PM Modi is inviting criticism, literally. Here’s why

If you thought Prime Ministers cannot be evaluated, Narendra Modi is going to change your perspective. Modi has asked the Union Secretaries to criticize him openly and freely as he is looking forward to an honest mid-term critique of the government policies. He has also asked them to provide honest feedbacks and ratings so that he can come up with a roadmap for 2019-the next general elections.

He also invited innovative ideas regarding Budget 2017-18.

About 10 groups of secretaries have been created and are entrusted with job of preparing reports on many sectoral themes, which includes education, energy, environment, communications, urban development, finance, corporate affairs, transport, agriculture, governance and crisis management, in a month.

"The PM wants a stringent scrutiny of all major policies, programmes, schemes and projects launched in these (above given) sectors by his government. He wants constructive criticism, so that it can improve the status of implementation of the policy and benefit the target audience. The novelty is inclusion of states and joint secretaries at Centre in the consultations as well as young officers of 2012 batch onwards. Yeh aapke anubhav ka pura nichod hona chahiye, PM told us,” a secretary told ET.

Even on Diwali, some of the secretaries were constantly on their phones, working to discuss policy initiatives and emerging trends and challenges in sectors the PM desires.

The deadline for the group is November end as the Budget presentation date has been advanced and the report by them should also include the answer of What ahead in the next 2.5 years' and implementation strategies up to 2018-19.

"PM does not want the results of the exercise to be limited to the upcoming Budget but wants them to impact policies till 2019. All policy announcements have already been done - be it Swachh Bharat, Ease of Doing Business, Digital India etc.,” a person in Prime Minister Office told ET.

In a meeting held between PM and the secretaries, Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha presented slides on the reports given by eight groups of secretaries earlier this year.

"The PM was all praise for the effort put in by secretaries in the last lap... 'almost 10,000 hours in all were spent by the secretaries then to prepare the reports by showing relentless energy' - the Cabinet Secretary said,” another secretary asking anonymity told ET.