PowerPoint comes to cabinet meets, one ministry at a time

In a new practice, weekly cabinet meetings will now be followed by a PowerPoint presentation by any one ministry on its recent activities to keep every minister abreast of the government’s functioning.

Here’s another reason for Narendra Modi’s cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats to be on their toes. In a new practice, weekly cabinet meetings will now be followed by a PowerPoint presentation by any one ministry on its recent activities to keep every minister abreast of the government’s functioning.

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Each ministry would be informed of its turn in advance and the issues to be discussed would also be decided beforehand.

“This novel practice has started for the first time. Ministries are invited one by one to give presentations post cabinet meetings so the top leadership has a holistic understanding of the functioning and initiatives of other ministries as well,” minister of state Rajiv Pratap Rudy told HT.

While Rudy’s skill development ministry made a presentation on August 20, several others are yet to be summoned. However, a source with knowledge of the procedure confirmed all ministries will be summoned one by one in due course to brief the Prime Minister and the cabinet.

Ahead of each meeting, the cabinet secretary would summon the secretary of the particular ministry and pick out issues that would be discussed.

The actual presentation too would be made by the secretary before his respective minister besides the rest of the cabinet. Under special circumstances, a ministry may be summoned out of turn too.

A top government source who has access to the plan said: “It may prove to be a healthy and participative practice. One could sense that the top ministers were looking forward to such presentations asking very relevant and interesting questions.”