New Delhi:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has told civil servants to throw out dusty files, clear clutter from corridors and, sources add, he may even demand that they work a six-day week.
The apparatchiks? They are apparently loving it.
Within days of taking office, Mr Modi, 63, issued 10 administrative commandments. The first: Build Up Confidence in the Bureaucracy.
"This is unprecedented. Power has been shifted," said Suhaib Ilyasi, editor of Bureaucracy Today, a professional journal.
"The bureaucrats are feeling happy - even though they will have to work harder," added Ilyasi. In a readers' poll, more than 70 percent backed the PM's shakeup.
It's a huge turnaround for a state apparatus that, despite recruiting its top cadres through tough competitive examinations, has been ranked Asia's worst by one political risk consultancy.
In a two-pronged attack, the PM has targeted slovenliness in government offices - often grimy places with chewed-paan stains on walls, dirty toilets, discarded furniture and rotting files clog corridors.
In an edict , the PM demanded "hygiene and cleanliness". Offices must be "cleared and spruced up"; and forms should be no longer than one page.
Change has been dramatic at government buildings across the colonial-era heart of New Delhi. Outside the Agriculture Ministry, unused files and old computers were piled up to be taken to a junk yard. Missing ceiling tiles have been replaced in passageways to cover loose cables.
The Health Ministry issued a statement saying that 35 steel cabinets, three water coolers and 40 chairs had been cleared from its corridors. The Ministry of Women and Child Development has launched an tender to auction off "obsolete/unusable/unserviceable items".
The PM also wants bureaucrats to think creatively and take risks to overcome administrative paralysis that set in over the past decade as the previous government became engulfed in a series of corruption scandals.
He has abolished a slew of cabinet committees, concentrated power in the Prime Minister's Office and is expected to overhaul the Planning Commission.