Eyes wide shut
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471Eyes Wide Shut : A unique initiative
I have spent almost four decades in government. But in my knowledge, never before has a campaign to introduce and spread ethics in public service been attempted by any department, or ministry, or public enterprise or even by a state government. Therefore, what started on July 27 in the Rail Museum was a unique experiment […]
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503Eyes wide shut : Ethics of governance
A new chapter was recently added to the old debate on the relationship between the political executive and the senior bureaucracy when the Chief Secretary of National Territory of Delhi accused a couple of legislators of the ruling party of assaulting him in the presence of the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister. Notwithstanding […]
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587Lateral entry needs a new perspective
by PRABHAT KUMAR WHAT started as a proposed idea has now emerged in a concrete form with the Department Of Personnel and Training issuing an advertisement for induction of ten persons from outside the government to man joint secretary level posts in the Union government. I had then welcomed the ideas of opening windows to […]
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596Falling back on generalities
SWOOSH! Another civil service day has just passed like an ephemeral shower of April. Nothing seems to have changed a bit in government. Lawrence Peter of Peter Principle fame once said that bureaucracy defends status quo long past when quo has lost its status. Prime Minister Narendra Modi made another catchy speech, as has become […]
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888Recognise the small entrepreneur
IT is widely believed, and not without substance, that the recent large scale replacement of currency has caused avoidable distress to the small business man, micro and small entrepreneur and trader. The social and the mainstream media have been providing ample empirical evidence of the impact of the breakdown of cash transactions. It is also […]
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838Demonetisation: The jury is still out
WHEN we are confronted with the evidence in any matter, for example a personal or a political issue, the cognitive process in our brain is immediately activated. But surprisingly, the neural circuits in the brain that are normally involved in reasoning or logic do not participate in this process. In fact, when the brain arrives […]
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871Puzzling silence
I N the foreword to the White Paper on the ‘State of Law and Order in Delhi’ that was released to the media recently, the Managing Trustee of the NGO Praja says, ‘There is a crisis brewing in Delhi, a crisis that this city is becoming unlivable for the common men and women’. And, ‘this […]
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709It’s time for conscious public service delivery
WORKING on the concept of institutional ethics as a possible solution to the menace of corruption in government, the IC Centre for Governance looked around for a value-based organisation in public governance. The search was very tricky, like the proverbial looking for a needle in a haystack. The hunt was as difficult, if not more, […]
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607The malady of political interference
IN the last seven decades, innumerable studies on civil services have been conducted from time to time. They have been read, commented on and forgotten. And now, a new and perhaps more comprehensive study on the civil service has been added to the existing literature, conclusions of which have been drawn from the enormous volume […]
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687A cruel pattern comes to the fore
IT is a tale of two cases in quick succession, where two senior civil servants were put on trial for alleged acts of corruption on the ground of causing benefit to somebody by their actions which, according to the CBI, were not in public interest. That they did not benefit themselves or their family and […]