Amma gone, table clogged, busy days for officers in Tamil Nadu

to hospital, she earned a reputation for sitting on decisions from the biggest to the smallest, clearing only a fraction of the files that were sent to her each day.

“The files that have got stuck with her could well be in the hundreds,” said a bureaucrat. “You could never tell when a file would come back. Sometimes it would return in a year, sometimes it could take two.”

The only time that officials recall files turning around quickly was before the 2016 elections, when as many as two dozen files would be listed on a sheet of paper, along with the subject line, all with Jayalalithaa’s initials at the bottom.

After coming to power in 2006, she reversed a system of delegation of powers that her predecessor M Karunanidhi had set up. Officials say her highly centralised system of functioning held up decisions ranging from financial clearance for small projects requiring a couple of crores of rupees to big multi-crore ones, to sanctions for vehicles in a government office in a district, and promotions and appointments of officials.

The hospitalisation only worsened the situation. The last two months were just a “holding operation”, officials said, in which only routine work got done.

“If it gave the appearance of a welloiled machine from the outside, it was in cool-down mode inside,” said one official.

Chief Minister O Paneerselvam’s first challenge, said several bureaucrats The Indian Express spoke to, would be to clear his in-box of the backlog he has inherited from his mentor. Bureaucrats who have worked with him in his two previous stints as Chief Minister are hopeful that he will turn out to be a quicker decision-maker than his mentor.

“If he attends office daily and focuses on this task for, he can even do it within three weeks or a month,” said one official.

Among the big decisions that the new government has to take is on framing its position on the structure of the tax rate and compensation when GST is implemented, issues on which the Centre and States are yet to come to an agreement. The AIADMK is also the only party that did not make any statement on the now one-month-old demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, although the party’s MPS took part in an Opposition protest in New Delhi.

Though there is still uncertainty and concern in the bureaucracy on what role Sasikala will play in the new set-up, officials said they expect wider and deeper consultation between the political government and officials on big-ticket policy issues such as GST and Tamil Nadu’s position on NEET, the combined medical entrance test.

Officials said the inexperience of the new set in administration and governance is both a challenge, as well as an opportunity for bureaucrats to play a more active role than they have done in the last six years. Bureaucrats are anticipating, at least in the near term, a far greater role in decision-making. As CM, Jayalalithaa made the decisions, and expected officials to support and implement them.

“The new chief minister could turn out to be more of a consensus builder,” said an official who has worked with him in the past.

Tamil Nadu officials also anticipate that Sheela Balakrishnan, the retired IAS official who Jayalalithaa appointed as her advisor in March 2014, will step down or withdraw from her role, to restore the position of the Chief Secretary as the State’s highest-decision making official.

“History will remember her positively it if she leaves now,” said one of her colleagues, predicting that it was widely expected that she would do so as an officer with high reputation of personal integrity.

Already Chief Secretary Rama Mohana Rao, whose office was “a big zero” in Jayalalithaa’s time, is seen as having become more assertive over the last two days, said his colleagues in the administration. He was active during the funeral arrangements for Jayalalithaa and during Paneerselvam’s late-night swearing in on December 5.

Balakrishnan, who was a low-profile official with an unexceptional career before her retirement, drew her power over the Tamil Nadu bureaucracy only from Jayalalithaa, keeping a wide berth from Sasikala during the two years that she became the late CM’S eyes and ears on the administration.

In a decision-making process that had become opaque and restricted, she was also the bridge between officials and the chief minister. “She has no connection with the present lot. She might not wish to work with them, and they may also not want to work with her,” said a former colleague, describing her as a “workaholic with no personal agenda and a person of high integrity”, who had learnt to read Jayalalithaa’s mind.