Come up with new ideas, PM tells top bureaucrats

As the NDA government approaches its half-way mark next month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked top bureaucrats of the Central government departments to study all the decisions taken by their respective ministers in the last 29 months and summarise the essence of good governance from the directions given by their political bosses. These ideas are to be presented to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) by November 30.

Mr Modi directed the bureaucrats to study all kinds of reports and presentations which may have been made in their departments since Independence and even seek help of the young IAS officers of the 2013 and 2014 batches to formulate fresh ideas.

The Prime Minister, who called a mid-term review meeting of all the secretaries earlier this week, asked them to realign physical targets fixed for programmes being run under their respective ministries, as well as suggest revised implementation strategies to re-energise these schemes till the year 2018-19. Sources privy to details informed this newspaper that they were also asked to suggest new initiatives for the forthcoming Union Budget of 2017-18.

Sources further informed that the Prime Minister gave a pep talk to bureaucrats, praising their performance in the last two-and-a-half years of the NDA government’s tenure. The basic thought behind asking all bureaucrats to go through all the reports and studies related to their concerned departments, was to come up with “tranformational ideas” which can be implemented for the benefit of the common man.

The secretaries were asked to even seek views of the freshly recruited IAS officers of the 2014 batch while preparing reports for their concerned sectors. These young officers just earlier this week completed their three months tenure in Central ministries where they were stationed as assistant secretaries. While these 100-odd officers have gone back to their respective cadres, the Prime Minister, sources said, asked the secretaries to take help of their experience at the Centre, as they are bubbling with innovative ideas, and their inputs could be of great help while formulating policies for good governance.

Apart from seeking inputs from young AS officers, the secretaries have been asked to take all chief secretaries in the loop for the exercise, sources informed further. This, the Prime Minister is learnt to have told them, will further strengthen the concept of cooperative federalism.