When Narendra Modi took over the reins of the Central government a month ago, his fans feared and his foes hoped that the villager from Gujarat, who had made his past of selling tea his passport to power, may soon trip on the many traps in Delhi. Therefore, the message was to friends and foes alike, when Mr. Modi said on the completion of his first month: “….some people believed that I would take at least a year or even two to learn the intricacies of the working of the Central government. Fortunately, a month later that thought does not exist any longer in my mind. My confidence and determination has increased tremendously…”
Mr. Modi’s focus in the first month has been on putting in place systems that are expected to streamline and hasten decision-making in the government. To that end, he has made it clear that he would restore confidence in the bureaucracy, entrust senior officials with taking decisions and also back them in the process. “After one month, two things are clear. One, this government is not run by racketeers. Two, there is a sense of urgency in all arms of the government,” says a senior Cabinet Minister.
Open to suggestionsMr. Modi has been dealing with department secretaries directly and has also offered an open platform for anyone to write to the PM with suggestions for improving governance. Within the first ten days in office, Mr. Modi met the Secretaries of all government Ministries and departments and told them what he expected. Senior government officials were asked what they would like their departments to achieve, what went wrong in the past and what they could have done differently if allowed to do so. It was the first time in eight years that a Prime Minister had met all the Secretaries.
“It is bureaucracy that plays a key role in implementing the policies of the government and the new Prime Minister realises this,” a senior government official said. Recalling the presentation made to the Prime Minister, one of the Secretaries said that he had prepared a thick volume of slides but was told to cut it to 10 or 12.
A Union Minister said that the presentations to Mr. Modi lasted nearly nine hours, which was split into two morning sessions. “The Prime Minister came up with very out-of-the box queries. Whether phone companies could be persuaded to text messages on pulse polio campaign and how services of post offices could be improved and expanded,” the Minister said.
Autonomy for bureaucratsMr. Modi has also marked as a priority more room for bureaucrats to function with predictability of tenure and autonomy to innovate — something that he has always pointed out as the reason for Gujarat’s efficiency — and Ministers are falling in line.
The Prime Minister tightly controls the selection of bureaucrats, including the personal staff of Ministers. He barred Ministers from inducting officials who had served with UPA Ministers on their personal staff, forcing even Home Minister Rajnath Singh to give up on his favourite as private secretary. The PM has also barred relatives of Ministers from personal staff.
New work cultureAll this has led to both enthusiasm and disquiet in the bureaucracy. A middle-level all-India service officer who was appointed as Additional P.S. to a Minister said there “is a lot of enthusiasm among young and middle-level officers.” He said that bureaucrats felt that they had come out of an era of “policy paralysis” and procrastination.
“Certainly, there is a new work culture in place among the Ministers and bureaucracy,” he observed. But a joint secretary in a crucial Ministry where the government wants to fast track decisions said: “We are worried that there will be pressure on us to speed up, ignoring proper procedure.” A Union Minister admitted noticing such feelings among the officials. “With an overenthusiastic CAG around, getting the officials to take decisions is no easy task and we are realising it,” the Minister said.
In its day-to-day functioning, dynamism is visible in the government — for instance in the way it responded to the rail accident in Bihar or the gas pipeline burst in Andhra Pradesh. Rail officials from Patna left for the accident site within 15 minutes and within hours the Rail Minister too reached the site. Just hours after he heard of the pipeline burst, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan left for the accident site in Andhra Pradesh.
That apart, the era when Ministers ruled their Ministries with unchallenged authority is absolutely over. The UPA government had more than 80 Groups of Ministers at one time to resolve issues that were trapped in inter-ministerial wrangles. Mr. Modi has scrapped the mechanism of Group of Ministers and Empowered Groups of Ministers altogether. “After dismantling the Empowered Groups of Ministers, has he created disempowered Ministers,” asked Congress spokesperson and MP Shashi Tharoor, a sentiment that many ministerial colleagues of Mr. Modi share, though they do not publicly articulate it.
Foreign policy, defence and internal security are areas that the PM particularly wants to be directly involved in. He has already been given detailed briefings by the chiefs of the Army, Navy and the Air Force as well as the Defence Secretary.
He has asked the three Service chiefs and the Defence Ministry to furnish a list of their priorities on modernisation and requirements of weapons and other equipment. Mr. Modi also plans to meet the Service chiefs once a month for regular briefings on the security scenario.
Connecting with StatesMr. Modi is perhaps conscious of the flipside of being the centre of all authority, and his attempts to engage with State governments and Chief Ministers could be aimed at hedging the risks. Inflation management is an urgent issue that requires complete support of the Chief Ministers. Mr. Modi has directed his office that any request from a State government for assistance should not be kept pending. He wants senior PMO bureaucrats to regularly meet representatives from the States.
On balance, Mr. Modi’s moves and manoeuvres in the first month have kept hopes alive for both friends and foes. The first find enough reasons to think that he will pull it off; the second thinks this model is unsustainable.
