New Delhi: TeaThePrint learned that the Narendra Modi government has started sending civil servants from various ministries to the corporate sector for skill development through immersive training programs as part of its Mission Karmayogi initiative.
According to a top official involved in the mission, the focus has been on ‘holistic interactions and exchanges’ between the bureaucracy and the corporates with the aim of making the government’s functioning “stronger and more developed”.
Apart from sending civil servants to private companies, the government is arranging skill development training programs by private institutions including the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, along with motivational courses offered by Art of Living Foundation and yoga guru Sadhguru.
For those associated with the Ministry of Defense, The government has also launched motivation and stress management programs. Courses cover a variety of topics, ranging from artificial intelligence and cloud computing to tackling the metaverse and global computing.
“Such private sector training or internship was first tried by the civil aviation ministry. Seeing its success, other ministries, mainly those dealing directly with markets and corporates, have also tried these programs. They are holistic in nature. For officers opting for ministries and programmes, it depends on the requirement,” said a senior IAS officer from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).
Apart from regulatory ministries, all other government organisations, departments and ministries that are required to interact with the private sector regularly get their officers trained by corporates. However, another source in the DoPT said that the design and duration of the course is need-based.
“The intention of the government is to move from rule-based to role-based actions. A lot of material has been prepared for the programmes. In the last two months, around 60,000 officers have enrolled with Mission Karmayogi,” Abhishek Singh, CEO, Karmayogi India, told ThePrint.
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public-private training program
Launched in 2020, Mission Karmayogi’s primary goal There is capacity building for civil servants, and to make civil services more technology driven and people friendly. Under the Capacity Building Programme, 25 Central Training Institutes, 33 Advanced Training Institutes and 790 other Government Institutions are working to enhance the education of officers.
Following the pandemic, the departments of civil aviation, food processing, social justice, logistics, defense and finance – which were selected as ‘pilot departments’ – developed their own programs, specific to their departmental needs.
The civil aviation ministry first proposed the idea of sending officers to private airline companies for training and internship. Subsequently, two batches were sent to private airlines for immersive training. A senior aviation ministry official said that following the success of such programmes, other ministries also took up the same.
“It is about domain specific knowledge. Government is focusing on skill and technology friendly learning. All new emerging trends are being identified and digital content is being created accordingly for training. Ministry internship accordingly. We are also getting batches from the private sector who want to see how government organizations work,” the official said, adding that the exchanges are “holistic” and “positive” in nature. It was a public-private communication platform.
(Edited by Tony Rae)
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