Introduction

India is rapidly integrating technology in both governance and in delivering goods and services. All this requires a worker (civil servant) who is not just committed but also has the competence to deliver on this evolving mandate. Civil service which is the backbone of the administration at the national, regional and panchayat levels requires reforms which will provide the civil servants better opportunities for the development of the economy. Civil service reforms have been taking place since 2014.

Rastriya Ekta Divas has been celebrated each year since 21014 on the birth anniversary of Sardar Patel. Aarambh programme was started in 2020, which was an initiative to bring all the probationers all india services together for a Common Foundation Course (CFC). Further this was followed by Mission Karayogi with focus of Mission on enhancing the government – citizen interaction, with officials becoming enablers for citizens and business, with development of Beahvioural-Functional-Domain competencies leading to ease of living and ease of doing business.

Civil services have remained at the epicentre of all government activities in India, both as agents of policymaking as well as the executive hand that delivers and implements those policies. It is the appropriate time for the civil services to pause, reflect and strategize on the approaches needed to shape its future. People-centric governance is no longer aspirational but is rapidly becoming the national imperative. We can see three forces shaping it. First, with the rise of information and communication technology, we are becoming more interconnected globally. Young Indians living in small towns and villages are connected to the wider world, which is shaping their aspirations and desires. India’s citizens are no longer content to passively receive benefits from a patronizing government; they are actively making claims on the state and feel empowered to shape how it affects their lives.

Second, this better-informed citizenry is giving shape to a more mature political system, in which politicians from across the spectrum recognise the importance of delivering on campaign promises of better health, education and social benefits. 

These two forces have led to a sharper focus on citizen-centricity, engagement and partnership. 

Finally, the development of new technologies is opening up possibilities for governance. The state needs to leverage them to deliver the greatest good for the largest number. An important lever for improving public administration during and beyond the crisis is improving the quality of decisions made by officials at each level of government.

Rule of Law - Rule of Man

"Good Governance" is being used as an all-inclusive framework not only for administrative and civil service reform, but as a link between Civil Service Reform and an all-embracing framework for making policy decisions effective within viable systems of accountability and citizen participation. The Civil Servant has always played a pivotal role in ensuring continuity and change in administration. The civil servants are dictated by the rules and procedures. It is the ‘rule of law’ rather than ‘rule of man’ that is blamed for widespread abuse of power and corruption among government officials. The explosion of media has also opened civil servants to external scrutiny. 

Mission Karmayogi is a new experiment of its kind in the direction of capacity building.  Through this mission, the government employees have to modernize their thinking, approach and improve their skill set. It is to give them an opportunity to become a Karmayogi. Mission Karmayogi is the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB), launched on 2nd September 2020 by the Union Cabinet for 46 lakh civil servants including officers and employees. This mission is a new capacity-building scheme for civil servants aimed at upgrading the post-recruitment training mechanism of the officers and employees at all levels. Hence enhancing governance in Indian bureaucracy through this mission.

Karmayogi for the Nation

The apex body of Mission Karmayogi is chaired by the Prime Minister of India and governed by the Prime Minister’s Human Resource Council, which will also include state Chief Ministers, Union Cabinet ministers, eminent public HR practitioners, thinkers, global thought leaders and Public Service functionaries. 

This mission will represent three transitions (under the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building) as listed below:-

The first transition is a shift in government employees’ perspectives from thinking of themselves as karmacharis to karma yogis.

The second transition is a shift away from holding employees individually accountable for their performance and toward identifying and removing any performance-related obstacles. 

The final transition involves switching from a rule-based to a role-based public HR management system and the related capacity-building equipment.

Aim of the Mission

Mission Karmayogi aims to prepare Indian civil servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive, imaginative, innovative, proactive, professional, progressive, energetic, enabling, transparent and technology-enabled.  It was necessary to implement because there is a need to develop domain knowledge beyond the administrative scope of the bureaucracy.

There is also a need to regulate and systemize the recruitment process and match the public service to a bureaucrat’s competence to fit the right person to the right job, i.e., the mission seeks to transform human resource management from “rule-based” to “role-based.” This mission also aims to end subjective evaluation and develop scientifically devised and objective assessment techniques.

Salient Features of Mission Karmayogi 

Mission Karmayogi signifies the importance of “on-site learning” to complement “off-site learning. “It aimed to ensure an ecosystem of shared training infrastructure that includes learning materials, institutions, and personnel and also pivots to align all civil service positions to a Framework of Roles, Activities, and Competencies (FRACs) approach and to create and deliver learning content relevant to the identified FRACs in every government entity.

It ensures all civil servants get an opportunity to continuously build and strengthen their behavioural, functional and domain competencies in their liberated and administered learning paths. It also enables all the central ministries and departments, including organisations, to head on and infuse their resources towards co-creation and sharing the collaborative and common ecosystem of learning through an annual financial subscription for every employee. It collaborates with the best-in-class content creators, including public training institutions, universities, start-ups, and individual experts.

Moreover to undertake data analytics in terms of data provided by iGOT-Karmayogi concerning various aspects of capacity building, content creation, user feedback, competency mapping, and identifying areas for policy reform.

IGOT-Karmayogi - It is an Integrated Government Online Training digital platform under the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD). which will deliver capacity building programmes by drawing content from global best practices rooted in Indian national ethos.It will enable a comprehensive reform of the capacity building apparatus at the individual, institutional and process levels. Civil servants will have to take online courses and they will be evaluated based on their courses, their performances in each course they have taken spreading across their span of services. 

All digital e-learning courses of world-class content will be uploaded on this platform for civil servants. Along with the online courses, services like confirmation after probation period, deployment, work assignment and notification of vacancies etc would also be integrated on the platform. It also imparts tools through which departments and managers can monitor and mentor officials, and it delivers anytime-anywhere-any-device learning to train about 2 crore users, which was previously not attainable through traditional measures. Similarly, a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), namely “Karmayogi Bharat,” would be set up as a not-for-profit company that would be set up under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, and will be a 100% government-owned entity.

The SPV will be responsible for delivering and managing the design, implementation, enhancement, and management of a digital platform and infrastructure, managing and delivering competency assessment services, managing the governance of telemetry data, and ensuring the provision of monitoring and evaluation. The task force will submit its recommendations on the organizational structure for the SPV, aligning its vision, mission, and functions. To make the mission successful ISTM was lauded for launching 75 courses on the Karmayogi Digital Learning Lab platform, totaling 75 hours of digital content. As a result, this capacity-building commemorates India’s 75th anniversary of independence.

What are the objectives of the Capacity Building Commission under Mission Karmayogi?

• It will assist the Public Human Resource Council

• It will supervise all central training institutions which are enabled for civil services capacity building

• It will create external faculty and resource centres.

• It will assist stakeholder departments in the implementation of the capacity building programmes.

• It will put forth recommendations on the standardization of the training and capacity building, pedagogy and methodology

• It will suggest policy interventions related to the HR practices in the government.

This mission has 6 pillars that are as follows:

1. Policy Framework

2. Institutional Framework

3. Competency Framework

4. Digital Learning Framework

5. Electronic Human Resource Management System (e-HRMS)

6. Monitoring and Evaluation Framework

Importance of Mission Karmayogi:

• As the Indian economy grows, it will get more complex to govern; the governance capacities will have to be enhanced proportionately which this reform undertakes.

• There is a need to develop domain knowledge besides administrative capacity in the bureaucracy.

• There is a need to formalize the recruitment process and match the public service to a bureaucrat’s competence, so as to find the right person for the right job.

• The plan is to begin right at the recruitment level and then invest in building more capacity through the rest of their career.

Impact during times of Covid

• Department of Personnel and Training collaborated with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on an online learning platform‘iGOT-COVID’ launched on 7 May 2020.

• It was used as an alternative line of defense that includes (volunteers from the NCC, NSS, NYKS, and Ex-Servicemen) that provides customized learning content to various Covid warriors.

• Over six months, more than 13 lakh COVID warriors were trained through this platform, there was the enrolment of 29.1 Lakh Courses, which constitute 19.1 Lakh Course completions and out of which 15.1 Lakh Certificates were issued.

• But it was expected that mission Karmayogi would directly benefit about 1.50 crore government officials in the long run.

• Remarkably more beneficiaries will get welfare with the program amplifying impact on millions of citizens who get empowered by the civil service. 

Challenges

• Because it is human nature to resist change, it presents a challenge to the bureaucracy that may jeopardize its current state of affairs.

• People need to shift from a generalized version of knowledge to a specialised form, so bureaucrats may need time to metamorphose themselves.

• With the increasing inversion of technology in our day-to-day lives, it becomes necessary to update oneself and attain the required skills and technical knowledge.

• Thus, it requires a behavioral change in the bureaucracy and should be embraced as the need of the hour.

• Moreover, online courses can also hinder officers’ efficiency as they can use them as a tool and an opportunity to go on sabbatical leaves.

• It becomes difficult to ensure that they are attending the courses and participating in them so that the purpose doesn’t get defeated.

Conclusion

Implementation of this reform is not easy, but it can result in a tremendous revolution in the Indian bureaucracy, e.g., in the case of Ashok Khemka, the IAS officer from Haryana, who has been transferred 52 times so far in his career as he wants to ensure transparency in the bureaucracy. Moreover equally responsible are the political implications of transfers, which also need to be addressed. Though it is accepted throughout the nation, it’s also true that bureaucratic inertia is only one side of the coin. So we all need to join our hands together and ensure this mission is implemented for the upliftment of our society.

Way Forward

To make this reform a success, we need to develop a diverse and decentralized learning system. Hierarchical measures and bureaucratic processes can stifle modernization, even among highly skilled workers. Alternatively, the culture in which competencies are passed down is as important as the competencies themselves. So we need to develop an approach that favors diversity and ensures balance in the diverse human nature. 

The ultimate aim of Mission Karmayogi is to ensure “Ease of Living” for the common man, “Ease of Doing Business” and Citizen-Centricity that is reducing the gap between the government and the citizens. 

Analysis

To cover around 46 lakhs, Central employees, a budget of  Rs. 5110.86 crores has been authorized to be spent over the next five years i.e. from 2020-21 to 2024-25 for the implementation of the mission. The expenditure is going to be partly funded by multilateral assistance to the tune of $50 million.

The implementation of the mission is necessary for continued survival in this dynamic world and especially civil servants need to metamorphosise their skills according to the requirement of the country and for that continuous up-gradation in one’s knowledge and skills is a must. It could be properly and efficiently provided through the mission Karmayogi. This mission can be a great success if it is implemented transparently. An important lever for improving public administration during and beyond the crisis is improving the quality of decisions made by officials at each level of government. Karmayogi initiative has the potential to radically upgrade the management capacity of public officials, and, in turn, strengthen the capacity of the State to deliver.

References

1. Aiyar, Y., & Bhattacharya, S. (2016). The post office paradox. Economic & Political Weekly, 51(11), 61-75.

2. Dhingra, S. (2020). Modi govt launches Karmayogi Yojana to transform civil servants into experts. The Print.

3. Government of India. (2020). Cabinet approves Mission Karmayogi National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB). Press Information Bureau.

4. Government of India. (2020). Mission Karmayogi. Press Information Bureau.

5. Ministry of Railway. (2020). Department of personnel and training. The Framework of Roles, Activities, and Competencies (FRAC) and everything else of fracing.

6. Pritchett, L. (2014). The risks to education systems from design mismatch and global isomorphism. CID Working Papers 277, Centre for International Development at Harvard University.

7. Saxena, N.C. (2012). Administrative reforms for better governance. National Social Watch.