Having nudged bureaucrats last month toward sharper meetings, Cabinet Secretary T.V. Somanathan has now taken aim at a habit that runs deeper: the quiet conviction among senior officers that if a job must be done well, it must be done by them.
In a candid letter accompanying a “Guide on the Art of Delegating Work,” Somanathan argues that India’s administrative machinery can become efficient, responsive, and future-ready only if officers learn to trust their teams.
“We are not very comfortable in delegating important work to subordinates,” he admits — a hesitation most officers would recognise even if few would confess to it. The fear is that juniors may botch the work, misuse the authority, or embarrass the government. Experience, he suggests, tells a different story: a person taking a decision on their own is usually more careful than one merely recommending it upward for someone else to sign.
The guide opens with a disarmingly domestic analogy — a parent entrusting a child to a nanny, or sending someone else to buy the groceries. Same hours, more output.
The biggest obstacle, it says, is the belief that “only I can handle this work properly.” The guide dispatches this notion briskly: someone did the work before you, and someone else will do it after you are transferred. “You are not indispensable” — a line that stings only because it is true.
Officers hesitate, the guide finds, for three reasons: doubts about subordinates’ competence, doubts about their integrity, and uncertainty about how to delegate without losing control.
On that last point, it draws a careful distinction: what gets delegated is authority, not accountability. If delegated work goes wrong, “the fact that you delegated it is no excuse” — the senior officer remains answerable. Delegation is not abdication; supervision continues, calibrated to the task’s sensitivity and the subordinate’s competence.
Somanathan is equally alert to the mirror-image problem: subordinates who, even after receiving formal powers, keep trotting upstairs for approval, “fully bred into the mindset of playing safe.” To shake both sides loose, he invokes John A. Shedd: a ship is safest in the harbour, but that is not what ships are built for. What he wants instead is “a culture of trust where the delegator and the delegatee act in unison to achieve a common goal.”
The practical advice is concrete: match the right tasks to the right people, hand over whole projects rather than scraps of routine work, spell out expectations, provide adequate authority and resources, and keep communication open. Micromanagers are warned off — supervision means checking work after delegated authority has been exercised, not hovering while it is. And on “reverse delegation,” the subtle art by which subordinates return decisions to their seniors’ desks, the guide is memorably blunt: “Do not allow the ‘monkey’ to leap from your subordinate’s back to yours.”
Beyond efficiency, Somanathan frames delegation as an investment in leadership. Governments are seen as slow even as officers complain of overwork — a paradox that delegation, done with calculated risk and proper supervision, can resolve. Done well, it is “thrice blessed”: improving efficiency, freeing senior officers’ scarce time, and building the capability of those below them. Effective delegation, the guide reminds readers, creates successors, not just lighter workloads.
The suggestions are non-binding, and official instructions override any conflicting guidance. The advisory follows Somanathan’s June 12 note on effective meetings — the Cabinet Secretary, it seems, is working through the bureaucracy’s oldest habits one gentle reform at a time.