The babus need more space

Mantralaya desperately needs some space mdash to implement recommendations of the Sarkaria Commission which has stipulated the number of members in the state cabinet Each of these ministers now need offices and with a headquarter already brimming with babus new space is hard to create The sixstorey building received an additional floor to accommodate a record number of ministers prior to the implementation of the Sarkaria Commission recommendations during the tenure of CM Sushilkumar Shinde The building constructed in the 50s could barely accommodate 75 ministers and their staffers before that A few chambers even had to be constructed on the terrace which has now been renovated into the seventh floor It was observed on a number of occasions that whenever an expansion of the ministerrsquos office or of a secretary level officer took place sacrifice was made by sections within the state departments who were stuffed inside the barracks nearby mdash many of them were even relocated to Bandra or Chembur The statersquos chief secretary is at the head of the state administration and is the highest implementing authority for all the decisions taken by the chief minister and his cabinet The entire bureaucratic body always follows his diktat scrupulously The incumbent in the chief secretaryrsquos post J K Banthia assumed charge on May 31 Soon after taking over Banthia prioritised two issues both with an eye to improve the performance of his subordinates First he asked for periodic health checkups for the entire state workforce The other matter at the top of his list was to train as many of the senior and junior level officers in IT It is a well know fact that though most of the officers at Mantralaya are given gadgets to help them carry out their duties they fail to use them The Public Health department began implementation the CSrsquos first order by organising health camps every month for officers mdash in the very first camp approximately 52 new cases of diabetes was detected Another camp has been scheduled for next week for eye checkups Banthia then issued orders for a wellequipped training centre in Mantralaya for the training of all secretary level officers and junior staffers in IT so that egovernance can be implemented soon To accommodate this centre a hunt for space was started mdash it was planned that the training centre would be located on the seventh floor as there was no room available anywhere between the ground floor and mezzanine floor to the sixth floor The space earmarked for the training centre was earlier used as a storeroom by the PWD and then given to the Tourism department a few months ago to accommodate its officers Incidentally Chhagan Bhujbal heads both the departments The space which has since been lying virtually unused can accommodate 35 people and is big enough to set up a stateoftheart training centre However problems cropped up as usual Even though the tourism department is minimally staffed it has expressed unwillingness to part with it As the tug of war for space continues between these departments the training centre and the ultimate dream of egovernance envisioned by the state government remains a distant dream This has always been the case whenever new concepts have been proposed at the government level For instance the biometric system to record the attendance of legislators was rejected on the ridiculous grounds that legislators found it offensive to give their angutha chhaap Even now the bureaucracy is ill at ease about adopting technology out of fear that their activities or the lack of it will be exposed Even the etendering concept has not been fully accepted by the state departments despite the clear diktat issued by our CM Prithviraj Chavan These rejections clearly taint the image of the government ndash officers along with their mounds of files and papers keep shuttling between the offices located in the New Administrative Building the barracks located at Nariman Point offices in the Bandra government colony the new administrative building at Chembur and Konkan Bhavan at Belapur How simple these moves would be if the egovernance system was in place Taking advantage of the governmentrsquos decisions some of the political parties have been able to block precious space near Mantralaya and at Ensa Hutments in Azad Maidan Some of these political parties have hardly any presence in state politics and a few of them have had no representation in the state legislature for years together Their space needless to say is eating into the space required for governance mdash The writer is Political Editor MiD DAYu00a0