India Show in Hong Kong: Commerce secretary Rajeev Kher to lead India delegation

AWAY from the heat and dust of elections in India, there will be an “India Show” in Hong Kong between April 27 and 30. And senior bureaucrat of 1980 batch and Union commerce secretary Rajeev Kher will lead a delegation to this city state, known to be a bridgehead to do business with China. It is expected that Indian exporters will get an opportunity to forge…

My Take: Low Level European Civil Servants Lead In Brand-Building Of Europe’s Bureaucracy

ONE of my esteemed readers rightly pointed out that I did not write much about my recent experiences in Europe despite my tall promise in my post from New Delhi airport before taking a flight to Amsterdam that I would give a sense of how European bureaucracy works so well vis-à-vis the Indian babudom. Let me be honest with you that I did not have much interaction with any senior government officials in the continent except one with an official at Mayor's office in city of Stockholm who walked me through how the city in Sweden adopted a holistic approach to convert itself into the green capital of Europe. Anyway, based on my earlier visits to Europe in 2001-02 and 2005, let me paint one aspect of European civil servants which stands out all the time. As an ordinary citizen traveling across the continent, you won’t be harassed by any civil servant whatsoever. No one will ask for bribe from a citizen for fixing any basic amenities. I have no idea whether corruption exists at the highest level of European bureaucracy or not, but ordinary citizen won’t find their country’s bureaucracy “suffocating”. In India too, gone are the days when an ordinary citizen had to pay a bribe to get his phone connection, but citizens even now encounter with low-rung officials, mainly police personnel, who ask for bribes to get wrong things right. Though I myself did not participate in BoI’s poll on Hong Kong-based Perc survey’s remarks on Indian bureaucracy, I personally disagree with the report’s terming of Indian bureaucracy as “suffocating”. Yet, I feel that senior civil servants in India who are quite friendly towards aam aadmi and their welfare ensure that their juniors on the streets follow some basic guidelines as they are the real ambassadors of Indian babudom. Babus In Demand Permanent Representative of India, UNESCO: The government has been looking for the right candidate to fill up the joint secretary level post of Permanent Representative of India, UNESCO, Paris, under the department of higher education, which falls vacant on June 30, 2009. The officer must have been empanelled to hold joint secretary or equivalent posts at the Centre, and should be at least three batches below the batch next to be considered for empanelment at the additional secretary level. The officer also must have worked for at least 2 years at the Centre under Central Staffing Scheme.

My Take: Don’t call Indian bureaucracy “suffocating”

QUOTING a survey done by Hong Kong-based firm, Political & Economic Risk Consultancy, Indian newspapers yesterday flashed a Reuters news item saying that Indian bureaucracy was least efficient among 12 Asian economies whereas those from Singapore topped the chart. The 12-page report based on a poll of 1,274 expatriates working in 12 Asian nations, went to an extent of terming India’s bureaucracy “suffocating”. It also said that working with the country's civil servants was a “slow and painful” process. I feel, we should not get carried away by a survey report and put the entire blame of system failure on Indian babudom. If you want to call Indian bureaucracy inefficient, don’t exonerate the political class, corporate leaders and intelligentsia too. In my 14 years of reporting in power corridors, I have encountered a large number of bureaucrats who transformed their departments into an institution despite serving under very inefficient and corrupt ministers. Can you call them below par vis-a-vis corporate CEOs? Absolutely not. I agree, some bureaucrats do fail to deliver like a corporate CEO though they are academically sound and have a passion to work in difficult circumstances. Yet, the number of such officers has come down in recent years in the backdrop of the government’s attempt to give them management trainings and allow them to work in private sector on deputation. The main handicap still is the lack of right synergy between bureaucrats and their political masters. The transfer, which is an age-old weapon of punishing babus by their political masters, still prevails leaving a massive demoralizing effect on officials. But yes, if Dr Manmohan Singh has succeeded to exclude non-performing ministers from his cabinet, he won’t hesitate to clamp down inefficient bureaucrats either. Maybe, the manner in which he will react would be quite different from Mayawati’s transfer saga in UP.