Bengaluru: If former Secretary, Urban Development, Dr M Ramachandran is to be believed, the UPA government was responsible for delaying the Kochi metro project.
The former bureaucrat writes in his book, The Mavericks of Mussoorie, which among other things, dwells on the hassles the bureaucracy went through when launching the Metro project.
“The delay happened because the Planning Commission created problems. Until the time the Communist party was in power in Kerala, the Congress-led government did not approve the project, but once it came to power in Kerala, the Metro was given the go-ahead.”
Dr Ramachandran recalls that although the Tamil Nadu government had sent a strong proposal for construction of the Metro in Chennai, the then Planning Commission under Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia insisted on its execution under the PPP model.
The former bureaucrat goes on to talk about why the post of Cabinet Secretary eluded him and about the difficulties civil servants face in implementing policies. He speaks about the spiralling corruption in bureaucracy and deplores that the urban development department has been one of the most neglected in government.
Speaking to the Deccan Chronicle about his book, he said civil servants should be allowed to serve for a fixed tenure or till a project was implemented to draw the best from them. “Implementation and accountability are two important facets of administration,” he stressed.
Ask him if India should have independent research institutions on the lines of China, where a large manpower is doing research on the future needs of the railways, and he agrees the job of bureaucrats would be easier if proper data was available to them.
