Na tired, Na retired How the Modi government uses the Vajpayee line to keep retired IAS officers

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New Delhi: Last month, the Modi government re-employed two retired IAS officers as advisers to the all-powerful Prime Minister's Office (PMO). It was not the first, and it was probably not the last.

Bhaskar Khulbe and Amarjeet Sinha, both IAS officers from the 1983 batch who recently retired were rehired on a contractual basis and taking into account the rank of secretary. While Khulbe was already serving in the PMO, Sinha was secretary to the ministry of rural development from 2016 to 2019.

With these extensions, Khulbe and Sinha have joined a long list of trusted lieutenants of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who continue to remain in active governance, especially in the powerful and Centralized PMO, for several years despite outgoing.

Ferocious loyalty, a clear understanding of the Prime Minister's operating style, alignment with his vision of New India, centralization of power, continuity and emphasis on schema-based governance are expected come together at contribute to the Prime Minister's excessive dependence on an army of retired civil servants, even though the military sometimes feels alienated or sidelined.

While the appointment of retired officers selected as advisers to the Prime Minister's Office or other offices is not new either under the government of the UPA, retired officers such as Pulok Chatterji and TK Nair were appointed as advisers to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, most of the officers who spoke to ThePrint on condition of anonymity said that the frequency of these appointments office had clearly increased under the Modi government.

From India's economic policy to foreign policy, from the country's main office (PMO) to its first think tank (Niti Aayog), cultural organizations to the board of directors of Indian Railways ( Railway Board), from the Indias Apex Security Council (NSCS) to the country's ambitious health mission (Ayushman Bharat) India under Modi is effectively led by a carefully chosen set of officers retired. We know that at least a dozen of these key appointments have been made since Modi became Prime Minister in 2014.

Nripendra Misra, former civil servant

Just a few weeks before Khulbe and Sinha were appointed advisers, Nripendra Misra, a retired IAS officer, who was until last year considered the country's most powerful civil servant in his Prime Minister’s principal secretary, was brought down by the government.

Misra was appointed the head of the Ram temple construction committee Janmabhoomi Tirth Kshetra Trust the body being responsible for the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, which for years has been the cornerstone of the ideological foundations of the BJP-RSS.

Just a few days ago, Misra was appointed the Chairman of the Executive Council of the Nehru Memorial Museum.

In an unprecedented move, Misra, who originally retired from the IAS in 2004, was appointed to government last year by the government. However, months later, he resigned, leaving room for another of the Prime Minister's retired lieutenants to take over.

P.K. Mishra the most powerful officer in the country

P.K. Mishra, who originally retired in 2008, has been with Modo PMO since 2014 as additional prime secretary to the Prime Minister. He too obtained the rank of member of the cabinet in 2019.

After Misra's withdrawal, P.K. Mishra took over as PM's principal secretary making him the most powerful official in the country 12 years after his official retirement from the civil service.

P.K. Sinha 3 extensions and still as strong

Modi called on another retired IAS officer, P.K. Sinha, to PMO as his main advisor, a position specially created for him in 2019.

Sinha, an IAS officer from 1977, was granted three extensions by the Modi government when he served as secretary to the cabinet to a position he held from 2015 to 2019, making him the oldest cabinet secretary in history.

Ajit Doval the National Security Czar

In addition to Misra, Mishra, Sinhas and Khulbe, another extremely powerful official in the Prime Minister's Office is national security adviser Ajit Doval, a former IPS officer.

In 2018, Doval became the de jure head of national security architecture when the government changed the structure of the strategic policy group at the first level and at the core of the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) to make Doval its chief instead of the secretary of the firm.

Like his head, Doval has been empowered to summon secretaries from any ministry to the SPG meeting, signaling a formal change in national security decision-making in India from the cabinet secretariat at the NSCS.

Last year, the Modi government also gave Doval a cabinet rank, making it the first NSA in India to match ministers.

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Centralization of power in the PMO

The officers who spoke to ThePrint said there was a clear reason for these extensions of the centralization of power in a carefully selected secretariat at the CPM.

There was a time when departments and ministers enjoyed considerable autonomy in decision-making With the arrival of Modi, this fundamentally changed, said a retired officer who served as secretary in two ministries under Modi.

When all decisions are made within the PMO, you want to make sure that they are executed by a group of selected and trusted officers.

If we look at the trend of extensions of some officers simultaneously with the erosion of the autonomy of other officers in office, the logic becomes clear, said the officer. The PM trusts only very few officers, not the entire bureaucratic system, so he wants to centralize the powers of the entire bureaucratic system in the hands of these officers even though they have officially retired.

TR Raghunandan, a retired IAS officer and a comrade in the lot from Khulbe and Sinha, said that if the re-employment of retired officers is indeed a prerogative of the government of the day, and is not a trend unique to the Modi government, it does reflect some insecurity.

This suggests that you want to stick with a small group of people who pose no threat to your ideology and will not ask questions, he said. This is a consequence of the distance from the bureaucratic system as a whole.

A senior government official, who did not want to be named, said that very few officers could even accommodate the Prime Minister's relentless operating style.

The PM can be very ruthless when it comes to monitoring execution. Not everyone can work this way, said the officer. This is why you see that messages from the PM to secretaries from other departments can be harsh, but those from the PMO are usually always synchronized with the PM.

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Reward performance and nod to schema-based governance

Amarjeet Sinha man who ran a rural housing program

Although loyalty and personal relationships with officers are crucial in extensions, Modi is also known for rewarding performance with extended terms.

Take Amarjeet Sinha, for example. As secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development for four years under the Modi government, Sinha oversaw the execution of key programs like the MGNREGA and the Modis rural pet housing program, the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana. He paid the BJP's rich electoral dividends in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The PM’s governance style was also concerned with the idea of ​​domain expertise. To encourage expertise in the field, the PM not only attempted to institutionalize the lateral entry into the public service, but also called on two former officials who had requested the voluntary retirement of the & # 39; IAS many years ago to lead its pet programs.

Parameswaran Iyer and Indu Bhushan feed PM's pet plans

While Modi brought in Parameswaran Iyer as secretary of the drinking water and sanitation department in 2016, he appointed Indu Bhushan as CEO of the national health protection mission. Ayushman Bharat in 2018.

As secretary, Iyer propelled the Prime Minister's Swachh Bharat pet mission project to rural India, and was also subsequently tasked with Jal Jeevan mission, another project Modi of great power.

Iyer and Bhushan have both been brought back to government to run government pet programs, although they have sought to voluntarily withdraw from service, given their extensive background in their respective fields.

But even in their case, the officers' retirement rules will not apply as they are not technically on duty, said the officer who is still on duty.

The PM's message is that if you know how to pay, the bureaucratic rules of voluntary or regular retirement will not apply to you.

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Reforms in mind

Amitabh Kant push reforms through Niti Aayog

Over the years, NITI Aayog has become the most powerful and important avenue for economic, administrative and governance reform in the country.

Reforms such as doubling the income of farmers, providing a model law for renting agricultural land to states, how to achieve Swachh Bharat, popularizing digital payments among MSMEs, reforming the Medical education, the introduction of Ayushman Bharat, the reform of the Medical Council of India, the privatization of the railways, the identification of the need for the strategic sale of Air India, lateral entry into the public service has all been conceptualized by or led by NITI Aayog.

While the NITI Aayog has become the nucleus of all Modi government reforms, it is chaired by Amitabh Kant, another retired IAS officer. In 2019, he was considering a two-year extension as CEO.

Its extension reflects two things, one of which he fully enjoys the confidence of the Prime Minister, and two that the Prime Minister greatly appreciates continuity in policy making, said a senior NITI official at Aayog, who recently retired.

While Kant is neither an economist nor a public policy expert, the fact that he has continued in this position for so long shows that the PM wants people who can execute his vision, added the manager.

S. Jaishankar an unprecedented meeting

Foreign policy is another area in which Modi has sought to push reform through a handpicked retired civil servant. Shortly after his return to power with a massive mandate in 2019, Modi shocked many by appointing, in an unprecedented manner, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs S. Jaishankar as Minister of External Affairs.

Since his appointment, Jaishankar has facilitated reforms to the very functioning of the Foreign Office of India. While on the one hand, Jaishankar has initiated a fundamental restructuring of the Ministry of External Affairs to make it more in tune with the needs of Indian foreign policy today, on the other hand, unlike before , he regularly addresses foreign audiences, unequivocally articulating a more skilful vision of India and its interests in the world.

Vinod Kumar Yadav official to the CEO

Another extension that underscores the Prime Minister's focus on reform is that of the chairman of the railway commission.

In January the government granted Vinod Kumar Yadav a one-year extension as chairman of the Railway Commission at a time when the government announced radical reforms in rail services.

Yadav, who is expected to be the first CEO of the Railway Council, will oversee key rail reforms such as cutting the council, amalgamating its framework and increasing privatization among others.

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Other key events

Shaktikanta Das "The Modi Demonetization Man"

The government has appointed another retired IAS officer, Shaktikanta Das, as governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), a position that no retired government official had held. over the past five years.

This was done after two RBI governors, Raghuram Rajan and Urjit Patel, left the country's central bank on an informal note.

As Secretary for Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Finance, Das would have led the Modi government's secret demonetization mission, and later defended the controversial decision even though there was a deafening silence from RBI Governor Patel on the matter at the time.

Since his appointment, Das has aimed to reduce friction between the country's finance ministry and the country's central bank over the contentious issue of interest rates.

Bipin Rawat India's first CDS

This trend has even spread to the Indian military.

Last year, in one of the biggest military reforms in the country, the Modi government created the post of Chief of the Defense Staff (CDS), in order to converge the functioning of the Indian army, navy and air force. The government appointed the then serving army chief, General Bipin Rawat, to the post the day before his retirement.

Raghvendra Singh from culture to history

This year, the government has once again departed from standard practice and appointed former culture secretary and retired IAS officer Raghvendra Singh as director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML).

It comes at a time when the government is seeking to quickly step up work on its controversial Prime Minister's museum project.

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Bending rules

In several of these appointments, the Modi government has bypassed existing rules to ensure that those it wants to keep in government beyond their official retirement can continue without encountering legal obstacles.

In 2014, the Modi government amended the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) law, which explicitly prohibited a president from being employed by the government after performing this function overnight to ensure that Nripendra Misra, who served as president, could be employed in the government.

Then in 2019, to keep P.K. Sinha, an All India Service Rule, which says that the government cannot grant an extension to a secretary to the cabinet beyond four years, was amended.

In general, government rules do not allow extensions without due process or justification.

According to the rules of the Personnel and Training Department (DoPT), no proposal to extend service / re-employment beyond the retirement age should normally be considered.

In addition, the rules state that the extension of service / re-employment can only be justified in very rare and exceptional circumstances.

Extensions can only be justified when other officers are not mature enough for the position or the officer in question is of exceptional merit. These two conditions must be sufficiently established for an extension to be granted to an outgoing officer.

But rather than highlighting the lack of respect governments give to conventions, these rules and their routine circumvention highlight their own redundancy and the growing need for reforms in public services, explains Nitin Pai, co-founder and director of Takshashila Institution, a center for research in public policy.

Such cases highlight the fact that the rules that governed public services in the 1960s cannot govern them in 2020, he said.

One cannot escape the fact that public services need to reform at a time when people are living longer, when governance needs in-depth expertise that cannot be obtained in a year or a mandate. a year and a half, when talented foreigners can be brought in to carry out certain projects.

Fundamental changes in governance structures

However, the PM's penchant for extensions, the creation of new posts for certain officers and the rise of retired officers to the rank of cabinet leads to fundamental changes in long-standing governance structures in the country, say the officers.

Nripendra Misra, PK The ascents of Mishra and Ajit Doval to the rank of cabinet, for example, brought for the first time retired civil servants at ministerial level in the government, a decision that the former officer of the IAS, Raghunandan, explained as undermining confidence in the Prime Minister's own political team.

This is a point of view shared by others.

The traditional system has always been to have the bureaucracy run by elected ministers. But these changes mark a change in the country's basic governance structure, said a senior central government official.

When this government came to power, the era of groups of ministers and groups of empowered ministers, etc. has declined steadily, but when the Prime Minister's Office officers were appointed ministers, the change was formalized and institutionalized in one way or another, added the official.

Admittedly, the extensions are not new… They also occurred during the UPA years, he said. But what is new is that it is done regularly now, which indicates a change in the way the country's bureaucratic structures are perceived. Pensions have now become a formality that can easily be avoided to reward loyalty or merit.

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