PM-Secretaries Interaction

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has held extensive interactions with secretaries at various ministries for two days. He complained with them, and at times reprimanded [break] them for the red tape, corruption and mismanagement in bureaucracy. Sometimes it was bemusing whether Nepal was an incoming prime minister or an outgoing one. But people close to the prime minister say that the whole purpose of the interaction was to give a message that he is still in charge and the bureaucracy should not shy away from performing its day-to-day duty in anticipation of change of reins in Singha Durbar. The prime minister decided to hold the interaction following widespread complaints that the bureaucracy had gone almost defunct with speculations of imminent change of guard in Singha Durbar.



One can always argue about the timing of the interaction, its intentions and its outcomes. Nonetheless, the interaction itself seems to have gone well, with the prime minister and secretaries exchanging their views candidly and sincerely. Prime Minister Nepal had deliberately kept the ministers, and even his advisors, out of the room so that the top bureaucrats could share their opinion without any inhibition. If Nepal never had an opportunity to understand how the civil service’s top-notch feel about the whole system of governance, he definitely had one during the last two days.



The secretaries complained about how creation of additional posts of secretaries had devalued the stature and importance of that post. Not just that but they also complained how undeserving civil servants were promoted because there were too many vacant posts to be filled at the top. The placement of two secretaries at the same ministry and division of their responsibilities also hasn’t gone well with many of the bureaucrats. The secretaries had the most serious, and also the most legitimate complaint, when they said the practice of ministers choosing their own secretaries was undermining the integrity and efficiency of the secretaries, and bureaucracy as a whole.



It’s true that when the ministers get to choose and change the secretaries in their ministries, it automatically dampens secretaries’ ability to question the ministers and resist their action however illegitimate they are. Many of the ministers choose secretaries for their personal loyalty over professional competence. One of the secretaries bluntly said so long as we have a system where the minister chooses a secretary and the later chooses accountant and store keeper, we will not be able to address the rot in the system. We could not agree more. Now that the secretaries have spoken their mind, the question is will this prime minister or future prime ministers do something to change the system?

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