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Boy Bureaucrat has no say in Man Minister's affairs!

Officials in the PMO are quite worried about the rigidity in attitude of certain ministers. A number of them, mostly belonging to the allies, are doing whatever they feel like, unmindful of what the bureaucrats advice.

For instance, Food Minister Surjeet Singh Barnala has shown his largesse towards sugar mill owners by deciding to purchase 110,000 tonnes of sugar at the higher rate of Rs 1,350 per quintal. The mill owners will get an additional Rs 333 per quintal in comparison to the levy sugar rate, which is only Rs 1027 per quintal. Despite bureaucratic objection, Barnala stuck to his guns and waved the deal through.

The government purchase limited quantity of sugar from mill owners for public distribution. Mill owners are allowed to sell out the rest of their stock in the open market at higher prices. Now the government expects a shortfall of 110,000 tonnes. Generally, this gap is to be filled by importing sugar. But after the sugar controversy during Narasimha Rao's time, the ministry is reluctant to do foreign deals. In this situation, the government can raise the levy quota of sugar -- but because of pressure from the sugar lobby, it has decided to purchase sugar directely from the owners at a much higher rate!

It is learnt that various sugar mills have surplus stock which, because of the dull market, they had not been able to get rid of. Now the government has come forward not only to bail them out, but also to provide them a big profit.

Mill owners defend the government decision by saying that India would save a lot in foreign exchange by purchasing from domestic producers. This would also give a boost to the sugar industry in the country.

Certain bureaucrats had opposed the proposal saying it would contribute an additional financial burden to the government. The PMO was in the process of studying the proposal, but because of the pressure from the food minister, the Union Cabinet cleared it immediately.

Another thing which Barnala is insisting on is that senior officers in his ministry should all be from the Punjab cadre.

The PMO and Delhi government are in a quandary over the attitude of Urban Development Minister Ram Jethmalani on the issue of Mass Rapid Transport System for Delhi.

After a Herculean effort, the government has finalised the project. The designing work has been allocated to a Japanese company. This has been done after a lengthy procedure in which clearance from various technical committees were sought. Unfortunately, when the work was to be finally initiated, the urban development minister intervened to stop the entire exercise. He wanted everything to be re-evaluated from scratch, which would mean another three years. Officials handling the project are not able to assess the reason for this decision. If the process is delayed again, experts fear, Delhi would be deprived of the MRTS for more than a decade.

According to sources in the urban development ministry, the entire project would cost around Rs 60 billion. Of this, a substantial portion is being given by the Japanese firm as soft loan, around 20 billion by the Government of India and Rs 20 billion by the Delhi administration.

Minister of State for Welfare Maneka Gandhi wants the department of animal welfare to be shifted to her ministry from that of environment. But Minister of Forest and Environment Suresh Prabhu is opposing the move.

Incidentally, when Maneka was the minister of environment, she had taken the department out from animal husbandry and attached it to environment -- now as minister of welfare she wants it back!

Small wonder, then, that PMO officials are tearing their hair out about these ministers!

Rajiv Shukla