In the next few weeks, the Union government will have to fill four key secretarial posts that will fall vacant following the incumbents’ retirement or completion of tenure. Home Secretary Gopal Pillai and Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar will complete their two-year tenures by the end of June and July, respectively. Similarly, Revenue Secretary Sunil Mitra, who is also finance secretary, will retire by the end of this month, while Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao will complete her extended tenure on July 31.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has so far restricted its extension largesse primarily to the post of cabinet secretary and a couple of key senior positions including a few in the Prime Minister’s Office. So, in all likelihood, the government will replace these officers with new incumbents selected from among the current batch of senior officers belonging to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Foreign Service.
The race for the foreign secretary’s job is the most interesting with India’s Ambassador to the United Nations Hardeep Puri, India’s Ambassador to France Ranjan Mathai and India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan Sharat Sabharwal emerging as strong contenders. The race for the top secretarial job in the home ministry and the defence ministry has also become intense, although little is out in the public domain on the favourites for the two jobs.
The choice of Pradeep Kumar as defence secretary two years ago indicates how the government views this job. A Haryana-cadre IAS officer, Kumar spent five years as joint secretary in the ministry of heavy industries and public enterprises between 1997 and 2002 and two-and-a-half years as additional secretary in the ministry of mines and minerals between 2003 and 2006. In between, he spent a few months each as Haryana’s resident commissioner in New Delhi and chairman of the National Highways Authority of India before becoming secretary first in the department of disinvestment in 2007 and then in the department of defence production in 2008. Thus, in the 12 years before he became defence secretary, his only assignment that brought him close to the defence ministry was as secretary in the department of defence production. The speculation now is whether the government will look for a secretary with some experience in the defence ministry or follow the precedent.
The bureaucracy in New Delhi is also discussing whether Home Secretary Gopal Pillai’s successor will be one of the chief secretaries in the states (the names of Punjab Chief Secretary S C Agrawal and Bihar Chief Secretary Anup Mukherjee are doing the rounds). The choice could also fall on one of the two senior women IAS officers. The contenders here are Alka Sirohi, who is secretary in the department of personnel and training, and Sindhushree Khullar, who is secretary in the ministry of youth affairs. The question is whether the country will see independent India’s first woman home secretary in 2011, after having seen the first woman finance secretary in Sushama Nath earlier this year. Remember that Khullar was the personal assistant to Home Minister P Chidambaram when he was commerce minister in the P V Narasimha Rao government, almost 20 years ago.
For the revenue secretary’s job, an interesting race is on. If the officer chosen as the new revenue secretary happens to be junior to Sumit Bose, who is now the expenditure secretary and next to Revenue Secretary Sunil Mitra in seniority, the mantle of the next finance secretary will fall on Bose. However, if the government chooses to bring the finance ministry a senior official, say, somebody like Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar, then Bose may not become the next finance secretary. Khullar as commerce secretary has presided over an exports sector that of late seems to be on steroids, registering healthy growth in spite of a slowdown in developed markets.
Yet, many senior officials do not covet these secretarial jobs as much as they would have, say, a few years ago. This is because the UPA government has perpetuated a new kind of governance that was actually introduced by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. The secretaries in charge of these ministries may head them, but when it comes to running them, they are not really in the driver’s seat. This is not official, but the secretaries in charge know the new limits on their powers and functional flexibility.
For instance, whoever is the final choice, the new foreign secretary will have to contend with the presence of a powerful former foreign secretary who, as the national security advisor, will continue to wield influence over the manner in which the foreign ministry conducts its policies. Similarly, the new finance secretary will have to recognise and accept the new reality of dealing with a powerful advisor to the finance minister, who has considerable say in all the key policies that the finance ministry formulates. The lure of these two prime secretarial jobs, therefore, appears considerably diminished. The situation in the ministries of home and defence may be better, but, who knows, a similar structure may come up there as well.
