Here is your essay on the Central secretariat of India

The Central Secretariat stands for the complex of departments or ministries whose administrative heads are designated as Secretaries and whose political heads are ministers. In this Unit, we shall briefly trace the evolution of the Secretariat, and describe its structure and functions.

The tenure system and the staffing of the Secretariat will also be discussed. Under the Secretariat there is a network of agencies which are responsible for the execution of the government policies. The relation between these agen­cies and the Secretariat will also be explained in this Unit.

To begin with, the Secretariat in India referred to the office of the Governor General in British India. However, the size of the Central Secretariat and the scope of its activities have undergone consider­able change over the last two hundred years of its evolution in keeping with the changes in the aims, objectives and nature of the central government in India.

At the end of the eighteenth century the central government consisted of a Governor General and three Councilors, and the Secretariat of four departments. Each of them was under a Secretary, and there was a Chief Secretary heading them all. A hundred years later, on the eve of the Mont fort Re­forms in 1919, the Government of India consisted of a Governor General and seven members and there were nine secretarial departments. This number remained the same till the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.

Prior to 1919, the Central Government, while administering certain subjects directly like the army posts and telegraphs and railways, had by and large left the task of implementation of other subjects to the local provincial governments. A major change came in the above position with the inauguration of the reforms of 1919 which for the first time, made a division of functions between the Central and provincial governments.

Both the Central and provincial governments became responsible for both policy and administration. As a result, the role of the secretariat began to change from a merely policy-formu­lating, supervising and coordinating agency to that of an executive agency as well.

The inauguration of provincial autonomy in 1937 and the outbreak of the Second World War accelerated the above process. In consequence, there was a fourfold increase of the Central Secretariat and its total strength rose to about two hundred.

The Government of India was still struggling with the post-war problems of demobilization and re­construction, when Independence came, accompanied by the partition of the country. At its very incep­tion, therefore, the new government found itself faced with tremendous problems like rehabilitation of refugees from Pakistan, external aggression in Jammu and Kashmir, integration of princely states into the Indian Union, internal security, shortage of essential articles, at a time when there occurred serious shortage of personnel due to the British Officers returning home and many Muslim officers opting for Pakistan soon after, the adoption of the goal of a welfare state made unprecedented demands on the already over burdened administrative machinery.

At the same time, the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948 started the process of a vast expansion of the public sector, the inevitable consequence of such a vast expansion, in the functions and responsibilities of the government was a marked increase in the number of departments, and personnel thus, the number of departments in the secretariat, which stood at four in 1858. (9 in 1919, 10 in 1939, and 18 in 1947) had risen to 74 by 1994. Correspondingly has also multiplied.

Meaning

The Central Secretariat occupies a key position in Indian administration. The Secretariat refers to the conglomeration of various ministries/departments of the central government. The Secretariat works as a single unit with collective responsibility as in the case of the Council of Ministers.

Under existing rules, each secretariat department is required to consult any other department that may be interested or concerned before disposing of a case. Secretaries, thus, are secretaries to the Government as a whole and not to any particular minister.

Role

The Secretariat assists the ministers in the formulation of governmental policies. Ministers finalize poli­cies on the basis of adequate data, precedents and other relevant information.

The Secretariat makes these available to the minister, thus, enabling him to formulate policies. Secondly, the Secretariat as­sists the ministers in their legislative work too. The Secretariat prepares legislative drafts to be intro­duced in the legislature. It engages In the collection of relevant information for answering parliamentary questions, and, also, for various parliamentary committees.

Fourthly, it carries out a detailed scrutiny of a problem bringing an overall comprehensive viewpoint on it, getting approval, if required, of other lateral agencies like the Ministry of Law and the Ministry of Finance; and also, consulting other organisations concerned with a particular matter.

The Secretariat is the clearing house preliminary to governmental decisions. Fifthly it functions as the main channel of communication between the govern­ment and other concerned agencies like the Planning Commission, Finance Commission, etc. And lastly, the Secretariat also ensures that field offices execute, with efficiency and economy, the policies and decisions of the Government.