Cooling Off Period for Officials

What is the issue?

• Ex-foreign secretary S. Jaishankar recently joined the Tata Groups.
• The cooling-off period has been waived off for him, leading to questions on the decision.

What is a 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.
• The period was reduced from the earlier 2 years, in December 2015.
• This applies to officers of Group "A" Central Civil Services/Posts and All India Services.
• Government permission is to be sought for post-retirement commercial employment.
• This is if the job is taken up within 1 year of leaving office.

What is the significance?

• 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.

What is the present case?

• Individual bureaucrats can apply for waivers from the "cooling-off period".
• Mr.Jaishankar had reportedly written to the Prime Minister.
• He had sought a waiver after he had been offered a position in the Tata Group. He has been offered waiver.
• He is appointed in the Tata Group as its new president in charge of global corporate affairs.

What were the earlier instances?

• Former finance secretary Ashok Jha was granted a waiver to join as head of Hyundai India.
• The present government changed the provisions of the TRAI Act through an ordinance, once it was in power.
• This was done to appoint the former chairman of TRAI as the principal secretary to Prime Minister.
• The ordinance relaxed the conditions, for former TRAI's chiefs to take up an employment under the central and state governments.

What is the concern?

• 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.
• It is not a credible practice for these choices to be made discretionarily on case by case.
• But the recent decisions leave scope for doubting the rationality.

What should be done?

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

• Certain reforms in this regard were demanded by an Indian parliamentary committee in 2014.
• It indeed extended its concerns to “consultancy” or non-executive work undertaken by retired officials.
• There were also 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.

Source: Business Standard