The Central government allocated Rs 510.86 crore for a period of five years from 2020-21 to 2024-25 to the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building or Mission ‘Karmayogi’. The mission, dubbed as the ‘biggest human resource development’ initiative in Indian civil services, aims to provide post-recruitment capacity building mechanism for civil servants. It aims to cover around 46 lakh central employees ranging from the All India Services to Group C services. A Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) is to be set up to manage the mission along with its Integrated Government Online Training platform IGOT Karmayogi.

Amidst the sea of flashy slogans like ‘citizen centric civil service’, ‘rule-based to role-based’ and so on, the mission genuinely tries to reform bureaucrats. The Capacity Building Commission which will provide self-driven and mandated opportunities to build and strengthen ‘behavioral, functional and domain Competencies’ is a desired addition. It will help civil servants stay in touch with the latest developments in their domain and update themselves with the proper technology. The IGOT platform through its e-learning modules can reach a wider base than traditional training. 

The Yugandhar report of 2003 recommended that incentives and penalties should be linked to in-training performance. This recommendation was implemented through the Mid-Career Training Programme (MCTP) started in 2007. Mission Karmayogi goes a step further and makes career progression based on ‘continuous performance analysis, data driven goal-setting and real time monitoring’ made possible by IGOT platform. The implementation challenge of MCTP with respect to the logistics of training can be addressed effectively by e-learning modules of IGOT. However e-courses also could become a burden for the civil servants if it is not prioritized by the departments (Krishnamurthy et al, 2020). 

While the online program helps cover more ground it could turn out to be centralizing without factoring in the diverse nuances of local frontline functions performed by Group C level officers. The planners of the program should take into cognisance the diversity of issues that the frontline workers need to face for effective citizen centric public service.

Overall the mission positively moves towards reformation. However this reformation is not of bureaucracy but of bureaucrats; it focuses on the symptom and not the disease. Many researches expose the limits of ‘individual-level technical, behavioural and professional training’ in complex systems. Personnel training is just one facet of effective public service. To think that the civil service will ‘radically’ change with this one mission is mere wishful thinking.