A K Bhattacharya: The same old faces

NEW DELHI DIARY

Every government has its favourites. It has favourite officers. It also has favourite experts. In the case of officers, a government is hamstrung to some extent by their availability. Officers are governed by seniority and superannuation rules.

So, a government may like to appoint a certain officer to head a specific central ministry. But that officer either may not be ready for promotion or may be serving a state government.

Worse, he may have retired. And there can be only a few exceptions to accommodate retired bureaucrats.

But such restrictions do not usually come in the way of a government appointing its favourite experts in key positions. Which is perhaps why the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has brought back into circulation a few experts who, everybody thought, had retired and gone into oblivion.

Not much was heard of them in the last decade or so. But they have been revived within less than six months of the formation of the UPA government and all of them now occupy key positions. Three such names come to one's mind immediately.

V Krishnamurthy was industry secretary in the late 1970s. During the 1980s, he headed two high profile public sector undertakings""Maruti Udyog Limited and the Steel Authority of India Limited.

Mr Krishnamurthy wielded tremendous power even when he ran the two PSUs. In the first half of the 1990s, the Narasimha Rao-led Congress government parked him in the Planning Commission as member.

It was during his stint as Planning Commission member that Mr Krishnamurthy was embroiled in a series of controversies. The securities scam took a heavy toll of his reputation and he had to make an ignominous exit from government. No one gave him any chance of a comeback.

He was seen as an ageing technocrat, waiting to call it a day after having served a long and chequered innings in government. In any case, the Congress lost the elections in 1996.

The new governments formed subsequently were not favourably disposed towards Mr Krishnamurthy. So, there was no question of him being seen anywhere near the government.

That was till the Congress-led UPA government was formed in May this year.

The government set up the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council in September, envisaged as an apex body making recommendations for enhancing the competitiveness of industry. Mr Krishnamurthy was made its chairman with the status of union cabinet minister.

Prahlad Kumar Basu is the second person to make an unexpected comeback after the formation of the Congress-led UPA government. Like Mr Krishnamurthy, Mr Basu also served the government in different union ministries during the late seventies and eighties.

He did not have too many friends in the bureaucracy or the government. So, when he quit the government in the late eighties, he did what everybody expected him to do. He went back to teaching management in some foreign universities.

He kept himself occupied with a think tank he set up, but nobody thought that he would be back advising the government on how to frame public sector policies.

But Mr Basu proved everybody wrong. The UPA government picked him up to head the newly created Board for Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprises (BRPSE).

In his heyday in government, Basu was once the director-general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, which used to lay down the policy framework for public sector enterprises. As steel and mines secretary also, he may have overseen the functioning of some public sector units.

But how that experience helped him qualify to head BRPSE is something that has baffled even many officers within the UPA government.

Even more surprising has been the emergence of Sam Pitroda as a powerful member of the National Advisory Council, set up to oversee the implementation of the National Common Minimum Programme ""a document that the UPA government swears by.

Mr Pitroda was Telecom Commission chairman in the mid-1980s, when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister. He shook up the system to expedite changes in the telecom policies .

But once Rajiv Gandhi was gone, Mr Pitroda too was out of government. Almost a decade and a half later, he seems to be back to advise the government on policy formulation.

As member of the NAC, he has already made presentations to ministries and the Prime Minister on how to revamp the telecom sector. It is only a matter of time before Mr Pitroda too is installed in a key position heading a committee or an organisation.

There is no doubt that all the three""Mr Krishnamurthy, Mr Basu, and Mr Pitroda""made significant contributions when they headed central ministries or public sector undertakings during the eighties.

But to bring them back as key players in committees and organisations almost after 15 years reflects a mindset that refuses to look for fresh talents to provide leadership to the government.

The UPA government may be rewarding those who have remained loyal to the Congress party. But in the process, it is also creating an impression that it suffers from an acute paucity of young leaders and bankruptcy of ideas.

akb@business-standard.com