Govt's Plan B to keep working during lockdown

NEW DELHI: It was an office memorandum with an innocuous title: “Preventive measures to contain the spread of Covid-19”’.

- Zia Haq

In reality, though, it was acritical notice —of curtailed but effective government functioning that applied not just to ministries but all public-sector undertakings and autonomous institutions.

And it detailed the government’s Plan B to Keep the business of governance going.

In these uncharted times, when whole communities have been shut down and the Union government itself is hunkering down, the country’s leaders and bureaucrats are not flying blind in the fog of a globally unprecedented pandemic.

In running a nation of its size and to remain effectively in charge, while enforcing social distancing within the government, the Centre is working off the plan.

The plan, which enforces social distancing, was vetted at multiple levels and signed off on by the two top bureaucratic establishments, the Cabinet secretariat and the ministry of personnel, according to details provided by at least five government officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

HT reviewed some routine tasks, such as agenda-setting and approvals, performed during normal times by departments, but more onerously now, to gauge how a heavy-set central government is still running its business.

The “highest priority” in day to-day administration is to “assist states”, keep some of the largest federally funded “national programmes running” and run all divisions involved in financial decision-making, one official said. Steering schemes, such as PM-KISAN in agriculture (a cash transfer scheme aimed at farmers) and metro rail under urban development ministry, has been classified as “essential”.