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
A new Niti Aayog? Former finance secretary and ex-Finance Commission chairman Vijay Kelkar has suggested a revamp of Niti Aayog and creating a new organization which, unlike the present avatar, can allocate capital and revenue grants to the states. Interestingly the suggestion has come less than five years after the government replaced Planning Commission with […]
Mayawati has always had twin political hallmarks. The first, her legendry ability to turn her support base into votes for her and her party, BSP; the second, her enigmatic inaccessibility. So, when Mayawati chooses to ascend into the portals of Twitter, it is a significant moment. Yes, both for her and for Twitter. The question […]
Kerala’s babu problem With a spate of retirements due over the next few months, Kerala is likely to face an acute shortage of experienced IAS officers. While additional chief secretary (revenue and disaster management) P H Kurien retired last month, additional chief secretary (home and vigilance) Subrata Biswas is due to depart in April and […]
Selecting the CIC The search committee for selection of Chief Information Commissioner did not short-list two senior Information Commissioners who had applied for the position and brought in four others who did not show interest in the post, documents made public by the government show. Now even the Supreme Court wants to know. It has […]
Governance deficit The government has clarified that it does not propose to lower the age limit for general IAS-IPS aspirants from 32 years to 27 years, as suggested by Niti Aayog. It had also said that recruits should be placed in a central talent pool, which would then allocate candidates by matching their competencies and […]
Surveillance state? Have we entered the era of mass surveillance with little oversight? The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has issued an order authorising 10 Central agencies to intercept, monitor, and decrypt “any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer.” The order, signed by Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba, gives a licence to snoop […]
The Modi sarkar has perceptibly slowed down in the last leg of its tenure. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tried to streamline the functioning of the government, it has had mixed results. While the 360-degree evaluation system is now well established, Mr Modi is having significantly more trouble trying to induct outside talent to […]
The Modi sarkar, also buffeted by the adverse assembly election results, wants to move on from the Urijit Patel era without delay. So barely a day after Urijit resigned as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the government appointed former finance secretary Shaktikanta Das as the new RBI chief. The resignation of Urijit […]
No extension for Hasmukh Adhia? Despite earlier rumours, Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia, due to retire this month-end, is unlikely to get an extension. In the past governments usually, extend the tenure of secretaries in the Finance Ministry if their tenure is ending close to the presentation of the Union Budget. In Mr Adhia’s case, sources […]
Modi’s security strategy In the last lap of the Modi sarkar before the 2019 general elections, the government is effecting a major revamp of the national security architecture. Over the past few months, the government has constituted the Defence Planning Committee (DPC), increased the budget for the National Security Council Secretariat, and reconstituted the Strategic […]
