The vast quadrangle at the centre of a sprawling complex of ministerial offices in Delhi has become a rubbish dump for broken furniture, discarded water coolers, broken air conditioners, abandoned telephones and large bags of discarded paper.
Nearby, two clerks from India's ministry of women and child welfare wheel piles of brown, bedraggled office files on swivel chairs toward a waiting van bound for the central records office. Inside, another keys into a computer the details of several more files before they too are sent for storage.
On orders from the new prime minister, bureaucrats are busy clearing rooms, corridors and staircases of the rubbish accumulated by previous administrations over the past 67 years, especially useless paper files and broken furniture.
"All ministries are supposed to review and reorganise their offices every four years, but nobody bothered, and old files and broken furniture just piled up everywhere, including in the corridors and staircases," said the clerk.
"But now that Narendra Modi has ordered it, ministers and top officers do the rounds at 9am every day, personally supervising the cleanup and reorganisation drive."
Modi has been prime minister for a month, not long enough to judge whether he can deliver on his campaign promise of good governance. But his obsession for order and cleanliness has energised bureaucrats to make their working space more presentable – and potentially more productive.
Like a stern housekeeper, he has roamed from floor to floor in government buildings, casting disapproving glances at the litter, the sloth and the lack of discipline. He found one office filled with cigarette smoke, despite "no smoking" signs everywhere. In another, he saw dirty tea cups lying around. "He just mentioned them and walked out, but it was enough for us to get the message," a bureaucrat told a reporter.
Clean, well-ordered offices is not the only thing Modi is demanding from Delhi's bureaucrats. He also wants them to come to work on time at 9am sharp, rely more on computers, end extended lunch and tea breaks to play cards in nearby parks (the junior ones) or golf at the club (an elite bunch of 200), say no to foreign junkets, be more responsive to the public and resist political interference by ministers and MPs.
The last instruction could be a potential gamechanger. The new prime minister has made it clear to the top bureaucrats in government that if they have a good proposal blocked by their minister, they can pitch it directly to him (but only in a PowerPoint format please, as Modi hates reading long files and documents).
Modi's approach may seem to undermine the cabinet system of shared ministerial authority, but it has made top civil servants enthusiastic about work after a demoralising phase under the previous regime.
"The top, secretary-level officers are feeling empowered for the first time and are hoping Modi succeeds in putting the new system in place," said Soma Chakravarthy, deputy editor of Bureaucracy Today.
For more than a decade, India's bureaucracy has been ranked as the worst in Asia by the Hong Kong-based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy. Much of the problem stems from shortsighted policies and outdated laws that entangle people in reams of red tape. But it is also to do with a work culture that shuns initiative and rewards indolence.
Delhi's bureaucrats had become too lazy even to clear the dust-laden files submerging them in a sea of decaying paper. After Modi ordered a cleanup, the home ministry discovered 150,000 unwanted files in its cupboards. One was from 1948, the year after Indian independence, and related to Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of British India. The document records the sanction of "Rs 64,000" as travel allowance to Mountbatten for his final return to Britain. The file went straight to the National Archives.
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