Sleepless in New Delhi

Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s penchant for starting his day early is giving his colleagues sleepless nights. The FM’s instruction to report for work before 9 a m has, apparently, caused such anxiety among some officials that they find themselves waking up in the middle of the night just to check the time and make sure the clock hasn’t struck 9. The fact that the FM has little patience with latecomers only adds to their nervousness. The minister is also learnt to have asked all bureaucrats to use the biometric machine to record their “in” and “out” times. According to an official, some senior bureaucrats were not doing so earlier but the FM insisted that if the juniors could, why couldn’t the seniors.