``It was only to give a jhatka (shock),'' was how Industries Minister Murasoli Maran explained away the DMK's withdrawal ultimatum. But though Maran, V.P. Singh and even Prime Minister I.K. Gujral were aware that M. Karunanidhi contemplated administering shock treatment to the UF, its timing and manner were left entirely to the DMK supremo.Karunanidhi chose to drop his bombshell on the same day that Jayalalitha and DMK rebel V. Gopalasamy of the MDMK were to meet formally for forging their anti-DMK tie-up. Karunanidhi's announcement pushed the news of the Jayalalitha-Gopalasamy meeting into the inside pages of the newspapers, which was his design.Incidentally, Karunanidhi's nephew Maran, who had just returned from London where he met V.P. Singh in hospital, was asked to fly to Delhi and meet the PM the same night. The presumption is that Maran was carrying the resignation letters of the DMK MPs with him, but when he reached Delhi he got a call from Madras and his appointment with Gujral was postponed till the next day. Probably, Karunanidhi relented and decided that the fragile UF would not be able to withstand such a high-voltage shock as the dispatch of actual resignation letters!Competent, but Under-Paid A case for paying the country's higher civil services better comes from the World Bank Development Report 1997. The report, while praising the method of recruitment and efficiency of the Indian civil servant, laments that the high standard set by the elite Indian Civil Services (ICS) has deteriorated due to frequent transfers and low salaries.Senior government servants in India remain among the lowest paid in the world. Small wonder, then, that most honest bureaucrats today aspire not to become Union Cabinet Secretary but to do a stint with an international agency preferably the World Bank or the UN for a year or two to build up a nest egg for post-retirement life.At present, a full secretary to the Government of India gets around Rs 17,000 all told monthly, whereas if the secretary went on a deputation to a UN agency or its equivalent, he would be paid around Rs 4,50,000 monthly. In fact, a secretary's salary is pegged so low that even the lowliest clerk in the UN salary structure gets more than him.After the Pay Commission implementation, a full secretary's salary will increase to around Rs 26,000 per month which is certainly not on par with comparable jobs in Indian industry and far removed from international standards. In the debate on eradicating corruption, surprisingly, no one points out the obvious, that a well paid bureaucrat would be less likely to succumb to temptation.Watching KesriAt a recent meeting of senior level foreign intelligence officers in Delhi, the subject most discussed was not terrorism or caste and communal violence in the country but a profile of Sitaram Kesri. It seems foreign intelligence agencies are calculating that he is the man most likely to succeed Gujral as Prime Minister. Interestingly, of late, more ambassadors and visiting foreign dignitaries have been calling on Kesri rather than former Prime Ministers P.V. Narasimha Rao and A.B. Vajpayee. Rao's RevengeFormer CBI Director Joginder Singh may boast that his proposed book will fetch him a million dollars, but the novel which is really going to create waves is former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao's book The Insider. Penguin will be releasing the political novel in September and several publications have contracted to print extracts at fees running into six digits. The book has taken eight years to complete and is bound to set off a guessing game in Delhi as to whom Rao is referring to when he refrains from using the real names.An extract of a rather torrid chapter reportedly on the author's love life was published earlier by a weekly and created quite a flutter. The controversial chapter hasn't been expunged from the final version. Since Rao had given senior journalist Nikhil Chakravartty the document to vet, the earlier leak is attributed to him.Not so HolyThe glow of Information and Broadcasting Minister Jaipal Reddy's halo has dimmed somewhat in recent weeks. Insiders in the ministry claim that actually the new minister interferes far more in news selection on the government media than his predecessor C.M. Ibrahim.The way Doordarshan handled news relating to the Janata Dal presidential election made it amply clear with which side Reddy and the Prime Minister's sympathies lay. TV was so biased in favour of the Laloo faction that when the first official press conference of Sharad Yadav's supporter Devendra Yadav was reported, he was described as a `` JD dissident.'' When DD reported a scuffle between the RPF force and the Bihar state police over putting a cordon outside Laloo Yadav's house in Patna, Laloo supporter M.A. Fatmi, MP, on the minister's instructions, was given considerable time on TV to refute the incident.
