Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) – The Government of India approves National Education Program for All Civil Servants. The program was named "Karmayoga". It is the largest government administrative reform initiative in recent Indian history, slated to be implemented within 5 years, starting this year.

Key goals and principles of the National Program.

1. Support for the transition to modern methods of personnel management in government agencies. Aligning the distribution of work of civil servants by bringing their competencies in line with the requirements of the position.

2. Calibration of all civil service positions in accordance with the types of activities and competencies, as well as the creation of the necessary training materials.

3. Focus on “on-the-spot learning” through the introduction of online education. Providing employees with the opportunity to constantly build up their knowledge and professional skills as part of an independent and compulsory educational process.

4. Ensuring the introduction of modern technological tools, such as digital platforms, artificial intelligence, machine learning in the field of staff development.

5. Reducing the cost of training for civil servants by focusing on continuous online learning and general infrastructure, reducing the cost of training abroad.

India’s National Civil Service Capacity Building Program will be administered by the Council for Public Personnel, headed by Prime Minister N. Modi.

Under the Program, the government plans to retrain 46,000 federal-level civil servants in Phase 1, spending US$69.1 million. Initial funding of US$50 million will come from the World Bank and ADB. Each year, all government departments will contribute US$5.8 per employee as payment to maintain the associated Program infrastructure.

Analyzing the Karmayoga program adopted for implementation, experts draw attention to the following.

1. India’s national program for public administration and retraining was adopted against the backdrop of an ongoing pandemic. The government failed organizing the fight against coronavirus. India is on the verge of the highest number of infections in the world, and its economy has shrunk by almost 24%. One of the reasons for this is the inefficiency of the existing state administration and the incompetence of civil servants at all levels.

2. The growth of bureaucracy and corruption in the public administration system. The deepening gap between civil servants represented by officials of various levels and citizens. Due to the widening gap between the state apparatus and the public, there is also a tendency towards an increase in the arbitrariness of officials, an expansion of bribery, including the provision of small public services.

The adoption of the National Program is in the trend of N. Modi’s policy to strengthen control and centralize power. The nationwide retraining program is another manifestation of it.

Also N. Modi, using the program, solves the problem of strengthening his position by getting rid of opposition-minded or disloyal cadres and renewing the composition of his administration.

In general, assessing the Karmayoga program and the possibilities of its implementation, experts note that by building the capacity of the civil service, ensuring effective provision of services to citizens, and eradicating corruption in the administrative sphere, the Indian government is trying to implement it by linking the transformation of the work culture, strengthening state institutions and introducing modern technologies.

At the same time, according to experts, India has been carrying out fruitless administrative reforms for decades, when civil servants must grapple with deep-rooted norms of governance, complex tasks, overload and other factors. Hierarchy norms and bureaucratic processes can stifle the next necessary government initiative, observers say.