Make people active agents of transforming India: Vice President’s message to young IAS officers
The Vice President of India, M. Venkaiah Naidu has asked the IAS officers to look upon people as active agents of transforming India, not merely as ‘target groups’ or ‘beneficiaries’ as we used to call them. He was addressing IAS Officers of 2016 batch posted as Assistant Secretaries in Government of India, here today. The Minister of State for Development of North Eastern Region (I/C), Prime Minister’s Office, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.
The Vice President said that unless this approach becomes an integral part of our planning and implementation process, the programmes will not succeed. He further asked the young officers to make good use of the opportunity and understand the role of Union government in formulation of policies and programs. “You belong to a civil service that was conceived of as a steel frame of our country by the great visionary unifier and the first Home Minister of independent India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel,” he added.
Saying that streamlining service delivery and effective, transparent, people-centred good governance are the need of the hour, the Vice President stressed on the need to address challenges in delivering basic services to the common man. “Aim at greater ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’ and build a culture of ‘evaluation’ and constant ‘learning’ in our governance systems,” he added.
The Vice President asked officers to adopt a more empathetic, responsive and inclusive approach of administration. “It should be an approach that cares for women, differently abled, the marginalized and those who have been left out of developmental process,” he added.
The Vice President asked officers to view every programme as a “societal mission” and implement them with dedication. There has to be a genuine commitment at all levels of administration to spread the benefits of democratic governance to all sections in society without any discrimination in the spirit of the principle “Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikaas,” he added.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Jitendra Singh said the attachment of IAS officers as Assistant Secretaries with the Union Government has been envisaged as a mechanism that blends the youth and experience. In the last four years, most of the Government programmes involved more and more of citizen participation and even the flagship programmes have turned into mass campaigns, he added.
Dr. Jitendra Singh cited two illustrations as heralding the dawn of Good Governance. One, the introduction of new practice of three months’ of mentorship in Government of India for fresh IAS officers before they went to their respective cadre allocated States for further assignment and second, an overall transformation with a new format for PM Excellence Awards which were earlier bestowed mostly on individual performance, but, now are broad-based on targets and outcomes achieved by different districts in the public welfare and priority programmes of Government of India.
176 young IAS officers of the 2016 batch working as Assistant Secretaries in 58 Central ministries attended the Interactive Session. During their three-month central deputation they would be provided a holistic overview of the functioning of the Central Government at a very early stage in their career.