Ramesh bats for lateral entry into forest sector

The forest sector may become the first segment in India to allow the lateral entry of professionals, if environment minister Jairam Ramesh has his way.

Updated on: Jun 30, 2011, 23:40:50 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The forest sector may become the first segment in India to allow the lateral entry of professionals, if environment minister Jairam Ramesh has his way.

Ramesh has asked the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, to submit a report on the modalities of implementing the lateral entry into the forest departments after an environment ministry committee rejected the idea of forest bureaucracy -- the Indian Forest Service (IFS).

“The IIM will submit report in the next three months,” Ramesh said, realising that his plan to induct professionals directly into the IFS will be resisted. Ramesh wants professionals to join the IFS at senior level.

There are 3,000 Indian Forest Service Officers and 4,500 state forest officers, who are recruited through an exam at the Central and state levels. Still about 45 % of the posts are lying vacant.

The Prime Minister's Office had wanted that up to 10% of posts at the level of joint secretary, under the Central Staffing Scheme, should be open to lateral entry of professionals from state governments, private sector and academics.

A draft note prepared by the Department of Personnel and Training had said the recruitment will be done by the Union Public Service Commission for five years. Lateral entry has been a distant dream with only a few including planning commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia joining as a joint secretary.

“You can't have lateral entry into a cadre easily. There will be too much resistance. That is why I am advocating lateral entry into departments,” he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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