Orientation programme for bureaucrats

Citizen-centric administration based on the concepts espoused by Kautilya’s Arthashastra and the governance model prevalent during ‘Ram Rajya’ were inculcated to the top bureaucracy of the country in the form of a week-long ‘Sadhana Saptah’, which was launched by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) on April 2 and ended on April 10.  While orientation workshops are common within official and corporate governance circles, the catch behind Sadhana Saptah was that attendance is compulsory and it is linked to promotions of bureaucrats, sources aware of developments informed this newspaper. In fact the week-long virtual workshop, which was to end on April 8, but was extended by a couple of days till April 10.

The idea was to enhance civil servants’ capacity development and it consists of sessions of webinars, group discussions and talks with renewed attention to Indian knowledge system and reorienting focus on citizen centric governance based on concepts of Kautilya’s Arthashastra and even ‘Ram Rajya’.

Divided into three "Sutras" namely ‘Technology’, ‘Tradition’ and Tangible Outcomes’, the week-long exercise focused on performance enhancement and improving administrative skills.

After every module, the participants had to fill up different sets of questionnaires, where they had to score compulsorily 50 per cent and above marks.

If the marks were below 50 per cent, then they had to undertake the entire exercise again.

The exercise was linked with promotions of senior officials, mainly IAS officers and on successful completion of the entire course, they will be issued certificates.

Till April 7, around one crore officials across the country had completed at least one course, with sources further informing that 70 per cent to 80 per cent state level officials also participated in it.

Under the ‘Technology’ Sutra, the focus area was AI and emerging technologies transforming the sector, covering sector-specific AI use cases, regulatory readiness and digital public infrastructure integration.

In the ‘Tradition’ Sutra, the focus was on Indian Knowledge Systems and indigenous innovations, encompassing civilisational practices with contemporary relevance, community-led institutional models and indigenous governance insights.

Under the third Sutra of ‘Tangible Outcomes’, the focus was on outcome-oriented governance and public value creation, covering topics like citizen impact tracking, clear articulation of priority sectoral outcomes and dashboard-based monitoring.

The modules were designed by the Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru, IIT Madras, IIT Hyderabad, XLRI and also IIM Bangalore, while even global entities like Microsoft and prestigious universities from across the world like John Hopkins University and Michigan State University, were also among the course providers.