Mission Karmayogi is the National Civil Service Capacity Building Program (NPCSCB). It is a bureaucratic reform in India. On September 2, 2020, the Union Cabinet will launch it. The mission is to lay the groundwork for the capacity building of Indian government workers and to improve governance.
‘Mission Karmayogi,’ according to the government, aims to make Indian civil workers more creative, constructive, inventive, innovative, proactive, professional, progressive, energetic, enabling, transparent, and technology-enabled.
The purpose has been structured in such a way that it is rooted in Indian culture and sensibility while pulling learning resources from the world’s top institutions and practices.
Purpose
In the bureaucracy, there is a need to build domain expertise in addition to administrative capacity.
To locate the right individual for the right job, the recruitment process must be formalised and the public service must be matched to the skill of a bureaucrat.
The strategy is to start with recruitment and then invest in building greater capabilities over their career.
The Indian economy will become more complex to regulate as it grows; governance capacities will need to be expanded accordingly, which this reform will do.
Reforms in the Indian bureaucracy are urgently needed, and a substantial overhaul has been undertaken in recent years to alter it.
Benefits
- Rule-Based to Role-Based HR Management: The programme will assist in the transition from rule-based to role-based HR management, allowing task allocations to be done by matching an official’s competencies to the requirements of the job.
- Domain Training: In addition to domain knowledge training, the scheme will emphasise functional and behavioural competencies.
It will allow government workers to continuously build and strengthen their Behavioral, Functional, and Domain Competencies through self-directed and mandated learning routes.
- Uniform Training Standard: It will harmonise training standards across the country, resulting in a shared knowledge of India’s aspirations and development objectives.
- New India’s Vision: Mission Karmayogi aims to create a future-ready civil service with the correct attitude, skills, and knowledge, all of which are linked with the vision of New India.
- On-Site Learning: It will place an emphasis on ‘on-site learning’ to supplement ‘off-site learning.’
- Best Practices Adoption: It will encourage and collaborate with the best-in-class creators of learning content, such as public training institutes, universities, start-ups, and individual specialists.
Challenges
The bureaucracy has a tendency to reject change that threatens the status quo.
The bureaucracy, too, must recognise the value of domain knowledge and the need of shifting from a generalist to a specialist approach.
In today’s world, governance is becoming more technical by the day, and it is critical that those in positions of power have the necessary competence and experience in that area.
Thus, there should be a behavioural change in the bureaucracy as well, and they must accept the change as a need rather than an attack on their status quo.
Furthermore, these online courses must not be used as an additional option for officials to take sabbatical leave.
In conclusion
While this is a positive step, it is also true that bureaucratic laziness is only one side of the coin.
Political interference, which presents itself in transfers, is also guilty and must be addressed.
Ashok Khemka, an IAS officer from Haryana, is a living example of this, having been relocated 52 times in his career. Clearly, the reform process will be difficult, but this is a step in the right direction.