NEW DELHI: In an indication of how consultants and private domain experts have become crucial for govt entities, only the housing and urban affairs ministry has engaged 112 such persons for its flagship programmes. The ministry spends around Rs 2.3 crore per month to pay salaries to these outsourced manpower, with some of them taking home between Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 5 lakh, as per the details submitted by the ministry to Rajya Sabha.
A maximum of 30 consultants have been engaged in the PM SVANidhi scheme, which was rolled out to provide subsidised loans to street vendors during the Covid-19 lockdown to help them restart their business. The programme has now been extended and expanded to bring the beneficiaries under social security and other welfare nets.
In the written reply to a question from TMC lawmaker Saket Gokhale, the ministry has submitted informd the Upper House that 18 and 16 consultants and experts have been engaged for the Smart City Mission and PM Awas Yojna (Urban) schemes respectively.
A former secretary in the central govt told TOI that while engaging consultants for different schemes and programmes brings new ideas and better management of information flow, in recent years there has been over dependence of govt agencies on big consultancy firms. “That is a concern. The institutional knowledge that officers should have is now less. Officers are depending on the consultancy firms for presentations to even cabinet proposals,” he said.
He added the total number of such professionals hired by govt entities and their subsidiaries will be huge.
The issue of govt departments over dependence on consultants had also come up at a meeting of all secretaries chaired by PM Narendra Modi, officials said. They added that the PM had even talked about how the country’s top bureaucrats have enough experience of handling diverse issues to deliver the best and whether they need to look at consultants.
