Mission Karmyogi: An attempt to change the face of civil services (GS Paper 4, Ethics)
Context:
- On Independence Day 2021, PM Modi launched the Mission Karmyogi and set up the Capacity Building Commission (CBC) and talked about “developing an effective citizen-centric civil service”.
- The capacity-building mission, targeted at 20 million civil servants working at the Centre and state-level, holds the key to enabling the state to deliver public goods and services to India’s more than 130 billion citizens.
Silent revolution in the delivery of services:
- In the 1980s, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi famously remarked that “of the Rs 1 sent from Delhi, only 15 paisa reaches the intended beneficiary”. The statement speaks of the extent of administrative failure in the country at that time.
- It took four decades to realise that when the state takes on a large number of economic responsibilities, the chances of failure are high; Air India, coal mines and banks became loss-making entities after they were nationalised.
- However, the direct benefit transfer initiative using the JAM trinity has, for instance, turned Rajiv Gandhi’s lament on its head. More than 90 paisa of every rupee transferred from the Centre in diverse welfare schemes today reaches the intended beneficiary. The silent revolution in the delivery of services is poised to intensify.
Case of a true Karmyogi:
- In June 2022, a passenger on a train to Gorakhpur tweeted about a railway ticket inspector: “Being a true rail karmyogi Shri Ambrish Prasad has shown great compassion towards his fellow passenger… he gave his berth to this couple. Lady was pregnant… they had wait-listed tickets and there was no other vacant berth”. The official was being true to Mission Karmyogi’s credo.
- Under the Mission, nearly 95,000 railway staff, including all ticket conductors, reservation and freight clerks and station masters, have participated in workshops to enhance their motivation to serve.
- These officers could help make the railway experience a pleasant one for passengers and freight customers. These trained staff are members of a virtual group where they share their karmyogi moments every day. Applause from their supervisors increases their motivation.
- Bollywood has created a negative view of the police force among people. Mission Karmyogi aims to change such perceptions. For starters, the programme is being implemented in all Union Territories.
Focus:
- The Mission should focus on improving professional and investigative skills of the police.
- Master instructors from each Union Territory were trained at the Sardar Vallabhai Patel National Police Academy.
- The project was then scaled up to cover all police inspectors, sub-inspectors and head constables in the UTs. Many small but inspirational tales of karmyogi moments have begun to emerge.
- Mission Karmyogi is about creating a civil service with domain and technological competencies. PM Modi’s maxim of “Maximum Governance, Minimum Government” is becoming visible on the ground, with the divestment of undertakings like Air India.
Civil Aviation Ministry’s Annual Capacity Building Plan:
- The government is being geared to play an enabling and regulatory role. This requires a civil service that has the domain knowledge to promote the growth of the private provision of goods and services. That’s why immersive learning for the ministry staff was one of the key components in the Civil Aviation Ministry’s Annual Capacity Building Plan.
- Those who deal with airline regulation had to work for a week with a private airline company or were deputed to a privately managed airport like GMR Hyderabad and observe its managerial practices. This approach has led to a wealth of feedback that can reduce friction points between the regulator and service provider.
Cross-learning:
- This also facilitates cross-learning across the private sector and breaking barriers between the public and private sectors so that all stakeholders work as Team India. National goals are, after all, shared goals. It doesn’t, for instance, mean making one steel plant competent but ensuring that Indian steel is more cost-effective than, say, Chinese manufacturers.
- The CBC has worked closely with the Department of Economic Affairs and coordinated with the UK’s National Infrastructure Authority, IIM Ahmedabad and Larsen and Tubro project management learning centres, amongst others, to develop online learning courses.
- The capacity-building approach adopted by the Mission has been guided by the “70-20-10” formula. Seventy per cent adult learning comes from on job experience, 20 per cent is a result of peer-to-peer sharing and only 10 per cent comes from classroom teaching.
- However, even as the CBC focuses on on-job experience and peer-to-peer sharing, the agency is working with over 750 government-run civil servant training institutions to provide classroom and online instruction.
Training of SO & ASO:
- The CBC has experimented with the training of section officers (SO) and assistant section officers (ASO) who form the backbone of the Union government’s secretariat administration.
- The Indian Institute of Secretariat Training and Management (ISTM) was roped in to change the training programme of junior SOs/ASOs, the focus shifted from educating the officers about routine administrative practices to providing them operational and practical skills such as working on government E-procurement portals, applying the provisions of general financial rules to specific cases and using computer-based data processing tools.
- CBC and ISTM worked together to develop course material that’s in sync with the actual work required of these officers. A post-training assessment by supervisors found that the efficiency of the SOs improved by 70 per cent in tasks such as answering RTI queries, data processing and managing government E-markets.
Civil services training programme:
- Civil services training programmes were earlier confined to Class I, senior cadres like IAS, IFS, IRTS who constitute less than five per cent of the nearly three million civil servants of the Union government.
- Mission Karmyogi is different in emphasising the democratisation of learning across all levels of civil services. The training courses are being uploaded on the online integrated government training platform, IGOT. This means any government official can educate herself at her own pace.
“Whole Government” approach:
- Another innovative element of the programme is its “Whole Government” approach. Training resources are being shared across departments and silos are being broken.
- For instance, a problem faced by the railways in the Northeast and parts of Southern India where railway lines cross elephant and tiger corridors and the animals are run over by trains.
- The CBC worked closely with ‘The Climate Change Training Institute and The Wildlife Institute of India (WII)’ under the Ministry of Environment which had mapped accident-prone elephant and tiger corridors.
- A plan was chalked out to use the WII’s expertise in railway training academies like IRTM as well as in loco drivers training institutes. Hundred railway crossings have been identified where the WII and Railways are jointly designing measures to keep the country’s wildlife safe.
Management training:
- The CBC and Ministry of Skill Development and Enterprise have curated a training programme for all officials of skill councils in management schools like the Indian School of Business.
- Managers of newly corporatised ordnance factories are acquiring managerial competencies at IIM Ahmedabad.
- Junior CBI, law and investigation officials are taking short-term courses in advanced scientific forensics and DNA investigation tools at the Rashtriya Raksha University.
Way Forward:
In his Independence Day speech in 2021, PM Modi said he was convinced that government officials will perform well if provided the right skills, knowledge and talent. Mission Karmyogi and the Capacity Building Commission are working towards that goal.
