Manmohan's team: Low key but professional

No one had any doubts as to who was the boss of the Prime Minister's Office in the AB Vajpayee years — Brajesh Mishra, who combined the offices of  principal secretary to the Prime Minister and national security adviser (NSA).

Manmohan Singh's PMO is characteristic of the man — low key and professional. "The new PMO will be a 'below-the-radar' affair," says a senior official.

A meeting of the Hindustan Times with a number of the top officials brought out the easy camaraderie that seems to characterise the group and its different style. Instead of phoning or getting a peon to do the job, principal secretary TKA Nair sauntered across the corridor to request national security adviser JN Dixit and special advisor MK (Mike) Narayanan to join us.

"We've been there and done it," says Narayanan referring to their respective high-flying careers. He was himself a director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) who retired in 1991 and chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee who did a stint as the first NSA.

Nair will handle the classic principal secretary tasks — as one aide put it, "Facilitating the work of ministries, but not breathing down their necks." A former IAS  officer, he has an impressive breadth of experience — chairman of the Public Enterprises Selection Board, chief of the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation, official in the Gujral PMO and chief secretary, Punjab.

Narayanan says that Nair and Dixit will be the two poles: "I am not going to exercise any executive function." He will be a kind of eminence grise. "With his formidable knowledge of intelligence affairs, MK will provide ideas on overall reform of the agencies to the Prime Minister," says Dixit. "And if and when the PM approves, it will be my task to implement them."

Insiders say that those who see a turf battle there do not know the relationship between the two men that goes back to 1961 when Narayanan was looking after the China desk for the IB (which handled external intelligence in those days) and Dixit was under-secretary in the China desk. 

The fourth and political pole of the PMO is provided by minister of state Prithviraj Chavan who also happens to be the youngest of the lot. His primary focus will be to liaise with coalition partners and to act as a trouble-shooter of sorts.

The fifth pole is the Prime Minister's media advisor Sanjaya Baru who was the chief editor of The Financial Express and has had a distinguished journalistic career. A PhD in economics, his association with the PM goes back to 1990 when Singh was chairman of the UGC.

In this structure, Pulok Chatterji, joint secretary in the PMO, occupies a unique place. He is an IAS officer who has served as secretary of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation where Sonia Gandhi was active till she assumed presidency of the Congress. Later when she became leader of the opposition, he was appointed her private secretary. It goes without saying that Chatterji is the bridge between the Congress president and her PM.