Letters: Redundancy of committees

Apropos the report “Rangarajan likely to act as referee” (March 27), setting up a new committee to resolve the dispute between the finance and the petroleum ministries over the proposal to price auto fuel at export parity rather than import parity will amount to procrastination. Traditionally, the Cabinet secretary resolved issues pertaining to a difference of opinion between two ministries. It was quick and had to be immediately implemented. In the case of a committee, once the report is submitted, its acceptability becomes another issue. The Cabinet secretary is the senior most civil servant, and the civil service has always obeyed him. Why can the Cabinet secretary not decide in this case? Once this tradition of dispute resolution by the Cabinet secretary is broken, there will be a committee on every issue of difference. Differences between the commerce and the finance ministries are common, and a committee to resolve their issues may be next. This is a retrograde trend from an administrative point of view. We must not forget the well-known perception that “a committee is a body of persons who individually cannot do anything but collectively can decide that nothing can be done”.

Sukumar Mukhopadhyay New Delhi

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