Vij (top), Padmanabhaiah

New Delhi, Jan.1 : CEOs may be looking for early exits but not India’s 60-plus babus. For them, retirement is just a stepping stone to the next government job.

The lure of a bungalow, a plush office, a white car with a red light, sarkari gardeners and a monthly honorarium of Rs 30,000 — plus all the other freebies — is enough to keep the old guard going strong.

And that’s the way the government wants it.

Delhi is re-employing retired bureaucrats left, right and centre while claiming to reduce expenditure. The jobs, many feel, could have been done by their juniors who are fretting at the lack of promotion opportunities.

The National Disaster Management Authority, which obviously needs men with quick minds capable of prompt action, is headed by General N.C. Vij, who retired in January 2005.

IPS officer K.M. Singh, whose stint as Central Industrial Security Force director-general ended in April 2005, has joined it again as a member with the status of a minister of state.

Another IPS officer, Anil Chaudhary, who retired as special secretary in the home ministry last year, is back as chief of the National Technical Research Organisation, which has taken over the Aviation Research Centre run by the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

Then there is the battery of interlocutors. N.N. Vohra (retired as home secretary in 1994) is in charge of Kashmir; K. Padmanabhaiah, who retired as home secretary in 1997, handles the Naga rebels; retired foreign service official Satender K. Lambah is the Prime Minister’s special envoy for the Indo-Pak dialogue. Chinmay Gharekhan, another retired foreign service official, is the emissary for West Asia.

It is the same picture in the commissions. If retired IFS officer Hamid Ansari heads the National Minority Commission, retired IAS officer Pratyush Sinha is at the helm of the Central Vigilance Commission.

Sinha bagged the job for three years the day he retired as personnel and training secretary last June. Former CBI director P.C. Sharma is member of the National Human Rights Commission.

Governors’ posts, of course, have long been up for grabs for former Intelligence Bureau and RAW chiefs, retired army generals and former home secretaries.

Promising young and middle-level bureaucrats can go on complaining that their promotions are stuck.