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Harish Khare is a senior journalist, commentator and a research scholar)
Media reports that the Prime Minister's Office has declined to accommodate at least three ministers in the choice of their respective private secretaries should not come as a surprise. The PMO appears to be on a firm wicket. If the Ministry of Personnel has laid down a general policy that no all-India service officer should linger on in the national capital on deputation for more than ten years, then it is obvious that some of Prime Minister Modi's colleagues have not done the requisite due diligence in choosing their private secretaries; and it is just as well that the lapse has been pointed out to them.
One of the primary causes of sub-optimal governance is the preference of all-India officers to stay on in Delhi; quite often this is an understandable preference, especially among those who happen to have school-going children. Delhi's reasonably good educational establishments as also its first-rate medical facilities become a massive allurement to officers; and, therefore, they are quite prepared to cozy up to the political bosses, do their bidding, show them the short-cuts. This malady has to be curbed, and it can be curbed only at the beginning of a new government.
During the UPA decade, cabinet ministers were allowed to be the unquestioned and unquestionable lord and master of their departments. This was perhaps inherent in the coalition calculus. Cabinet Ministers were free not only to cherry-pick their private secretaries but also felt empowered enough to select senior officials-joint secretary and above-level IAS and IPS men and women. The arrangement did not always yield optimal satisfaction or ideal results. The ministers and his/her senior officials came to constitute a quasi-cabal, each ministry became a kingdom unto itself. The cause of co-ordination and synergy suffered.
The new government does not suffer from any coalition-related infirmity and it is natural - and, even desirable-that the pendulum should swing a bit. It was about time that the cabinet should be made to defer to advice from the Prime Minister's Office. The centrality of Narendra Modi in the 2014 Lok Sabha campaign and the BJP's clean majority are bound to steer the government's style of functioning towards a prime ministerial primacy.
Yet beyond a point, this cannot be a very reassuring format. Narendra Modi has experience of only one style of functioning-his long, successful and uninterrupted innings as chief minister of Gujarat, where he was able to insist on micro-managing almost every aspect of the government's performance. In fact, most chief ministers function precisely this way. In state capitals, there are virtually no voices of dissent, no speed-breakers. A Prime Minister, on the other hand, has to contend with a number of institutional veto-players.
Admittedly, a certain degree of prime ministerial overlordism can be a healthy antidote, especially to the vast bureaucracy that has got addicted to under-performing; nonetheless, it is always wise to remember that ministerial initiative is a vital ingredient in sound and sensible governance. Centralization of authority can become too much of a good thing. Collective wisdom and synergy are qualities that ought to be nurtured by the new regime.
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