Governance

KEY POINTS

Cooling off period

·        Bureaucrats serve a cooling off period after they retire and before they can join a private firm.

·        As per rules for the all-India services, officials undergo a “cooling-off period” for a year.

Significance of cooling off period

·        Senior bureaucrats occupy key policymaking positions in the government.

·        The cooling-off period is a way to reduce any possible conflict of interest.

·        But it ensures their right to take up an employment of choice in the future.

Concerns

·        Government permission is to be sought for post-retirement commercial employment, if the job is taken up within 1 year of leaving office.

·        Individual bureaucrats can apply for waivers from the "cooling-off period".

·        For example, Ex-foreign secretary Mr.Jaishankar had recently sought a waiver after he had been offered a position in the Tata Group. He has been offered waiver.

·        This leads to questioning the discretion of the government on such decisions.

·        There are many other examples over the past decades of such discretion being applied.

·        It is not a credible practice for these choices to be made discretionarily on case by case.

·        Well-laid procedure is in place for processing proposals to grant such permission to officers who retire as joint secretary and above.

·        This is to ensure that grant of such permission does not depend on the discretion of the government of the day.

·        But the recent decisions leave scope for doubting the rationality.

Suggestions

·        Sticking to the rules is essential to maintaining the proper distance between policymaking and corporate interests.

·        There were demands to extend the cooling-off period.

·        Importantly, it called for adhering to a mandatory one-year cooling-off period without exception.

·        These reforms could be considered for implementation, to establish the credibility in the working of executive offices.