In a general sense, the term secretary in government does not exude power
Briefly stated, mnemonics is said to be a system for assisting and improving the memory. Within the science of mnemonics, some methods use images, others use rhyme, and there are even some that use a simple catch phrase. Students of mathematics are known to use the expression ‘Please excuse my dear Aunty Sally’ shortened to PEMDAS to remember the order of operations in mathematics which is parenthesises, exponents, multiplication, division, addition and subtraction. Similarly, teachers are known to set the ABCs to music to help young children remember the alphabet. Decades ago, when the film actress Madhuri Dixit danced to ‘Ek do teen’ she inadvertently provided mnemonic assistance to children in schools across India trying to memorise numbers in Hindi.
Everyone knows that the Indian Administrative Service is extremely hierarchical, and this is also true for most government jobs. Rank, designation and year of joining the service are extremely important. Within the United Nations officials are often on a first name basis, but Indian bureaucrats are known to keep ‘sirring’ each other.
For this reason, it is necessary for those having to deal with IAS bureaucrats working for the central government to clearly understand from their designations who is at the top of the pecking order and who is at the bottom. Across ministries the commonly used designations are secretary, additional secretary, joint secretary, deputy secretary and under-secretary.
The terms themselves are terribly vague, and do not offer any clue as to the importance of the official. For instance, although an additional secretary is a much more important official than a joint secretary, in no way does the word ‘additional’ suggest superiority over the word ‘joint’? Rather the terms would appear to be synonymous. Similarly, anyone not familiar with the IAS hierarchy could falsely assume from the use of the term ‘deputy’ that a deputy secretary is the number two in the department junior only to the secretary himself. The truth of the matter is however that far from being number two a deputy secretary alias a director is at the lower end of the bureaucratic chain outranking only the under-secretary.
Whether it be the CEO or Managing Director of a corporate entity, an industrialist or the common citizen they all need to know the hierarchy or they may get their wires crossed with inimical consequences for themselves and the organisation they represent. How can people make sure they don’t forget which designation outranks the other? Aside from the time-honoured practice used in school classrooms across the world of writing down something a hundred times to make sure that it is not forgotten, there is, thankfully, another easier way. The science of mnemonics can come to the rescue.
All a person needs to do is to remember a short, pithy sentence that may have more than a grain of truth to it. This is: SECRETARIES ARE JUST DAMN USELESS.
The first letter of each word in that short statement will indicate the hierarchy that is followed within the Indian Administrative Services. So, for instance the first letter of the first word in the sentence is an ‘s’ which indicates to us that a secretary is the most important bureaucrat in the system. The next word is ‘are’ and ‘a’ which is its first letter gives us the clue that an additional secretary is the next most important official. ‘Just’ is the third word which tells us that a joint secretary is just below a deputy secretary. Moving on in our use of the chosen phrase, the ‘d’ in ‘damn’ will let us know it is a deputy secretary who comes just below the joint secretary. Incidentally, the rank of a deputy secretary is often that of a director. The ‘d’ will work in both eventualities. Finally, the ‘u’ in ‘useless’ will indicates to us that the humble under-secretary is the lowest official within the pecking order. A clue for this may be found in the word ‘under’ used in under-secretary which may suggest that this is an official who is ‘under’ everyone else.
Such confusion is by no means confined to the civil servants. In the Indian Army, for instance, in days gone by, the lowest rank for an officer used to be a second lieutenant followed by a lieutenant. A lieutenant himself is subordinate to a captain who is turn is outranked by a major. The rank of a second lieutenant is now longer in use; an officer is commissioned as a lieutenant.
Members of the general public who are unfamiliar with the military hierarchy in the country may be surprised to learn that a captain is subordinate to a major but that is because of the association the term ‘captain’ has in other walks of life, such as being the captain of a ship or the captain of a cricket or football team.
Anyhow, given that a lieutenant is clearly subordinate to a major, many of us may erroneously deduce from this that that surely if the rank of lieutenant is much junior to that of a major, a lieutenant general too must surely be a less important rank as compared with a major general. The reverse of this is true, and in fact a lieutenant general outranks a major general. According to some reports there are less than two hundred lieutenant generals in the Indian Army and nearly six hundred major generals.
The Secretary in the Indian Administrative Service is an immensely powerful creature. Yet, in a general sense, the term itself does not exude power, possibly because the term ‘secretary’ is also used for someone who may be a very junior employee such as the secretary to a lawyer, a judge or even the CEO of a company. It is for this reason that when Mr Ban Ki-moon became Secretary General of the United Nations some years ago, recognising this ambiguity, there were critics that referred to him as ‘more secretary, and less general.’
Rajesh Talwar, the author of thirty-nine books spanning multiple genres, has served the United Nations for over two decades across three continents. His most recent book is titled ‘The Boy Who Fought an Empire.’