Union Cabinet Approves 'Mission Karmayogi' On Civil Services Reforms For 'New India'

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday, September 2, approved Mission Karmayogi which is a skill-building scheme for the civil servants to help them tackle the evolving challenges of the society.

Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh and Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar addressed the media while launching the scheme and described the initiative as "biggest human resource development reform in the government".

Mission Karmayogi is a nationwide programme aimed to standardise training and lay the foundation for capacity building of civil servants. The scheme will help the officers in learning about the best practices around the world.

Called as the "National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building", the mission plans to transform human resource management from a 'rule-based' to a 'role-based system', according to the government.

It will be under the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) with the Prime Minister's HR Council serving as the apex body to provide guidance while formulating and implementing the reforms. The council will have chief ministers as members.

"Mission Karmayogi will help end subjective evaluation and ensure scientifically-devised, objective and real-time assessment of employees. It focuses on individual (civil servants) and institutional capacity building. At the top, there will be the Prime Minister's HR council consisting of chief ministers and international experts. The council will be headed by the Prime Minister himself," Javadekar said.

It will be open to all government employees for their re-skilling under which they would also be encouraged to upgrade themselves with their domain, and improve their functional and behavioural competencies.

"Mission Karmayogi is an endeavour to reincarnate a government servant into an ideal karmayogi (a man driven by his work) to serve the nation by enabling him to be creative, to be constructive, to be pro-active and technically empowered. The endeavour is also to end the culture of working in (departmental) silos; to overcome the multiplicity of training curriculum by the introduction of a common platform for realisation of the nation's vision and of our shared aspiration and future goals," said Jitendra Singh.

"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).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Mission Karmayogi will radically improve human resource management practices in the government.

"It will use scale and state of the art infrastructure to augment the capacity of civil servants," PM Modi tweeted.

In another tweet, PM Modi said that the scheme aims to prepare civil servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive and innovative through transparency and technology.

Hailing it as a significant reform, Union Home Minister Amit Shah tweeted: "It is a landmark reform for the 21st century which will end the culture of working in silos and bring out new work culture. Goal-driven and constant training will empower and sensitize the civil servants to ensure accountability and transparency in the system."

One of the most important aspects of the mission is to prepare the bureaucrats for the future and bring effective post recruitment reforms in the government. The objective for implementing the scheme is to equip the civil servants with right attitude, skills and knowledge, aligned to the vision of a "New India".

The government said the scheme will end subjective evaluation of the employees, and ensure scientifically-devised, objective and real-time assessment of their performance.

With Mission Karmayogi, the government plans to ensure ease of living for the common man, ease of doing business and "citizen-centricity" that would reduce the gap between the government and the citizens and facilitate trust-building activities.

The programme would assist in making the bureaucrats more creative, constructive, imaginative, innovative, proactive, professional, progressive, energetic, enabling, transparent and technology-enabled, said an official statement.

To cover around 46 lakh central employees, a sum of ₹510.86 crore will be spent over five years under the mentioned scheme.

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