Cabinet approves Mission Karmayogi, national programme for civil servants

New Delhi: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday announced Mission Karmayogi, an unique skill building programme for civil servants across the country. Karmayogi mission, Modi government's latest initiative, will help training the officers to meet the challenges of the society. Headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a council will approve the capacity building plans for civil servants, the central government said on Wednesday.

Mission Karmayogi is a nationwide programme to lay foundation for capacity building of civil servants, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said while introducing the programme. It will help the officers to lean about the best practices across the world, Javadekar added.

Officially called as the "National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building", the mission plans to transform human resource management in the country. The aim is to form a 'roles-based system' instead of a 'rule-based' practices.

“This scheme is based on the government’s vision on how a civil servant should be. A civil servant of today, in order to meet the challenges of the world, will have to be imaginative and innovative, proactive and polite, professional and progressive, energetic and enabling, transparent and tech enabled, and constructive and creative," said C Chandramouli, secretary, Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).

The central government will set up Capacity Building Commission to harmonise training standards. The commission will have shared faculty & resources. It will supervise all training institutions in the country, so that there's common understanding of India's aspirations & development goals, Chandramouli added.

"It aims at building future-ready civil service with the right attitude, skills & knowledge, aligned to the vision of New India," he further mentioned.

The schemes will be accessible for all, from section officers to secretaries. It will have two paths, self driven, where the official can choose field of interest, and guided, where official will be provided with the wherewithal to perform their jobs effectively.

There will be more focus on 'on-site learning' in complementing "off-site learning". There will be more focus on e-learning. Several ministries will directly invest and co-create common learning system.

“This is the biggest Human Resources Development reform in the government," Union minister Prakash Javadekar said at a press briefing on the Cabinet’s decisions.

"Mission Karmayogi focuses on individual (civil servants) & institutional capacity building," Chandramouli added. “The scale is so huge that it could probably emerge as the largest civil service reform in the world in terms of spread and in terms of the depth…And what is the ultimate purpose of all this-- it is basically to equip the civil servant, with domain and functional competencies, which would be goal driven, and also build behavioral competencies," he added.

Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved three MoUs - one between Textile Ministry & Japan for quality evaluation method, between Mining Ministry & Finland & between Ministry of New & Renewable Energy & Denmark, added Javadekar.

The launch of the Mission KarmaYogi is a boon to all the civil aspirants in the nation, said Harshavardhan Muppavarapu, a socio-political activist.