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Welcome to our interview series featuring changemakers across Asia, where we delve into policy and change processes that are shaping the region.
In this edition, Annapoorna Ravichander talks to V. Manjula, the former Director General at the Administrative Training Institute (ATI), Mysuru.
Manjula is a retired Indian Administrative Service officer from the Karnataka cadre of 1987, batch 234.
During her career, Manjula held various positions in the Government of Karnataka, including additional Chief Secretary of the Personnel and Administrative Reforms Department; additional Chief Secretary of the Medical Education, Health and Family Welfare Department; and Commissioner Directorate of the Urban Land Transport (DULT) Department, Bengaluru.
In this interview, Manjula discusses her experiences of working with different Indian government initiatives in the areas of training and capacity-building.
Question. Please introduce yourself.
I am Manjula. I belong to the 1987 batch of Indian Administrative Service. I retired from service on 31 May 2024, after almost 37 years.
I belong to Hyderabad and I did my post-graduation in Organic Chemistry from the University College of Science, Osmania University.
During my service in the Karnataka cadre, I worked in various positions, such as in urban development; rural development; revenue; planning; administrative reforms; energy; information technology and bio-technology; and medical education.
At the time of retirement, I held two posts, i.e., Chairperson, Karnataka Administrative Tribunal, Bengaluru, and Director General at the Administrative Training Institute, Mysuru.
Q. As the Director General at the ATI, what was your biggest challenge(s)?
I joined as the Director General at the Administrative Training Institute in April 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown. From April 2020 to April 2022, we had to work under the looming shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We had to adapt ourselves to the circumstances pretty quickly and implement our training schedules as there was demand for us to conduct common foundation courses for new recruits to the government.
We conducted several training programmes online during 2020 and 2021, and when we started the offline programmes in 2021, we maintained a bubble-like environment on our campus to ensure that training was imparted in compliance with COVID-19 protocols.
The other big challenge was to reform and refine the training schedules, pedagogy, and content, and to enhance the use of tools like case studies, games, etc., in training programmes.
As we dealt with adult learners, we needed to upgrade our capacities to capture and retain their attention and to evolve, innovate and deliver high-quality capacity-building programmes, tailored to the specific needs of government officials in the state of Karnataka.
I would say that we were successful in doing so, thanks to the proactive faculty and support from other institutions, like the Public Affairs Centre (PAC), Bengaluru; the World Resources Institute (WRI); and the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), etc.
We had 30 District Training Institutes (DTIs) and 50% of the posts of principals, vice-principals and instructors were filled by deputation from other government departments.
As most of them did not have a prior background in training, the quality of the training programmes imparted through the DTIs suffered to some extent.
We tried to improve the quality through Faculty Development Programmes, conducted with support from the PAC. And also, by taking a policy decision that all training programmes that were less than five days in duration would be conducted in the DTIs, with the active participation of the faculty of ATI.
We also introduced common modules across the DTIs to ensure uniformity in training. We delegated powers to the principals to equip them with the necessary administrative and financial authority to function effectively.
We were also at a disadvantage as we did not have a training portal to keep track of the various training programmes undergone by an employee. So, we developed a framework for Saamarthya – a portal for capacity-building – and shared it with the concerned department to integrate it with the human resource management system of the government.
Q. Can you describe your experiences of working with different government departments, especially in the area of training and capacity-building?
In the state, there are different levels of collaboration with government departments in the areas of training and capacity-building.
First, departments fund capacity-building programmes with specific objectives.
We had a robust relation and memorandum of understanding with departments like the Planning, e-governance, Disaster Management (Revenue), Infrastructure development, and Social Welfare departments.
These departments fund the cost of the workforce and training in the Centre for Sustainable Development Goals; the Centre for e-governance and Data Analytics; the Centre for Disaster Management; the Centre for Public-Private Partnership; and the Centre for Social Justice and Equity, respectively.
We delivered training programmes based on the training needs assessment done jointly with these departments.
Second, departments nominate officials for the training programmes conducted by the ATI.
Our experience was fairly good in obtaining the nominations of officials for training in common foundation courses, refresher programmes, and programmes delivered by the centres – where the entire cost of training is met by the ATI out of the budgetary grants or grants from the centres.
Third, departments nominate officials and meet the training expenses.
ATI has had a mixed experience in collaborating with departments in such programmes. ATI took up the training course, Leaders in Climate Change Management – a sponsored programme where the nominating department has to pay the cost of training.
The programme has a unique design, with online and on-campus training and mentorship projects. It sensitizes government officials working in urban areas on climate change, its causes and impacts, and the mitigation and adaptation measures needed to combat it.
Some departments were not prepared to pay the cost of training, and it took a lot of cajoling on the part of our faculty to get them to nominate their officials for the programme. This was in spite of the departments being mandated to set apart some funds for training, as per the training policy of the state.
Similarly, when we took up training for visually-impaired government officials from several departments under Sugamya, we needed to use money from our own corpus to conduct the training. We did so as we believed in the importance of the programme.
Q. Was funding a constraint in running this huge institute? If so, how did you address this challenge?
Unfortunately, training institutes do not figure on the priority list for funding. While we did get funds for training from the budget and grants released to the centres, we barely got sufficient funds for the maintenance of existing infrastructure, let alone for creating new infrastructure.
There is an urgent need for upgrading our infrastructure in the district training institutes. We took every opportunity to present our funding requirements to the state government. Our proposal for upgrading computer labs and connectivity in ATI and the DTIs is still under active consideration by the e-governance department.
We submitted a proposal to the Finance Commission of India seeking financial assistance. We also strove to implement as many sponsored programmes as we could to supplement our funds and tried to tap into funding from various institutions of the Government of India.
Q. What did you do when there was an influx of training requirements (especially from various government departments) that you couldn’t accommodate at the same time?
We faced this scenario with respect to conducting common foundation courses.
Many departments fail to do regular recruitment to fill up the vacancies because of a lack of approvals, budget, etc., and then they take up recruitment to fill a large number of vacancies in one go.
This results in a sudden surge of demand for common foundation courses/induction courses for the new recruits.
We incorporated specific slots for conducting common foundation courses in our training calendar in ATI, as well as in the DTIs. In general, we planned for two common foundation courses per year, with the flexibility to include another if there was demand.
Q. Now that you have moved on from ATI, what do you hope that you have left behind?
The yearning to raise the bar continuously and pursue excellence in training through faculty development programmes, building partnerships with reputed institutions, and being innovative.
Q. In ten years from now, where would you like to see the ATI? Particularly, are there any milestones/specific achievements that you would like to see achieved?
I would hope that the ATI will continue to be a premier training institution at state and national levels, and would excel in research, data analytics, and the use of innovative and relevant pedagogical tools in capacity-building.
I would like the ATI to develop modules, tools and courses that are recognized for their quality at the national level and for the existing centres to carve a niche for themselves as centres of excellence in their respective domains.
In addition to the existing centres, I would like to see the ATI establish a Centre for Climate-Smart and Gender-Inclusive Mobility, to focus on the evolving challenges of mobility in urban India.
I would also like to see the DTIs as centres of excellence at the district level, with high-quality infrastructure and for them to be a committed and learned faculty, contributing to the enhancement of the knowledge and skills of officials.