Management institutes to help group of ministers handle Covid-19 crisis

Crowded offices

The Centre’s revised guidelines, issued on April 15, asked all its officials at the level of deputy secretary and above to ensure 100 per cent attendance while of the remaining officials, 33 per cent were mandated to attend office. This was to reduce overcrowding in offices and maintain social distancing. “It is, however, seen that in some ministries/departments more than one third of the officials below deputy secretary level are being called to office. This might lead to undesirable crowding in the office, jeopardising the preventive measures in place for containing the spread of Covid-19,” the Department of Personnel and Training stated in a recent office memorandum to other ministries. It reiterated the guidelines on staggered timing for attending office and asked the ministries to draw up rosters.

Management for Covid

The government has turned to 26 management institutions, including 20 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), to assist the 11 empowered group of ministers, or EGoMs, it has constituted to handle the Covid-19 spread. Students of these 26 institutes will provide interns to help the EGoMs with data analysis and policy inputs. They will work remotely. Apart from the IIMs, the government has sought interns, who will be interviewed and then selected, from the Indian School of Business, Gurugram’s Management Development Institute, the Indian Institute of Public Administration, and The Energy and Resources Institute. An interesting inclusion in the list is that of APJ Abdul Kalam Centre in Delhi.

Dress versus redress 

While we’re stuck at home amid coronavirus quarantine or isolation and discovering the ease of having conversations or meetings via video-conferencing services like Zoom and Google Hangouts, there are some who find themselves in a bit of a mess. A Rajasthan High Court lawyer who appeared in an online bail hearing wearing a vest has ended up drawing the ire of the judge. Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma of the court’s Jaipur Bench rebuked the lawyer for not appearing in uniform during the hearing last week via video-conference. In his anger, the judge threatened to dismiss the bail plea but later accepted the public prosecutor's request to not punish the accused for an aberration on his part. The hearing was then postponed until May.