Modi raises performance bar for ministers by 10%

The PM, who recently called himself a 'hard taskmaster', has set his ministers a minimum 10% target for enhancing existing infrastructure in their areas of responsibility by the end of the financial year.

Updated on: Sep 15, 2014, 09:08:04 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who recently called himself a 'hard taskmaster', has set his ministers a minimum 10% target for enhancing existing infrastructure in their areas of responsibility by the end of the financial year.

And he plans to keep an eye on them. The task of monitoring the performance of ministries has been given to the Planning Commission, and later to the think tank that replaces it.

The government is currently giving shape to the think tank but has already decided on some of its functions, one of which will be to oversee the implementation of the PM's innovations such as Digital India, Skill India and Swacch Bharat, senior government officials said. It would be required to submit regular reports to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

The PMO's direction, quoting Modi, to ministries to add 10% to existing physical infrastructure and services provided by then by March 2015 would translate into mobile services for half of India's rural villages, a minimum 80% literacy level (from the current 72%) and 19% gross enrolment ratio in higher education (17% now).

The road transport ministry headed by Nitin Gadkari will have to add 7,700km of new roads and highways compared to its target of 7,000km. The PM wants 500km of new railway tracks instead of the 300km target presented by railway minister Sadanand Gowda. Similarly, targets for civil aviation and shipping ministries have also been upped.

"This is the minimum the PMO has prescribed," a government official said, adding that anything over and above would add to the annual performance of ministers and secretaries.

A union minister who refused to be named said the initiative would push them to achieve more. "The Prime Minister is targeting us to do more for the country, and we will try our best. We, as well as the bureaucrats, will be under pressure but it will help us deliver."

The PMO has told plan panel secretary Sindhushree Khullar to prepare a template for reviewing the performance of ministries with the new target in mind. Monitoring divisions of the panel are being strengthened with staff from other units. "We believe the divisions entrusted with monitoring will continue their job till the new think tank is in place," another senior official said.

Khullar has already made a presentation on the performance of core infrastructure ministries for 2014-15 and deliberated on targets suggested by them for the fiscal.

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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