Archana Agarwal, a 1990-batch IAS officer of the UP cadre, is better known as the PPP (public-private partnership) lady of the state and is currently executive director of the Udyog Bandhu and Secretary of the industries department. She has issued a Tughlaqi Farmaan that shirts should be buttoned till the top to hide chest hair. If the shirt is still unable to hide the hair, then the chest must be shaved. Compliance with this unusual diktat is a hundred per cent!
She is a workaholic, sometimes working nonstop to prepare Requests For Proposal and scrutinizing Requests for Qualification for projects related to urban infrastructure, highways, tourism, and transport worth Rs 1.5 crore floated by the UP government to attract investment in the state. Though progress via the PPP route has been nil till now, the consultancy firms are making the most of madam’s patronage.
The lady also has a reputation for riding roughshod over anybody, including her seniors. But she recently met her match in Neeta Chowdhary, a 1977-batch IAS officer and Principal Secretary, Health. Archana tried to overrule the latter regarding the strategy to be adopted for running the Primary Health Centres and Community Health Centres. She was ordered to behave and had to tender an apology.
Unfazed, Archana then locked horns with another senior officer, Alok Ranjan, of the 1978 batch, who was Principal Secretary, Technical Education. She has little to fear as she is the most trusted lieutenant of Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh.
AIIMS yet to heal
The All-India Institute of Medical Sciences has been without a Director since July 2, 2007 when the controversial Dr P Venugopal retired after a long-drawn tussle with the government. The happenings at AIIMS since the anti-quota agitation of May 2006 are well known. The PMO, initially accused of protecting Venugopal, finally made up its mind early last year to ease him out by enacting a law. Its passage in Parliament witnessed much drama between the treasury and opposition benches.
The sorry state of affairs at AIIMS has not been helped by all this. The Institute Body —the apex controlling authority under the AIIMS Act—took steps to appoint a new Director. The process was completed on August 18 when IB unanimously selected Prof RC Deka, an eminent ENT specialist and currently Dean, as the new Director. But the appointment has not been finalized for three months. The undue delay in the appointment of the doctor from Assam has provided potent ammunition to Northeast MPs, who always complain about New Delhi’s attitude towards the region. And despite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh being a Rajya Sabha member from Assam.
Hostels a burning issue at NIFT
The current Director of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Monika Sehgal Garg, is a 1989-batch IAS officer of the UP cadre who has earned notoriety for citing High Court orders , DDA rule, paucity of space et al to justify misgovernance, lack of imagination and will to take proactive measures in the face of a crisis.
NIFT, run under the aegis of the Ministry of Textiles, hires private accommodation to house its students. During the June 2008 admission to the four-year bachelor programme, it promised residential accommodation for girls. Outstation girl students were asked to apply along with demand drafts and were given hostel accommodation. Now, though, Garg has told the students that the facility will not be available after December. The reason, she says, is that the admission prospectus was printed much before the court order compelling it to provide the hostel accommodation and that newspaper ads have not fetched the required accommodation.
As an eyewash, she is still collecting the names of girls wanting hostel accommodation to buy time when the institute closes on 19 December for the winter vacation. Her claims that parents were told the facility was available only till December is refuted by the latter. She does not reply to parents’ mails or take their calls.
Meanwhile, private hostels that have sprung up around NIFT during the last three months are reportedly confident that NIFT will not extend hostel facilities beyond January at the most because they are hand-in-glove with elements at the institute. The issue of the girls’ safety is being ignored in crime-prone Delhi.
Razdan’s foresight saves the day
While the entire government is threatened by the current spate of recession and is waiting for some miracle to happen in the US economy to reverse the economic slowdown, Power Secretary Anil Razdan has reportedly embarked on a simple yet imaginative exercise to keep his Ministry afloat.
He visualized well in advance that if the suppliers of machinery, raw material and spare parts to the Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) of his Ministry felt the pinch of recession, the latter would also be severely affected. He therefore asked the PSUs to write to their suppliers expressing willingness to help them in case they felt any liquidity crunch because of the recession. The purpose was two-fold: keeping the PSUs operating efficiently and gaining the confidence of the suppliers.
The feedback was immensely encouraging – all the suppliers replied with expressions of gratitude and were able to manage without help.
