Be alive to problems at hand and equipped to tackle them: PM tells Indian bureaucrats

PRIME Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has given Indian civil servants a thumps up while adding that there were areas in which the civil services should have and could have performed better. While inaugurating the Civil Services Day in New Delhi on Wednesday, Mr Singh preferred to encourage the bureaucrats by saying: “On the whole, it would not be an exaggeration to say that our civil services have lived up to this expectation”.

Yet he reminded the bureaucrats that they should not only be alive and sensitive to the problems at hand but should also be well-equipped to tackle them. He emphasized on continuous up-gradation and improvement of trainings. Some excerpts:

On New Problems

The problems and challenges that we face today are not only very different from those which we encountered soon after Independence but are also increasingly complex. Our population has grown manifold, as has the size of our economy. Our country is getting increasingly urbanized. Higher levels of education, income and awareness have raised the aspirations and expectations of our people.

Post Crisis

Our medium term target is to return the economy to an annual growth rate of 9-10 percent. Our civil services have a major role to play in reaching this goal by facilitating the right enabling environment in which enterprise and innovations are encouraged.

On Delivery

Civil servants, particularly those of the All-India Services serving in the states, have a key role in the implementation of all these (Central government) programmes. There is a wide-spread feeling that we have not been completely successful in ensuring that the benefits of our development programmes reach out to the people as intended. This is a massive challenge.

(In Picture: Dr Singh with the awardees of PM’s award for Excellence in Public Administration, at 5th Civil Services Day function, in New Delhi on April 21, 2010)

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