Merge BDA & BCC and you have Jerome for free

bangalore: just when we thought shantanu consul would do something to elevate bangalore's small-town infrastructure to metro standards, comes the news that he's all set to flee. can't blame him really. mayor prema cariappa might be charming but what about the rest of the caboodle? poor guy, his kannada ain't too hot. he made some tentative forays into the big bad city and just gave up.``i want 30 days leave. i got a wedding to attend,'' he told somanahalli mallaiah krishna. the cm avaru forgot his backhand for a moment and said, ``cut that down to ten.'' but consul didn't budge. so that man for all seasons jayakar jerome who has given the bda a new dignity, has been given temporary additional charge of the bcc. the batf and krishna's think tank must grab this opportunity and just merge the two gargantuan organisations. or alternatively, find somebody else to run the already-smooth functioning bda and just let jaykar loose amongst genus rattus, order rodentia. it sure is a ludicrous state of affairs that krishna has to borrow an ias officer from one agency and put him in charge of two. aren't there enough upright and visionary iaswallahs to turn bangalore into a truly modern millennium city? if there are, perhaps it's time for the ias officer's association to take a delegation to the vidhana soudha and make very clear that some of them want to stand up and be counted. all the brouhaha that surrounds the appointment or transfer of the bcc commissioner must stop. it's just another job. and since it involves the very prestige of the capital city - must be handled by a person who means business. instead there's politics rife in the highest echelons of the ias in namma kannada nadu. the seniormost officers, many of whom have had piffling track records are busy jockeying for the post of chief secretary which will fall vacant later this month. no wonder the bureaucracy is in a state of flux. fairly decent officers have been dispatched to tumbuctoo, the more-or-less okay put in charge of pisciculture, silviculture, dryland development and the like, and the really top-notch posted to agencies where they are confronted with the very dregs of the political establishment. like the bcc. consul's run away. jaykar's sure got to meet prema. the coming days will reveal who will lay out the tea and sympathy. unless of course, jaykar relishes pandhi curry and votti. allenmendonca1@indiatimes.com