New Delhi, June 30: Something must be the matter with the air at Shastri Bhavan, home to the Union human resource development ministry. Or it could be the airs of those who run the ministry.
A steady trickle of officials has been streaming out of the ministry since last year.
The latest example is Binita Thakur, a 1996-batch Rajasthan cadre IPS officer who is private secretary to minister Smriti Irani. Thakur's request for a transfer has been approved and she is waiting for the final order, sources said.
Thakur didn't want to comment on the reasons behind her decision to leave. But government sources spoke of a "trust deficit" between her and Irani.
Others spoke of a change of attitude, contrasting Irani's willingness in the initial weeks after her appointment as HRD minister - probably the biggest surprise among Narendra Modi's picks for cabinet - to listen and digest information with a sense of impatience since then.
But the manner in which the minister dismisses dissenting suggestions appears to have touched a raw nerve in officials and academic administrators who are either seeking more amenable postings or stepping aside altogether.
Irani was not available for comment. Most of the officials and administrators declined to comment.
But, seeking to illustrate the point, one official recalled how an academic was told "not to repeat yourself" when he demurred with a plan to upgrade an institute to the status of an IIT - a UPA habit the NDA is happy to ape although questions have been raised about its impact on the IIT brand.
Ideological differences also have played their part -- a topic some former administrators are willing to discuss.
Gopinath Ravindran, member secretary at the Indian Council of Historical Research, handed his resignation to the organisation's chairperson, Y. Sudershan Rao, two weeks ago.
Ravindran told The Telegraph he quit because of certain actions by the council after it was reconstituted in February, with several members from the Sangh-backed Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana being brought in.
Ravindran, appointed during the UPA government's tenure, had at a meeting disagreed with a proposal to disband the advisory committee to the council's journal Indian Historical Review.
Ravindran prepared the minutes of the meeting, which included his dissenting views. However, he said, chairperson Rao kept sitting on the minutes even after he wrote at least twice asking him to approve the minutes.
"I realised that there would be more disagreements in future," Ravindran said. "If I can't disagree with the council and record my disagreement, what's the point continuing as member secretary?"
Rao did not take calls from this newspaper this evening. The advisory committee was disbanded last month.
Himanshu Rai, a professor who specialises on leadership and negotiation and is dean of MISB Bocconi, a Mumbai-based B-School, had a few tips for leaders faced with unhappy juniors.
Rai said that when a leader's style makes her subordinates uncomfortable, she should "collaborate" with them.
"The government and the bureaucracy have to work together. The stakeholders must be made part of any programme or initiative," Rai, who is on leave from IIM Lucknow, said. "They should not feel they are being isolated or given unreasonable directions."
