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Level up: PMO to babus on cabinet notes

NEW DELHI: In a sharp message to the bureaucracy, the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) has ordered all ministries to stop working in silos, drop blame games and prepare only high quality cabinet notes that match Indian policies and projects with global standards. The strongly worded directive, issued last week, asks secretaries to shed routine bureaucratic mindset and focus on value addition while drafting or commenting on cabinet notes proposals which ministers submit before the government for approval on major policy decisions. The PMO made it clear that these instructions reflect Prime Minister Narendra Modis personal views and must be strictly followed by all. Finalisation of cabinet notes should be monitored regularly to avoid delays. Ministries must focus on value addition rather than routine comments, the note reads. It emphasises early inter-ministerial consultations and, if required, face-to-face meetings to iron out differences instead of letting files gather dust in endless back-and-forth. The PMO said: Proposals submitted to Cabinet Committees relating to various projects/schemes/programmes and policies should, wherever possible, incorporate details of benchmarking with global standards with respect to that proposal. The PMO also warned against the tendency to push files with narrow departmental views, and to keep in mind the overall public interest while conceptualising a policy proposal. Departments should not focus only on their limited turf but look at the larger national perspective, it stated, especially in multi-ministry schemes.To ensure speed and quality, the finalisation of every cabinet note will now be tracked closely. Ministries have been told to incorporate global benchmarking wherever possible so that Indias policies match the best in the world. Officials say repeated logjams and inter-ministry turf wars in recent months have prompted the tough directive from the PMO. With several big-ticket reforms and infrastructure projects in the pipeline, the government wants to cut red tape and deliver faster results, a source said. Onus on pulling together in same direction A senior officer said that currently each secretary optimises for his/her own ministrys interest rather than the countrys interest. When a major infrastructure project involves five ministries, the Prime Minister often gets five different agendas that pull in different directions. This needs to end at the outset, the officer told this newspaper