Dilip is considered India's foremost Image Management guru and resident iconoclast. He wavers between irrational exuberance and cataclysmic gloom but can be influenced at [email protected]
Babus go on and on Old habits die hard. Our babus, therefore, rather naturally, get so accustomed to their kursi and the power that flows from it that many are reluctant to fade into the sunset when the time comes to bid goodbye to all that. Not everyone, I must hasten to add, lingers on, […]
Manpower crunch Rattled by the exodus of senior babus for the greener pastures of the private sector, the Central government, it seems, is formulating a new policy aimed to discourage the trend. Apparently, a clause in the present guidelines gives babus the option of unpaid leave up to five years. This clause has now become […]
Who will put YSR’s CMO in order? Tension between powerful chief ministers and the rest of the babu system under them is par for the course. But the staff at the Chief Minister’s Office in Andhra Pradesh seem to be working doubly hard these days – issuing orders and then annulling them. So, if their […]
Moily’s noble intentions This is so radical, it’ll never see the light of day, was the immediate thought that strikes me. The recommendations made by the second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) headed by Veerappa Moily are bound to ruffle some feathers, not just among my favourite tribe, but even more among politicians and the judiciary. […]
Babus don’t take easily to training There is no doubt that huge quantities of training are both crucial and critical to the future of the bureaucracy, as it exists today. Everybody seems to be aware of that. Whether it’s the Cabinet Secretary or the Department of Personnel and Training, this entirely appropriate obsession with training […]
Caste loyalties prevail Caste is the backbone of UP’s political culture, but for the babu-watcher it is more interesting to note how caste loyalties are played out at the level of the bureaucracy,especially now in what are seen as the last few weeks of Mulayam’s current reign. From the politicians’ point of view, it makes […]
Bihar’s babus avoid Lalu With his archrival Nitish Kumar firmly in saddle in Bihar, it is becoming clear to the Union Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav that his writ no longer runs in his home state. Last week Lalu had summoned secretaries of various state departments to the capital to discuss progress on the Sam […]
Kaoboys and other Indians The famously forbidding headquarters of the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) in New Delhi’s CGO complex hosted rather unusual guests recently. The occasion was the first R.N. Kao Memorial Lecture and the guest was Shashi Tharoor, Under Secretary General of the United Nations, who spoke on “India and Global Security: Leveraging […]
Springboard AIIMS The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) may produce India’s top doctors, but it loses more than half of them to more lucrative options abroad, mostly in the United States. While most of us have been aware of this trend, here are some hard statistics to confirm our worst fears. With the […]
Everything that L. M. Thapar did was gigantic but there was very little chance that the huge effort would ever be visible. That was the man’s quintessential style. And in fact, perhaps that one phrase sums up the man. He went like he would have wanted to. Quietly into the night. The huge Ballarpur empire, […]
