In a bid to curb the tendency among bureaucrats belonging to the All-India Services (AIS), including Indian Admini-trative Service (IAS) officers, to overstay on inter-cadre deputation for personal gains (location or otherwise), the government has decided to make the process of granting extension much harder. The Cabinet Committee on Appointment headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has in a meeting directed the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to set out...

Non-performing officers in the elite civil services -- IAS, IFS and IPS -- may be asked to pack up leaving space for "performers" if a plan to review their performance once they cross 50 years takes shape. Indicating that officers could be compulsorily retired for non-performance, home minister P Chidambaram said on Wednesday that there was a strong case for conducting a review of officials after they attain the age...

The novelist and critic, C.S. Lewis, said he had no time for those who thought that since they had read a book once, they had no need to read it again. The great works of literature were to read again and again. The urge to go back to a book was prompted sometimes by aesthetics, the desire to savour once more its artful or elegant prose; and, at other times,...

CITIES MAKE one simple promise to newcomers: Sacrifice yourself to me and your children shall prosper. This promise drew Ahmed Raza, a small-time wrestler from an Uttar Pradesh village and millions like him to the capital of newly-independent India. Raza kept his part of the bargain, yet half a century later, his daughter was pushed out of the city her father helped build, the only home she has known. “I...

SOMETIMES, TO accentuate the intransigence of the present, one must revisit the past. So first, a flashback. The year is 2006. An ordinary November evening in Delhi. A slow, halting voice breaks into your consciousness. “How shall I explain? It is not a punishment, but my bounden duty…” A haunting phrase in a haunting voice, made slow with pain yet magnetic in its moral force. “My bounden duty.” What could...