Cabinet Secretary Somanathan’s Parting Advice: Keep Meetings Short And Purposeful

As Cabinet Secretary and senior IAS officer T V Somanathan’s tenure is scheduled to end on August 29, he pens a note on having brief meetings. Upon the conclusion of his term, the 1987-batch Tamil Nadu cadre officer will superannuate from the IAS. However, before his departure, he had decided to list some dos and don’ts. In a recent communication to all chief secretaries and the directors general of administrative training institutes, Somanathan has circulated a ‘Guide on Conducting Effective Meetings’. As a first rule, he has asked the babus to “avoid long meetings” and finish them in 30 to 60 minutes. Somanathan believes that meetings consume an inordinate part of a civil servant’s working day. Many officers themselves have told him that meetings often begin late, become overstretched and directionless, and end without any “tangible takeaways”. Somanathan’s objective, however, extends far beyond shortening meetings. The guide is, in effect, an attempt to change the culture of governance itself. Along with Somanthan’s departure, nearly 300 senior IAS officers, including some of the most powerful figures in the bureaucracy, are set to retire this year. This may trigger a massive reshuffle across the Centre and states, reshaping the top echelons of governance and opening the door for a new generation of officers. Several chief secretaries of major states and senior secretaries in crucial Union ministries are also on the retirement list, making the turnover far-reaching in both scale and impact. Uttar Pradesh alone is expected to see around 30 senior officers retire, while Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and the AGMUT cadre are also slated to lose a significant number of experienced administrators. States such as Delhi, Odisha, Haryana and Meghalaya will see their serving chief secretaries superannuate, necessitating a new succession line.