The Centre’s recent directive to states regarding the transfer of IAS, IPS, and IFS officers pertains not only to administrative procedures but also raises important questions about the governance and oversight of the civil services. By demanding annual reports on how Civil Services Boards manage postings, New Delhi has told the states that your transfer business is now our business too.
Formally, this is sold as compliance with Supreme Court guidelines, fixed tenures, institutional oversight, and fewer whimsical reshuffles. Fair enough. But everyone in governance knows the real problem isn’t ignorance of the rules; it’s the routine decision to ignore them. Civil Services Boards exist in many states largely as constitutional décor. They are often assembled under pressure, sidelined for convenience, and rarely allowed to interfere with political priorities.
Also Read
Seen through that lens, the Centre’s move is less reformist and more corrective. A constantly shuffled bureaucracy doesn’t just hurt officers; it sabotages delivery. Projects stall, files reset, responsibility dissolves, and when outcomes disappoint, fingers point conveniently upwards to Delhi.
States will, predictably, cry foul. Transfers have always been a core instrument of state authority, and federalism bristles when oversight starts resembling supervision. This is what happens when states abuse discretion long enough for the Centre to step in. The real question isn’t whether Delhi is overreaching, but whether states have earned the right to complain.
Unless this exercise leads to consequences, not just reports, it will become another case of central monitoring without central courage. And the babu transfer culture will survive yet again: bruised, documented, and fundamentally unchanged.
Deadline heat
Deadlines in government are famously elastic, especially when they run into land disputes, contractor delays, or inter-departmental mental buck-passing. But this time, the subtext feels sharper. The mood currently hanging over Gujarat’s babus is one of quiet desperation after a message from the Chief Minister’s office: stop explaining, start finishing. And the PMO is also leaning in.
On paper, this looks like routine governance, review meetings, status reports, and coordination memos. In reality, it signals something deeper: a system under pressure to show delivery, not just intent. When departments are asked to account for both completed and ongoing projects, and unfinished works are given a hard March deadline, it’s rarely about curiosity. It’s about urgency, optics, and ticking political clocks.
The issues being flagged aren’t new. Land acquisition bottlenecks, traffic choking urban centres, industrial growth rubbing up against environmental limits, roads and bridges that seem perpetually “under renovation”—this is Gujarat’s long-running to-do list. What’s changed is the tone. The insistence on quality, ministerial coordination, and cross-departmental alignment suggests that silos are no longer being indulged. Or at least, not publicly.
With the 2026–27 budget looming in February, this push smells suspiciously like pre-budget housekeeping. No finance minister wants to present a fresh slate of promises while last year’s commitments are still stuck in the files or, worse, on the ground. Action plans, acceleration strategies, completion targets: these are the bureaucratic equivalent of a government tightening its shoelaces before a sprint.
The real test, of course, lies beyond review meetings and deadline-driven emails. Will this pressure translate into smoother roads, cleaner air, faster approvals, and less finger-pointing? Or will March arrive with the familiar chorus of “procedural delays” and “unforeseen constraints”?
For now, Gujarat’s babus know one thing for sure: the comfort of slow drift is over. Someone, somewhere, is counting.
CIC’s real test begins now
After years of drifting in institutional limbo, the Central Information Commission (CIC) is finally back at full strength. Raj Kumar Goyal’s appointment as Chief Information Commissioner, along with eight new Information Commissioners, closes a vacancy cycle that should never have been allowed to stretch this long. But before applauding too loudly, it’s worth asking whether numerical strength automatically translates into institutional spine?
The CIC’s problem was never just about empty chairs. It was about delays that quietly hollowed out the Right to Information Act. Appeals languished for years, penalties were rarely imposed, and public authorities learned that stonewalling carries few consequences. Vacancies merely made this decay visible; they didn’t cause it.
Goyal, a former law secretary with a long résumé, brings administrative gravitas. That helps. But the CIC doesn’t need another well-run secretariat as much as it needs a commission willing to annoy ministries, question routine denials, and restore urgency to a law that was designed to be citizen-centric, not file-centric. RTI jurisprudence isn’t about the elegance of orders alone. It’s about signalling that delay is not a neutral act, but it’s a denial by other means.
The commission has been “fully staffed” before, without becoming fully effective. Unless this new team prioritises backlog clearance, enforces penalties, and reasserts the CIC’s independence, the reboot risks becoming cosmetic. So, the real test is whether it remembers how and when to bite. Transparency, after all, doesn’t fail dramatically. It erodes quietly, one unanswered appeal at a time.
Share a Babu experience! Follow dilipthecherian@twitter.com. Let’s multiply the effect
