With Modi sarkar, bureaucracy gets ready for a new innings

While the spotlight has firmly been on who Narendra Modi will pick to be a part of his cabinet, senior bureaucrats in Delhi are also closely tracking developments and have already begun to prepare for a complete change in their functioning.

Bureaucrats at the North and South Block are already feeling the effects of the incoming Modi government. According to a report in Economic Times , all secretaries were asked to cancel their holiday plans for now.

The report quotes an official as saying, “I have been working at the Centre for six years now, but haven’t seen such a diktat yet. Even when Parliament was rocked by debates on missing coal allocation files or the economy’s slowdown worsened over the past year, the officials in charge of these ministries would travel abroad or outside Delhi without any fuss.”

Among some senior bureaucrats, Modi’s experience as CM of Gujarat for three terms is also seen as a positive factor and they believe that Modi will take come in, take charge, and set the ball rolling soon.

Perhaps indicative of this, is a recent tweet by Amitabh Kant, secretary for Industrial Policy & Promotion at the government of India.

He tweeted: “Every person is waiting for the change, some in fear and some in hope.We are in hope.” India: Modi’s moment.”

Of course not all share this sentiment and some senior bureaucrats are worried that they could be shunted out for being too close to UPA government or worse still face the heat from the coming government.

The bureaucrats also may not need to worry about their ministerial bosses. As Modi’s cabinet of ministers is concerned, it might not play as important a role, at least not where policy creation is concerned.

As Firstpost ’s Dhiraj Nayyar had noted, in Modi’s case his ministers might not really matter given he’s expected to have  very strong PMO with key persons driving policies on the economy, foreign policy and national security.

Under Modi the PMO, which could be one of the strongest in recent times, is expected to flesh out policy and then hand it over formally to the Cabinet Ministers concerned for implementation.

As Nayyar noted, all big ideas will flow from the PMO which will have the strongest secretariat. This may explains why bureaucrats are doing all they can to make sure that they are on the right side of the new government.