Indian bureaucrats need constant re-orientation as they face new challenges every day

Indian bureaucrats need constant re-orientation as they face new challenges every day

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) of Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh said that Indian bureaucrats need constant re-orientation because they are faced with new challenges every day, the expectation level is high, the conditions across the country are heterogeneous and above all, they are expected to develop the skill of adjusting with every new political dispensation under which they work. The Minister was addressing a group of senior IAS officers at the “Curtain Raiser” programme of the Mid-Career training at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), Mussoorie, here today.

Dr. Jitendra Singh said, the IAS officers attending today’s programme are drawn from the 1985-87 batches and hold high positions of Joint Secretary at the Centre or Principal Secretaries in the State and therefore, they are themselves also capable of providing valuable educative inputs from their personal experience to the budding bureaucrats at LBSNAA. These officers are now going to get elevated to the highest rungs of bureaucracy and decision making in the government where they would be called to conceptualize new policies for 21st century and hence it is this lot of bureaucrats who will be playing the historic role of being the architects of India emerging as a world power in the next few years, he added.

Describing as misnomer the description that “IAS” is a replica or legacy of the erstwhile Indian Civil Service (ICS) of British Raj, Dr. Jitendra Singh pointed out that the basic scientific difference between the two is that while an ICS officer was expected to collect revenue and hence called a District Collector, an IAS officer, on the other hand, is expected to generate revenue and hence called District Development Commissioner.

Dr. Jitendra Singh said, the Narendra Modi government at the Centre has taken upon itself the task of ensuring good governance which would be, at the same time, people-friendly and development-oriented and therefore, certainly it is the bureaucrat’s responsibility to translate this dream into a reality.

The Union Cabinet Secretary Shri Ajit Seth, Union Secretary Personnel, Shri Sanjay Kothari and Director LBSNAA, Shri Rajiv Kapoor also spoke on the occasion.