Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'New NMMC Commissioner for Navi Mumbai' that was published in Newsband

New NMMC Commissioner for Navi Mumbai

(Above) New NMMC Commissioner A B Misal

(Above) Former NMMC Commissioner Dr Ramaswamy N

A B Misal is the new commissioner of Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation. He comes in the place of former NMMC commissioner Dr Ramaswamy N.

Dr Ramaswamy N has left behind an example to follow for the future NMMC commissioners. He did his job perfectly, promptly and without hurting the sentiments of those who were working under him. In other words he was a thorough diplomat. And that is what the IAS officers are expected to be.

What is IAS? It is Indian Administrative Service which means it is all about administration. These IAS officers have a lot of knowledge about administration which even the politicians under whom they have to work don’t have. The politicians have to depend heavily on these IAS officers even when it comes to applying the basics of administration.

In a democratic system we have the political leaders on one side and secretariat on the other. Those in secretariat are totally informed about what administration is. In fact, they know A-Z about administration. The political leaders are just persons who are supposed to be administrators by virtue of their being popular owing to which the public voted them to power and made them sit in Parliament or Legislative Assembly or Municipal Council or Municipal Corporation and asked them to look after the nation.

But who are the actual people who are conversant about how a nation should be looked after? The answer is IAS Officers in the Secretariat! They do all the ground works and these elected public representatives take all the credits.

There should be a clause in our Book on Constitution where the elected people’s representatives should undergo a course in Administration matters so that they don’t have to rely so very heavily upon the Secretariat. After all, people expect these public representatives to do the administrative works. Most of the people are unaware of the fact that the Secretariat does a bulk of the administration works.

Coming back to Navi Mumbai. Tukaram Mundhe was the NMMC Commissioner who was succeeded by Dr Ramaswamy N. Now Mundhe was the man who made his own decisions and policies and wouldn’t pay heed to the opinions of the public representatives. Yes, we sometimes find such IAS officers who do their job in a way they think is right. But such IAS officers are rarely liked by the public representatives who will go to any extent to get him replaced by a ‘Yes, Minister!’ type of IAS officers. We had Sheshan as Election Commissioner who did what he thought was right. This man was loved by the public but hated by most public representatives.

So now we will have to wait and see as to which category the new NMMC Commissioner belongs to. Will he go about with his own decisions and policies or will he go by the dictates of the public representatives? In other words, he has to choose between functioning like Tukaram Mundhe or like Dr. Ramaswamy N. But remember one thing: a person like Tukaram Mundhe is rarely found.