This Article is From May 27, 2016

Bureaucrat Counters Criticism On 'Rehashed' Schemes Under Modi Government

Bureaucrat Counters Criticism On 'Rehashed' Schemes Under Modi Government

Programmes like the Swachh Bharat Abhyaan were path-breaking, P K Mishra, Additional Principal Secretary in the PMO said.

New Delhi: Countering criticism of "rehashing" schemes, a top official in the Prime Minister's Office has said that no idea is entirely new and its origin can be traced in old ones but what distinguishes it is how effectively a programme is applied to a particular situation.

Stating that initiatives including Swachh Bharat and Jan Dhan Yojana were "path breaking and ambitious" but were dubbed by critics as "basically new names", P K Mishra, Additional Principal Secretary in the PMO, cited the example of noted economist Amartya Sen's concept of entitlement and suggested it was similar to observations made decades earlier by an official of erstwhile Mysore State.

Mr Sen, a Nobel laureate, has been critical of Modi government's policies.

Addressing inaugural session of second National Symposium on Excellence in Training in Delhi, Mr Mishra said the initiatives taken by Modi government required "highly motivated and competent" personnel for ensuring "effective implementation".

"It is sometimes pointed out that these programmes or schemes are not new, they are basically new names. I would like to point out that no idea can be entirely new.

"Ideas evolve over years, innovations and any new idea, so-called new idea, its origin can always be traced to something in the past," he said.

Mishra also made a strong pitch for application of three "distinctive aspects" of transparency, speed and effective implementation in governance.

Underscoring need for human resource development, he said it was the same factor that had propelled economic development in East Asian countries between 1960s and 80s.

"We need to use technology not in the sense of high-level technological equipment, but technology at the grass roots-level also will make the schemes more effective. So, all these pose lot of challenges to training institutes," he said.
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