Andhra withdraws order to rename award after Kalam

HYDERABAD: The YS Jagan Mohanled Andhra Pradesh government seems to have tied itself in knots over yet another renaming. A day after redesignating ‘ Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Pratibha Puraskar Awards’ as ‘YSR Vidya Puraskars’, the government hastily withdrew the order on Tuesday following criticism from various quarters.

A government order released on Monday announced that the awards were being renamed after former chief minister and Jagan Mohan’s father YS Rajashekar Reddy or YSR , who died in a plane crash in 2009.

“The government has ordered to re-designate the ‘Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Pratibha Puraskar Awards’ as ‘YSR Vidya Puraskars’ from 2019 onwards for distribution on the occasion of birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as National Education Day on November 11, 2019,” read an order tweeted by news agency ANI. But, on Tuesday the order was rescinded by chief minister Jagan Mohan who issued instructions for its withdrawal.

The revoking of the order followed harsh criticism from Opposition parties. Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu tweeted, “Dr Kalam has accomplished much for the nationwith his inspiring life. @ysjagan’s govt changing ‘APJ Abdul Kalam Pratibha Puraskar’ to ‘YSR Vidya Puraskar’ is a shocking method of self-aggrandisement at the cost of disrespecting a much venerated man.”

At the conclusion of an unsatisfactory meeting to review the government’s “Ek Bharat, Sheshtra Bharat” programme on October 12, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the top bureaucrats present at the meeting that they had spoiled his first fiveyear tenure but that he would not allow them to spoil the second. “Apne mere paanch saal barbad kiye hai, main apko agle paanch s a a l b a r b a d nahi n kar ne doonga,” he said, according to people present in the meeting, holding the bureaucracy responsible for delays in programme implementation.

Since its conception by then home minister Sardar Patel, the Indian bureaucracy has largely moved from a national to a selfserving agenda in which the focus is on processes, not outcomes. There is no penalty for acts of omission, although acts of commission are often questioned with a significant number of officers under the scanner for corruption and malfeasance. The once steel frame of Indian governance architecture has rotted with each service operating within its own silo and ready to go to war within the government to protect its own haloed turf.

The Modi government’s decision to hold a common foundation course for all Group A services