What’s the significance of 1968, 1972, 1977 and 1988? These are the respective years in which Ajit Doval, PK Mishra, S Jaishankar and TV Somanathan joined their respective services.
Each of them has the total confidence of the Prime Minister but Somanathan, who will take over as Cabinet Secretary on September 1, is far junior to them. He belongs to the 1987 batch of the IAS and might want to say ‘sir’ to them. Doval, Mishra and Jaishankar also have Cabinet rank.
Anyone who knows about government service will understand what that means: it places the Cabinet Secretary — who heads the civil services and supervises the administrative arms of the government, as well as the national security wing — in a very unenviable position. Today he is the junior most in age, rank and status amongst a group of former civil servants, rather than politicians. This is the opposite of what the classical Westminster type of model envisages. In that model the Cabinet Secretary is the capo di tutti capo, or captain of captains who also services the Cabinet. He or she therefore inspires real awe. Not in India, not any more anyway.
The Indian Cabinet Secretary lost out as soon as a Prime Minister’s secretariat was created in July 1964 by Lal Bahadur Shastri and a Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister was appointed. The creation of the post of National Security Adviser by the Vajpayee government in 1998 further reduced the Cabinet Secretary’s importance.
What we have had since the mid-1960s is a hybrid between the American and the British types of governance. Or, as they say in Punjab, ‘aadha teetar, aadha batayr’ (half partridge, half quail).
Government watchers will find the process of interaction between these functionaries very interesting despite the fact the ‘allocation of business’ will pave the way for clarity. The Cabinet Secretary now depends on the influence he or she has on the Prime Minister. Somanathan, by all accounts, is not lacking in that respect.