Modi gives bureaucrats the thumbs-up, says they will bridge gap between India ... - India Today

PM Narendra Modi Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he's largely satisfied with the bureaucracy's performance in the last year he's been in the saddle.

Speaking to the Hindustan Times, the prime minister said bureaucrats needed time to fix problems in the country. He cited the instance of the difference in the reaction times between the media and the bureaucrats.

"Let me explain: If there is a ditch on the road, media has to just take a picture or video and put it up. That takes two minutes, but the person who has to fill it up and do the repairs will, at least, take 24 hours. Pehle, itna toh space dena padega (the bureaucracy has to be given some breathing space)," Modi said.

He said the bureaucrats need to understand that they are all meant to serve the people and should be geared for it. "I used the perspective of the common man of the country who had voted us to power. We have worked hard and sat together repeatedly and tried to remove the silos, barriers and bottlenecks. There is a very large Hindustan beyond Delhi."

Modi said the Central and state governments were now working together in the spirit of co-operation instead of maintaining a giver-taker relationship. "A true partnership for national development has emerged. We have succeeded to a large extent in changing the work culture, making it pro-active and professional," he said.

Modi said he has experienced that Delhi functions in the way defined by its leadership. "I am hopeful of extraordinary outcomes, both towards changing Delhi (the Centre) and towards changing the country through Delhi," he said, adding that his outreach to the bureaucrats has helped.

"I have done a small thing. I regularly interact with secretaries over tea; it is part of my working style," referring to the chai pe charcha that had been the high-point of US President Barack Obama's visit earlier this year.

Modi said he told the secretaries to go back to the place where they had their first posting. They had not been there in the last 25-30 years, he said.

"I also asked them to go with their families and spend, at least, a night there and tell their children how it all started. Then think about how far they had come and where the place of their first posting was. They had to reflect why we moved forward and not the places. I am happy that almost everyone visited his or her first place of posting," the prime minister said in the interview.

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