In his first post-retirement interview, Subramanian told The Indian Express that earlier bureaucrats would be removed from sensitive posts if they raised their voice against any "funny deal." "Now we have by and large cleaner governments and secretaries doing the other extreme. They are being negative and trying to stop everything," he said.

Recalling his two-year tenure as Cabinet Secretary, Subramanian, who demitted office on March 31, said he could give at least 30 to 40 examples in each ministry where the minister and the top bureaucrat had disagreements. "Many ministers treat a file like a gold-mine," he said. "It (the file) is a playground for the minister to milk. These ministers want bureaucrats to play ball withthem and facilitate their making money. And many bureaucrats, unfortunately, do play ball with them."

It is because of such a scenario, Subramanian said, that a majority of bureaucrats had developed an "in-built resistance" to such ministers. He said in the Railway Ministry, the former railway minister wanted to push through clearance of around 35 railway projects, but he had been forced to intervene.Recalling the incident, he said he told the minister that the Railways already had projects which would take them 70 years to complete, so they should reprioritise and shorten the list. "Finally, towards the end, they got back and wanted to clear all the projects in one shot. They told me, `how are you concerned, Parliament has cleared it? I told them `Then why are you bringing it to the Government ?...There were many issues like this in many ministries."

Without naming the ministry, the former Cabinet Secretary said, once Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral invoked rarely-used powers of calling for aministry's files before a full Cabinet. This happened after a secretary complained to him that the minister had taken certain "untenable" decisions. The Prime Minister found the secretary's viewpoint to be correct and asked for the files to be placed before the Cabinet.

"Though I cannot speak about what transpired at the Cabinet meeting, the decisions of the minister on two of the four files were overruled by the Cabinet at the behest of the Prime Minister," Subramanian said. "As far as I remember, this has never been done before."

He agreed that there was also a flip side to the phenomenon and that bureaucrats were also to blame for taking on the role of decision-makers. "There is strong substance to the criticism that bureaucrats are wooden-headed, negative, dogmatic and rigid in their postures. And that the legitimate functions being performed by the minister in implementing policy are being obstructed by some civil servants," he said.

This, Subramanian said, was being done at all levels. "I cannothide these things. While at the top, the motivation may be ideology, at the bottom, it is money. The fact is that the bureaucracy, by its very nature, is resistant to change. It is very comfortable in a status quo and does not want to change a single thing."

The other disturbing trend which Subramanian said he had noticed during his tenure was the high media profile that some top-level bureaucrats had developed. "This is not a healthy trend. It is ministers and not bureaucrats who should have a profile. Unfortunately, some bureaucrats have also become media savvy and begun to seek publicity," he commented.