Neha Rao’s SOOT uses carbon black (a substance created by treating soot) to create personalised designs on a range of sustainable fabrics. Every three to six months, the factories undergo cleaning and maintenance checks and during these checks, the chimneys are cleaned and tonnes of carbon black powder are collected,” reveals Neha.  She also says that her desire to revive the dying craft of hand screen-printing further motivated her to set up SOOT in Mumbai in Antimicrobial non-woven fabric suppliers 2016.. “I make every design customisable to bolster the sustainability angle. I chose to look closely at inks and the more I researched, I realised that natural dyes are not really sustainable because they use up a lot of natural resources. Some use it as a pigment in ink, some as manure in their gardens while others mix it with natural oils to make kohl or kajal. These chimneys are fitted with filters that catch carbon black particles. After placing the order, it can take about two weeks to receive the finished product, but Neha says this is because she goes the extra mile to personalise the packaging as well. Our grandmothers used it to line our eyes, so in no way is it harmful,” avers Neha. “Several factories burn fossil fuels and the smoke passes through huge industrial chimneys.

The designer also says that the dye is extremely safe to use, is clinically tested and has good colourfastness. So, I try hard to engage the customer and ask them to select the material, colour and the designs on the garment,” shares the designer. “This waste then goes through a cleaning process, where the dust and dirt are removed and a really fine powder is acquired. She motivates her customers to use SOOT garments for longer by involving them in the decision-making process. She mostly creates shades of grey and black and uses opaque and transparent binders to manipulate the shade.While in the past, Neha mostly stuck to printing on organic silk and cotton, for the past six months she has been experimenting with a new textile – fabrics made from industrial hemp.But apart from introducing sustainability in the dye-making process, Neha also tries to champion the cause through the designing process.Neha uses her unique dye to print on a range of garments like sarees and kurtas and even uses it to design on paper and wooden furniture.While some factories channelise the byproduct for use in construction work or the tyre industry, many factories are not so responsible with their waste and end up dumping tonnes of carbon black into water bodies or in landfills. To prevent this from happening, Neha ties up with companies and uses their carbon black waste to make dyes.“For my Master’s project at Chelsea College of Art and Design, I had to work on a project that combined sustainability with design. But a 26-year-old textile designer has come up with a unique use for the substance – to make sustainable dyes. In college, I learnt that when the consumer becomes a part of the decision-making process, they’re likely to keep the product for a longer time because they have that sense of ownership.

Neha says that the idea to use soot for designing came about when she was looking for sustainable materials for a college project.Design stencils Soot, the black powdery substance created when organic matter is burnt, has been put to use in various ways over time. “People worry if soot is safe to wear; it absolutely is, unless you ingest or inhale it. So, I began to look at ways to use waste materials to create colours,” shares Neha. I mix this powder with a water-based binder and use it to screen print it on fabric,” says the Chembur-based designer. In the future, she hopes to invest more in research and indulge in collaborations that help her work on a range of products. This made her zoom in on carbon black since it is a byproduct produced by most factories during incineration

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One valid fear was that the government would bring people of their choice for these key posts. The scheme, however, did not last beyond one batch, ostensibly due to the opposition of vested interests.Now, 60 years after the botched effort, the government is again seeking to infuse outside talent in the government and make use of their domain expertise. Kapoor. Reforming the bureaucracy with lateral entry is a welcome move, but lateral exit also needs to be planned and implemented. They cannot annoy them because of the imperative of getting China non woven fabric for face mask good appraisal reports without which their promotions can be held back. But they did not do the job well, because one of the recruits was a retired state civil servant whose domain knowledge was sound. The present move of the government differs from the past in its attempt to institutionalise the way of recruiting civil servants parallel to the All India Civil Services Examination. By making lateral entry a part of the system, the PM has made an important political intervention. Shahi, the last lateral entry power secretary, who joined a select group of those who reached the top ranks of bureaucracy from the outside — Lavraj Kumar, Mantosh Sondhi and D. Also, it is not wise to lose someone after imparting all the necessary on-job training.

But much more needs to be done and if we want better governance and performance, we need lateral entries at levels both higher and lower than joint secretary levels. For the other two subject experts, the biggest challenge was their lack of experience in the functioning of the bureaucracy.Developed countries such as the United States, Britain, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand are known to have lateral entrants as a standard practice.Pradeep S MehtaThe author is secretary general of CUTS International. But many may not be aware that many of the joint secretaries’ current positions are held by officers from the IRS, IPS and so forth, who bring in a fresh perspective. They were hired from both the public and the private sectors to provide the bureaucracy the much needed fillip of quality at the senior levels. This needs to be coupled with exits — weeding out of the deadwood in the system. In the event lateral entry happens in greater numbers, it will challenge the existing automatic promotion system and also create an exit avenue for non-performing babus.V. When bureaucrats with enough administrative experience fall short of their optimum performance due to a lack of subject expertise, it is imprudent to expect that a subject expert will perform without strong knowledge of how government works.end-ofTags: union public service commission, government of india, narendra modi. Others included R. In our opinion, the duration is inadequate to understand the job role and start performing. Subsequently, in December 2018, to counter such fears, the task was handed over to the UPSC, the country’s central recruiting agency, to make the process politically neutral. An option to extend their stay by another 5-10 years based on their performance could be considered, when permanent civil servants can work for 30-plus years without the fear of getting fired. By the way, many existing permanent civil servants are brilliant but many have to suffer incompetent supervisors.On April 12, 2019, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) announced nine candidates as lateral entrants to serve as joint secretaries in various ministries of the Government of India. As it stands today, only two of them, who already had enough experience of working with the bureaucracy, have managed to thrive. This is already happening except that choices are restricted to the civil services.In order to keep the process controversy-free, the Central government has fixed the tenure of the joint secretaries for three years. The move will also bolster the performance of permanent civil servants when they will face competition. However, appointing people from outside the system has raised the hackles of the entrenched bureaucracy for obvious reasons. It is high time for a reform process by opening up different ministries to more short-term consultants and experts and lateral entry can be the way forward. However, most of the 131 recruits went on to serve a full term.Although no amount of training can bring them at par with the career bureaucrats on administrative issues, a short training to understand the basics of government procedures at any reputed training centre such as Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration could be useful.

To put it on record, lateral entry is not a brand new move and it has been tried and tested in the past when the government handpicked several experts from outside the steel frame such as Sam Pitroda, Vijay Kelkar, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and several others at the secretary level, or even Nandan Nilekani, who was given the rank of a Cabinet minister.V.One bureaucrat in Haryana (not Ashok Khemka) alleged hoarsely that the move is an attempt to tear down the very fabric of democracy and that lateral entry can crush the steel frame of India.Appointing nine joint secretaries from the private and the public sectors was the first significant step by the Narendra Modi government to bring specialists and experts into the government from outside the system.On April 12, 2019, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) announced nine candidates as lateral entrants to serve as joint secretaries in various ministries of the Government of India. Four individuals for the post of special secretary were recruited.Similar to the Central government’s decision to handover the selection process to the UPSC, in Jharkhand, KPMG was hired, limiting the scope for political intervention. Even regular civil servants have to compete for any posting. Moreover, the lack of a provision to extend the services of even the better performers can act as a deterrent for the candidates to invest their intellectual capital. To create a pool of highly qualified managers, 131 candidates were hired in 1959 under the “Industrial Management Pool (IMP)” initiative. Likewise, many Opposition leaders termed this move as the government’s attempt to fill the position with people of a similar ideology.Published: May 16, 2019, 1:47 am IST Updated: May 16, 2019, 5:39 am IST Developed countries such as the United States, Britain, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand are known to have lateral entrants as a standard practice. If indeed a level playing field can be created, the move can act as a catalyst to infuse competition in the system and holds the potential to transform the system. This was tolerated by the steel frame because they were also civil servants, and not outsiders.In 2016, an experiment of institutionalising lateral entry at the special secretary level was initiated by the government of Jharkhand. A healthy mixture of subject expertise and administrative knowledge is the only way forward. These nine new joint secretaries will account for less than three per cent of over 340 joint secretaries in the Central government.Not many may know that one major lateral entry experiment was done in 1957. This was a milestone event in the government’s efforts to bring in administrative reforms. Many committees and also the 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission had recommended it but there was no momentum

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