Administrators Wanted ; a Booming Infrastructure Sector has India Scrambling for Indian Administrative Service Officers and the Latter, in Turn, Scrambling for Plum Jobs.

Summary

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Sudha Bhave. A. Ramakrishna. Rajeeva Sinha. Sonia Sethi. Mahesh Pathak. Jayant Kawale. Prabhakar Karandikar. Important as the people behind the names are-all once held modestly senior positions in the Maharashtra government; Kawale, for instance, was Principal Secretary, Energy, and had served as Chairman of the State Electricity Board; Sinha was Transport Secretary-it is unlikely too many people have heard of them. Still, arrayed thus, in a series of seven, the names represent the beginning of a very significant trend. Since late last year, these senior bureaucrats have quit, or taken a sabbatical (or applied to do the same) from government service, and have signed on with the private sector. And five of them have landed plum jobs in companies in sectors such as transport and logistics, construction, and infrastructure.

There are other examples, from states other than Maharashtra, like that of Rajeev Talwar, who recently resigned as Additional Director General, Ministry of Tourism, and signed on as Executive Director, DLF, and Ravi Kant, who, in June this year, resigned as Labour Commissioner, West Bengal government, and joined Hyderabad's Ramky Group as Vice Chairman. Still, it seems only apt that Maharashtra, the most industrialised state in the country-its seat of governance is Mumbai, India's commercial capital-be the one to feel the pinch of one of the most happening trends in India Inc., that of Indian Administrative Service officers leaving government service for private companies, largely in the hotter-than-hot businesses of SEZs (special economic zones), energy, and transport.

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Administrators Wanted ; a Booming Infrastructure Sector has India Scrambling for Indian Administrative Service Officers and the Latter, in Turn, Scrambling for Plum Jobs.

The phenomenon of IAS officers moving to the private sector isn't new. Yet, spurred by the boom in sectors such as transport, infrastructure, and SEZ-mania (at last count, the government had given in-principle approval to 164), all areas where bureaucrats have more experience than private sector managers and come with the additional skill of being able to manage the regulatory regime- after all, not too long ago, they were the regulatory regime-India Inc. is targeting the IAS. "The number of requests f...

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