It is high time that the GOI cut its umbilical cord with the colonial past. Let the GOI Ministers no longer, be treated like Indian princes receiving fat privy purses (Read as salaries), a large number of freebies and a still larger complement of Personal Staff, to boot. Annual expenditure on Ministers’ personal staff runs into crores of rupees with no matching benefits. On the contrary, it facilitates corruption. Ghost man-power is ‘employed’ by ministers and salaries due to them pocketed. These are hard realities of the present political Executive of the Union of India and the federal states. Ministers heading economic and social sector ministries like Coal, Petroleum, and Heavy Industries, Banking, Finance, Commerce, Agriculture, HRD, Rural Development etc mis-use public utilities (including PSUs and PSBs) as personal fiefdoms utilizing their unlimited manpower, transport facilities etc. Their personal staff are deployed to facilitate misuse of powers. A minister who is confident enough to attend to official work, does not require any PS or PA. He /She is free to summon his ministerial officers for briefing or seeking clarification on any point. The fact that a large number of officers belonging to organized services vie for appointment as Private Secretaries to richly endowed ministers bear testimony to the lucrative business that it is! Honestly and seriously speaking, the requirement of a Minister in GOI can be met by engaging at the most three persons instead of the existing over ten. This includes a peon who should also be an Usher. The Prime Minister as the Cabinet Minister-in-charge of DOP&T must put a full stop to the existing practice of Ministers poaching ministries’ officers/ staff for deploying in personal section on informal basis, while pocketing the salaries earmarked for the regulars! This secret, I bet, may not be known to many Civil servants!
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