General Bipin Rawat, Chief of Defense Staff and Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog India Today High and Powerful List of Administrators in 2021
bureaucrats are indispensable Narendra Modi Govt. This truthfulness was good in the first term of the government. In the middle of its second term, the government, like few other administrations, has increased its dependence on a group of prominent bureaucrats. Officials not only make important policy decisions – from disinvestment to restructuring the defense ministry – but also implement them.
Thus they are considered important for the performance of the government. Efficiency and achievement are rewarded through extension and key bureaucrats are placed in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) as post-retirement advisors. The Modi government’s PMO is arguably the most powerful since Indira Gandhi in the early 1970s and later in the early 1980s. It deals with every aspect of governance, from national security to the economy and COVID-19 management, and relies on a corps of skilled bureaucrats working under the watchful eye of the PM. The career progression of former bureaucrats now extends to the Union Cabinet as well.
After the July 2021 reshuffle, there are now a record five former civil servants serving as cabinet ministers- Hardeep Singh Puri, S Jaishankar, RK Singh, RP Singh and Ashwini Vaishnav. Two prominent former civil servants in the PMO—Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, PK Mishra; And National Security Advisor Ajit Doval- also has the status of a cabinet minister. This could be the golden age of bureaucracy.
— Sandeep Unnithan, Shweta Punj, Anilesh S. By Mahajan, Kaushik Deka and Sonali Acharjee
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