5 Civil Servants to Watch Out For, 2018: At No 4 is Chhattisgarh’s Strategist-in-Chief Aman Singh

WHETHER you are a staunch supporter of the BJP-run Chhattisgarh government or a fierce opponent to it, one thing you will agree in common: Aman Singh, a former Indian Revenue Service official and the principal secretary to chief minister Raman Singh is also the principal strategist of the state government. As the state will go for the crucial assembly poll later this year with the ruling party fighting 15 years of anti-incumbency, here’s the bureaucrat to watch out for. In BoI’s new list of “5 Civil Servants to Watch Out For, 2018”, Aman Singh is No 4, above new…

foreign secretary and 1981 batch Indian Foreign Service officer Vijay Keshav Gokhale (No 5). The views of bureaucrats, politicians, political analysts have been taken in drawing up this list of five bureaucrats to watch out for this year. The names of the remaining three will be revealed shortly.

So, why is Aman Singh a civil servant to watch out for, during this year? After all, he is the CM’s eyes and ears in the government and also the crucial connect between the government and the ruling party. Singh, an IRS (Customs and Central Excise) officer who first joined the Chief Minister’s Office in Raipur on a deputation, later chose to resign from the service to remain with CM Raman Singh.

And those who know politics in the Naxal-hit state will tell you how Aman Singh is the backroom boy in defusing many a crisis in the state. In 2017, for example, he had a role in ending the strike of two lakh ‘Shiksha Karmis’, something that could have potentially turned a bigger problem if it had not been tackled on time. Singh had direct roles in designing policies to increase mobile connectivity in the state (BharatNet, BastarNet and Sanchar Kranti Yojana) and then in Jan Samvaad, a first-of-its-kind initiative to seek feedback from the citizens on various government policies.

But don’t forget, many of these policies were designed in such as way that those can give the ruling party political dividends too. And the 2018 is a test year. Jan Samvaad, for example, is the government-equivalent of the corporate customer satisfaction survey, as nearly 15 lakh households are being spoken to one-on-one in local languages and dialects. Then, Sanchar Kranti Yojana, or SKY as it's called, is such an initiative that entails the distribution of 50 lakh smart phones to rural population, urban poor households and college students etc. Is it not a smart move of the state government to outreach to the homes of 50 lakh households?

Already, CM Raman Singh is the longest serving BJP chief minister in any state (2003 onward), and if he wins the coming elections scheduled for November-December 2018, his strategist-in-chief Aman Singh will possibly be the most sought-after bureaucrat not just in the state capital but in Delhi too.

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