Narendra Modi’s new mantra for governance: Human touch, efficiency & innovation

NEW DELHI: Add a human touch to governance, revamp office memorandum-circular system, earmark 1% of departmental budget for innovation, and make top officers spend 5-6 days a month in the field — these are the core of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new mantra for governance.

Three weeks after Modi met additional secretary and joint secretary level officials, Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha has written to secretaries of all ministries with 39 actionable points to “expeditiously” act on and give a status report to the Cabinet Secretary. The actionable points circulated by Sinha are largely on how the governance needs to be revamped to give it a human touch and an efficient turnaround.

The directive observes that the Central Secretariat has lost field focus and officers need to mandatorily spend 5-6 days in the field. Modi had observed during his interaction that there is a “need to reach out to everyone in the team — break the habit of working in silos”.

Taking forward this observation, one of the actionable points circulated is: “There is need for communication between seniors and juniors. Need to align all employees of the organisation to the vision of the organisation.”

The Cabinet Secretary has directed all departments to keep aside 1% of their budget for innovation. The government would also institute an award for innovation among officers.

Sinha also flagged the current system of office memorandum (OM) and orders. “Instead of multiple orders on the same subject, each department should undertake an annual validation of all OMs on the same subject,” he said in the directive. “While doing so, all earlier orders on the subject should be subsumed and only one OM should remain current. Consolidation of circulars as has been done in MNREGA should be done,” it said.

There is a renewed emphasis on decision-making and reducing time lines. The Cabinet Secretary’s directive includes observations from Modi on speed of decision-making. “Speed of decision-making is critical — officers should constantly endeavour to reduce delays in processes,” the prime minister had said.

Following up on this, Sinha has asked secretaries to address routine matters like drawing up of minutes of meetings in not more than 48 hours and focus largely on process simplification to reduce timelines.