Story about “bloated” UN bureaucracy

NOW, United Nation's bureaucracy is getting flak for its size and inefficiency. As more and more experts are voicing for reforms and the need to create a smarter workforce for this global body, The New York Times has published a very interesting insight of this entire debate in an article titled, “A Bloated U.N. Bureaucracy Causes Bewilderment”.

After all, the UN has five big centers — New York, Geneva, Rome, Vienna and Nairobi in addition to many more small centers. According to the article, in Geneva alone, the United Nations held 10,000 meetings in 2009, offered 632 training workshops and translated 220,000 pages of documents for its yearbooks, reports, and working papers. “But in these difficult economic times, as many countries reduce their own services, critics are asking whether there is a case for putting this army of civil servants to work in a smarter, more streamlined manner,” it argues.

What’s probably needed today is an improved version of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s initiative of late 1990s to reduce staff, cut administrative budget and weed out patronage.

Read: NY Times Story

Action and Appointments

a) G Balachandran, a 1977 batch West Bengal cadre IAS and currently additional secretary and financial advisor in the Department of Space, has been appointed as Advisor in Inter State Council Secretariat in place of Shashi Prakash, a 1976 batch MP cadre IAS who has retired.

b) Former additional chief secretary of Karnataka AKM Nayak has been selected as the state chief information commissioner of Karnataka. A three-member committee, headed by chief minister BS Yeddyurappa chose him for the top post of the Right to Information watchdog in the state. Ex-IAS officer D Thangaraj and ex-IPS officer MR Poojar have also been selected to be information commissioners.

c) An RTI activist has written to the Prime Minister and the CBI questioning the appointment of Ratnakar Gaikwad as the chief secretary of Maharashtra. It was alleged that Gaikwad was the commissioner of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) when it gave the Adarsh building in Mumbai an occupation certificate (OC) on September 16, 2010.