar on public diplomacy organised by her ministry’s public diplomacy division in the capital recently. Ms Rao wants the usually restrained MEA babus to use social networking tools such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and interact with the public and media in “real time” to fill “information vacuums”. The public diplomacy division under joint secretary Navdeep Suri is already countering negative information and stereotypes about India’s diplomatic efforts using the Internet. Hopefully, the MEA initiative should herald a change in attitude in other ministries as well.