Training Public Servants: Recent Policies,Needs,and Experiences

For the last three years, the Government of India has been emphasizing upon the training of public servants as a strategy for social and economic development. The earlier training policy which focused on remedying deficiencies in skills of individual officers has yielded place to the new policy of preparing all civil servants for development.

The new training policy is neither a part of a new developmental paradigm, nor is it based on an assessment of training needs. A survey of 400 supervisory Group ’A‚ officers of U P State Government and of All India Services shows that the administrators feel that training should emphasize much more the external environment they face than the principles of management.

Based on this survey, and his own experience as a trainer, Mukul Sanwal argues that besides political emphasis, a new development paradigm and an assessment of current systems and practices are prerequisites for the new policy. He suggests ways to link training programmes with the service goals of development administration and for the resolution of specific problems. He considers the human resource concept involving changing the ingrained values and attitudes of public servants as central.