STATE TIMES NEWS
KEVADIYA: Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said here on Friday that in recent years there has been a sort of “democratisation” of Civil Services and other avenues due to technology driven accessibility to preparatory material which has, of late, enabled even the aspirants from remotest parts of India to make it to IAS and other All India Services.
This new trend will have a bearing on our future as well, said the Minister. Technology has been the biggest leveller, with mobile phone and internet penetrating the countryside and everybody gaining access to knowledge, he said.
“The demography of the entire Civil Services has changed, – you have now toppers from Punjab, Haryana, even three Civil Services Exam toppers were all girls this year, from different States of India, earlier it was confined to a handful of States,” said Dr Jitendra.
The Union Minister was addressing the IAS Probationers at the 98th Foundation Course of Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), bringing together 560 Officer Trainees from IAS including 16 Civil Services of India and 3 Civil Services of Bhutan, being conducted at Kevadiya, Gujarat.
Dr Jitendra said that the focus of the Government, under the leadership of PM Modi, has been on transparency, accountability and in-time delivery of services by the Government.
“PM Modi has stressed that the age of working in silos is over and today it is the ‘Whole of Government’ approach,” he said.
Dr Jitendra said, Civil Services officers have to turn into instruments of public service delivery of the Government’s citizen centric schemes.
The DoPT Minister said that the three-month mandatory stint of new IAS Officers with the Central Ministries / Departments was a visionary idea by PM Modi in 2015 to expose them to the top echelons of the Government at the commencement of their training.
“These young officers are privileged because before beginning their posting, they get an opportunity of meeting the senior Secretaries and Ministers in the Government of India, whereas their seniors from earlier years would sometimes never get such an opportunity throughout their career and even if they got an opportunity like this, it would be much later in career during their term of deputation to the Centre,” he said.
“With the change of times, with the change of priorities, the accountability having increased, transparency has gone up manifold, technology taking up many of what was not there earlier on, it has to be inevitably evolving all the time,” he said.
“In order to give a work friendly environment, it is equally a responsibility of the government so that we can have the best of the potential of the officers,” he said.