Post-Cabinet, get ready for training, officers told

After the Cabinet is expanded, all ministers and secretaries will be sent to an orientationcum-training programme at the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, regarding their roles, powers and responsibilities.

The programme will include getting the ministers acquainted with rules and regulations, business rules of secretariat, budget-making procedures, and priorities as well as the state and national economy, according to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao who ordered the measure.

He was speaking at a review meeting on preparations ahead of the visit of the 15th Finance Commission. The CM instructed finance department officers to prepare a comprehensive memorandum highlighting the state’s requirements.

He felt that the Finance Commission should think of leveraging the economy, and its role has to be changed and its functioning should not be routine. He said there was no qualitative change over the decades, and it was time to introspect on this.

Mr Rao said, “The Finance Commission visits states with pre-occupied notions. They come with pre-occupied ideas. It’s better the Finance

Commission becomes a policy-formulating body.”

He said devolution of funds was the right of the states. “There is a lot of diversity with regard to the states’ requirements,”

Mr Rao said.

He said, “The broad fiscal policy lies with the Government of India. Whatever they are supposed to devolve, they have centralised. I have told the Niti Ayog in one of the meetings that the Centre should not come in the way of growing states. The growth of the state should be considered as the growth of country.”

He expressed unhappiness that the people were disappointed with the policies of governments. Two political systems had failed the nation, he said.

■ OFFICIALS ASKED to work out modalities for modernising agriculture, including research facilities in universities and to also take into consideration how the concept of food processing units can be taken forward.