As expected, the Union government on Saturday announced T.V. Somanathan as the Cabinet Secretary-designate by appointing him as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in the Cabinet Secretariat, who will take over India’s top bureaucratic position from August 30 when incumbent Rajiv Gauba’s extended tenure ends.
A 1987-batch IAS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre, the veteran bureaucrat has been moved from the Ministry of Finance where he is Secretary, Expenditure and designated as Finance Secretary, a designation given to the senior-most officer among all five secretaries in the ministry, to the Cabinet Secretariat for two years.
This old-style bureaucrat, who prefers to be low profile, holds a PhD in Economics and has vast experience of working in key positions in the State as well as at the Centre. He was seen as the natural choice for the government to appoint him as the Cabinet Secretary, a top bureaucratic position serving as the nerve centre of central administration.
“There was nobody better than him to occupy the top post at the Centre,” remarked a secretary-level officer who described the appointment as an “inspired choice”.
Dr. Somanathan worked at the State-level in Tamil Nadu in the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) as well as Joint Secretary and Additional Secretary level in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Finance, Commissioner of Commercial Taxes and Chief of Chennai Metro Rail project where he had achieved the financial closure of the ambitious project and also at multiple levels in the World Bank including as Director between 2011-2015.
Just less than a decade of his career in civil service, he had joined the World Bank, Washington through the Young Professionals Program, as Financial Economist in the East Asia & Pacific Regional Vice Presidency in 1996 and in 2000, he had become one of the Bank’s youngest Sector Managers when he was appointed Manager of the Budget Policy Group.
Again in 2011, the World Bank had sought his services, and he was deputed to serve as Director from 2011 to 2015.
Very few IAS officers have an illustrated curriculum vitae (CV) as Dr. Somanathan because besides being a top ranker in the civil services, he was 2nd ranker in 1987 batch, and is a qualified chartered accountant (CA), cost accountant, and company secretary, who has prepared Budgets in the State as well as at the Centre and as a prolific writer, he has published dozens of papers and articles on economics in journals and newspapers on finance and public policy, and is the author of two books as well as chapters in several other books.
“This is an excellent and inspired appointment. T.V. Somanathan is a terrific officer and brilliant scholar and thinker in his own right. His published works on the State and the civil services is a testament to that,” said Milan Vaishnav, Director of the South Asia Program at the leading think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who writes on civil services of India.
At the centre, he steered the economy at a critical juncture during and post pandemic when the centre’s revenues were hit due to the pandemic. He was appointed as Expenditure Secretary in December 2019 and some of the measures he initiated included enforcing expenditure curbs on various ministries and departments across the Union government during the pandemic.
Moreover, he also played a leading role in implementing flagship schemes such as ‘PM Gareeb Kalyan’ and ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’, which were announced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In fact, given his formidable background in economics and his expertise in public finances and public policy, in Mumbai, he was seen as the frontrunner successor of Shakti Kanta Das as RBI Governor later this year while in Delhi, he was seen frontrunner to be the Cabinet Secretary, a rare talent recognition for any bureaucrat. Finally, Delhi prevailed, and he is now out of contention to succeed his senior bureaucrat from Tamil Nadu cadre who is helming the central bank since 2018.
“I will say his appointment is an excellent choice because he is a very straight forward and professional kind of bureaucrat who will never get into any groupism or politicking and would meticulously focus on his job and deliver it,” a serving secretary in the Union government told The Hindu.
He added that in current circumstances, there are very few bureaucrats who can politely say no for certain things to his or her minister and TVS, as he is known among his pals, would probably top the list in such a category.
