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 mail@dilipcherian.com
The instances of bureaucrats getting caught in the middle of political battles is a growing and dynamic list. Those in the know say that after the Centre recently amended the empanelment policy for IAS officers, young officers fear that their careers will be jeopardized if there is no political consensus between the Centre and the […]
In the context of the second Covid surge, a group of 116 former civil servants has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing the government of not addressing the crucial issues at stake. What makes this “open letter” significant is that the signatories include former Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar, former foreign secretary and National Security […]
Protocol, anyone? Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pep talk to district magistrates on the Covid-19 issue in an online meeting has got some raising the issue of whether it was right for Modi to interact directly with district magistrates and other officials while bypassing their respective ministers. Moreover, the event was telecast live just a few […]
The devastating Covid crisis has renewed demand for the creation of an Indian Medical Service along the lines of the all-India services such as IAS and IPS etc., at the earliest. The second wave of the epidemic has caught India’s creaking health infrastructure on the wrong foot again. It has blown the lid off the […]
Is India’s fabled ‘steel frame’ only creaking or is it screaming? The coronavirus pandemic surge has devastated big cities including the capital and brought the healthcare system to its knees. India has now been recording the highest number of new coronavirus cases in the world and the death toll is mounting. The second wave of […]
While the administration has been widely rebuked for complacency in the face of the coronavirus epidemic, a district magistrate in Tripura is in trouble for being overly enthusiastic in enforcing night curfew rules during a marriage in the state capital Agartala. A video that recorded the incident went viral on social media and political parties […]
The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has run into a wall of bureaucratic denial. The anti-corruption watchdog which regularly reviews pending cases and even called for a probe into pending corruption cases, but little has resulted from its efforts. Earlier this year in January, the commission set a timeline to finalize pending cases. It directed all […]
In September last year, the Modi sarkar gave the go-ahead to its most ambitious bid to reform the bureaucracy – a national capacity building programme. Finally, the programme has got under way with the creation of Capacity Building Commission (CBC) under the National Programme for Civil Service Capacity Building aka “Mission Karmayogi”. And given the […]
After six months the government finally moved and appointed the new chairperson of the Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB). Mallika Srinivasan, Chairman and MD of Tractors and Farm Equipment (TAFE) is the first private sector specialist to be appointed as the head of PESB for a three-year term. Hopefully, her appointment will now end the […]
Everybody loves a diplomat. Last month, after revamping its policy of inviting interns, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) opened its doors to interns. It was swamped by a deluge of applications from across the country. Under the new policy, MEA will take in about 60 interns every year in two batches, with each intern […]
