Mains Practice Questions

Approach

• Introduce by writing about Mission Karmayogi.
• Examine the benefits of the mission in building a future-ready civil service.
• Discuss the challenges in achieving the objectives of the Mission Karmayogi.
• Conclude suitably on a positive note.

Introduction

• Mission Karmayogi- the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB) is meant to be a comprehensive post-recruitment reform of the Centre’s human resource development. These are the Comprehensive reform of the capacity building apparatus at the individual, institutional and process levels for efficient public service delivery.
• It aims to prepare Indian civil servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive, imaginative, proactive, innovative, progressive, professional, energetic, transparent, and technology-enabled.

Body

Benefits of the Mission Karmayogi: At present bureaucracy is facing challenges like- Rule orientation, political interference, inefficiency with promotions, and generalist and specialist conflict. The mission will be effective in dealing with these issues.

• Rule Based to Role Based: The programme will support a transition from rules-based to roles-based HR management, so that work allocations can be done by matching an official’s competencies to the requirements of the post.
• Domain Training: Apart from domain knowledge training, the scheme will focus on functional and behavioural competencies also.
• It will provide an opportunity for civil servants to continuously build and strengthen their Behavioral, Functional and Domain Competencies in their self-driven and mandated learning paths.
• Uniform Training Standard: It will harmonise training standards across the country, so that there is a common understanding of India's aspirations and development goals.
• On Site Learning: It will emphasize on 'on-site learning' to complement the ‘off-site’ learning.
• Adoption of Best Practices: It will encourage and partner with the best-in-class learning content creators including public training institutions, universities, start-tips and individual experts.

Challenges of the mission

• John Maynard Keynes, the economist, once said that “The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones."
  
  • There is a tendency in the Bureaucracy to resist the change which challenges their status quo.
• The bureaucracy too must understand the need of domain knowledge and the importance of moving away from generalist to specialist approach.
• In today’s world the governance is getting technical with each passing day and hence it’s important that the person in authority too should have the requisite skill and experience in that particular area.
• Thus, there should be a behavioural change in the bureaucracy too and they must embrace the change as a need of the hour and not an attack on their status quo.
• Moreover, these online courses must not become another opportunity for the officers to go for the sabbatical leaves.
• It must be ensured that they are actually attending the courses and participating in it so that the purpose doesn't get defeated.

Conclusion

• While this is a welcome move, it is also a fact that lackadaisical attitude of public servants is only one side of the coin. Equally culpable is the political interference which manifests itself in transfers which must be addressed too.
  
  • Ashok Khemka, the IAS officer from Haryana, is a living testimony of it who has been transferred 52 times so far in his career.
• Clearly, the reform process is not going to be easy but this is a good move in the right direction.