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Last Update: February 25, 2023, 09:00 IST
Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a ‘chintan shivir’ for the Department of Personnel, a ministry he heads, and spoke with officials on the issue of public grievances and pensions. (@NarendraModi/Twitter)
At a progress review meeting earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked chief secretaries of states to organize ‘chintan shivirs’ at the district level so that new ideas emerge
When he was chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi introduced the concept of ‘Chintan Shivir’ in 2003, during which officials and ministers were put on a bus and taken out to Gandhinagar for brainstorming sessions on ideas for governance. Some see it as a milder version of companies having their “offsite”.
The concept has now been brought to Delhi and all central ministries have been asked to organize ‘Chintan Shivir’ or introspection camps. The minister in charge has been asked to lead brainstorming sessions with officers and staff members.
News18 It is reported that the Ministry of AYUSH has decided to organize ‘Chintan Shivir’ in Guwahati over two days. At a progress review meeting in Delhi earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked chief secretaries of states to organize similar ‘chintan shivirs’ at the district level so that new ideas emerge.
Last week, the prime minister went to Chanakyapuri to conduct a ‘chintan shivir’ for the ministry – the Department of Personnel – and spoke for over an hour with officials on the issue of public grievances and pensions. He impressed upon officials to study the ‘Swagat Portal’ launched by him in 2003 as Chief Minister of Gujarat to handle public grievances, where he would listen to 1,200 to 1,500 complaints directly online in a single sitting.
How will this help?
For years, government meetings consisted of a closed-door office review environment with mundane discussions. As CM in 2003, Modi tried something different by starting ‘Chintan Shivir’, in which he delivered speeches to officials in settings outside the office. This was seen as a pioneering initiative towards vibrant governance in Gujarat, which had no precedent in the administrative history of the country.
The Gujarat government brought out a coffee table book, calling the initiative a “meeting of minds, collective thinking, free expression of ideas and brainstorming that resolved many issues faced by Gujarat”. Modi will take his entire cabinet, BJP legislators and senior bureaucrats as well as police officers to a three-day ‘chintan shivir’ where discussions and debates take place.
The idea is to replicate this concept across all ministries in Delhi. As such, a ‘Chintan Shivir’ in Gujarat gave birth to the idea of ’Swant Sukhay’ scheme, to reward and recognize the initiative of officers doing innovative work beyond the routine assigned tasks. The officers were motivated through their initiative to take up a useful public project, which is different from their routine works and this gave them a sense of inner happiness and satisfaction. The idea was to let them “think out of the box”.
In October last year, the PM addressed a two-day ‘Chintan Shivir’ held at Surajkund in Haryana, which was attended by home secretaries, state DGPs and DGs of the Central Armed Police Forces. There he gave the idea that the identity of the police across the country should be similar to the concept of ‘one nation, one uniform’.
“It is always inspiring and motivating to hear the PM speak in such a setting. One feels the energy to come back and do something different which contributes to nation building. New ideas are the fuel of good governance,” a senior secretary-level official told News18.
Another secretary-level official said the agenda-making exercise for ‘chintan shivirs’ held in various ministries has yielded new ideas. “It is important to hold such sessions outside of office settings,” the secretary said. ‘Chintan Shivirs’ may not sound like fancy corporate offsites but they seem to be working.
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