North Block officials may have SRK, Gavaskar for company

Mandarins of the finance ministry are taking a break from the usual work, and they may have Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan and Indian cricket’s little master Sunil Gavaskar for company. Amid the hustle and bustle of Budget preparations, the officials of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) will re-energise themselves for the last lap at their annual retreat near Sohna in Haryana.

For three days, January 6-8, they will take a complete break from the routine work in North Block and brainstorm on various offbeat issues, besides indulging in a few recreational activities. The finance ministry is trying to rope in Khan for the celebrity session and Gavaskar for a panel discussion on cricket.

“There will be yoga sessions in the morning to de-stress officials. Also, there will be games like tug-of-war and a cricket match among officials. The idea is to refresh them ahead of their hectic schedule before the Budget,” a finance ministry official told Business Standard.

More than 70 officers of the rank of deputy secretary and above will be part of the retreat, which may also have lectures by eminent personalities like India Today’s editorial director M J Akbar. Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh is also likely to chair a panel discussion.

It was in January 2008 that DEA had first gone for an off-site retreat to Surajkund, when the then finance secretary D Subbarao decided to make P Chidambaram, finance minister at that time, accessible to the officials of the ministry.

Reflecting the theme of the retreat ‘Improving the Way We Work’, about 50 officers of the department had brainstormed on their vision of the emerging role of DEA in the fast-changing economic situation and how they might best contribute to that vision.

The retreat had seen several sessions on team building.

At the 2009 retreat, the ministry had invited filmmaker Shekhar Kapur to hold a workshop on cinema in Sohna.

In 2010, when the economy was struggling to recover from the effects of the global financial meltdown, Bollywood actor Aamir Khan was invited for the retreat in Faridabad. Fresh from box office success of his ‘3 Idiots’, he assured the officials ‘All izz well’ in his celebrity session on ‘Cinema and Society’.

That year, the ministry had kept the expenses at the bare minimum and chose a reasonably-priced location as part of its austerity drive. It was learnt that Aamir Khan did not charge anything and his visit was a “goodwill gesture”.