Bureaucrats and Meetings

Always in a meeting
by Punam Khaira Sidhu

Call any bureaucrat on any given day, during office hours and chances are that the PA will tell you that the public servant is in a meeting. On one occasion, a friend recounts calling at hourly intervals to be given this stock reply every time. The business of government is evidently run through meetings and if the average babu is not attending one locally, he is off to Delhi. More business liaisons are forged in the Shatabadis connecting Delhi with State capitals than in offices. Political leaders, babus, all under one Shatabadi roof, break bread with businessmen, literatti and chateratti/causeratti, in the serene comfort of the Executive Class. Warmed croissants and paneer cutlets are downed over business plans and orange juice. Meanwhile, the all-important PA naturally informs the public that the ‘Sahib Bahadur’ has gone for yet another, yes you guessed it: ‘important meeting’! All this while, decisions affecting peoples’ lives and livelihood remain in animated suspension.

All-India heads of departments meetings are occasions for batch reunions and networking that can help plan great LTCs. Several days and many meetings are spent preparing for these meetings. It would be safe to say that if such a meeting were cancelled it would probably be more productive in terms of savings effected from the cancellation, than any item on the agenda. Savings would include expenses incurred on air fare and TA/DA claims, electricity, rentals for Vigyan Bhavan, mineral water, working lunches and the stationery: slip-pad + pen combo given away at these dos.

The latest set of meetings involved free travel, free board, lodging and local sightseeing, where the bureaucrats for a change, were placed higher in precedence to even the all powerful Ministers, i.e. as Election Observers. The results of the general elections were evidence that the observers played a vital role in ensuring that the elections were conducted both freely and fairly. But significantly, several airlines bottom-line should have received a healthy boost with EC’s “watchdogs” criss-crossing across the country to take observer meetings.

There is a Westminster joke that in meetings politicians take hours while bureaucrats take minutes. Hence back to home base, after the meetings, there are the “minutes” to record and circulate because, “He who keeps the minutes calls the shots”. Post meetings there are implementation and status reports to monitor, but only until the next ‘review’ meeting. It helps that bureaucrats work for an employer without a balance sheet. No other organisation has an inflating debit side without any corresponding addition to topline or bottomline: partly the reason why most States have yawning budgetary deficits.

Theodore Zeldin (1994) said that an opportunity is wasted every time a meeting has taken place and nothing has happened. But bureaucracy can make even business “best practices” come a cropper. That’s why, it is still believed that an opportunity is created everytime a meeting takes place!