When the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) moves to a swank new office at Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla complex, it will start with a clean slate and little institutional memory. Pratip Kar, the last senior executive who has been with the organisation since its inception, has resigned. Dharmishta Raval, another ED who was there from the start, quit a couple of years ago to practice law. Interestingly, neither of them has left for fat salary in an MNC or private sector company. Kar is leaving for ‘personal reasons’ and emphatically denies he is joining Reliance (as speculated by a leading newspaper). What does this say about the government’s ‘selection’ process which remain unconcerned about the growing unattractiveness of low-paid government jobs that now provide neither challenge nor growth? Consider Kar’s example. After 12 years as a competent Executive Director who reported directly to the Chairman and helped frame and draft regulation in Sebi’s development phase, he now reports to three whole-time Members at a time when basic regulation is in place and the main job is market supervision and tracking new developments. Each of the three Members knows far less about the capital market and the nuances of its regulation than Kar does. They were appointed to Sebi on retirement from Income Tax, central bank and a government bank respectively. No organisation with a decent HR policy would allow such a situation to develop in connection with competent officials, or allow them to be hounded by a specious vigilance inquiry (in which he was exonerated) as Pratip Kar was. However, government remains blind to the massive shortage of talent and experience that corporate India is grappling with. Its appointment committees are superficial, easily influenced and focussed on creating post-retirement sinecures. The hush-hush extension in the retirement of Sebi Members to 65 years is an example.

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