When he was the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi began the concept of ‘chintan shivir’ in 2003 during which officials and ministers got onto a bus and drove out of Gandhinagar for a brainstorming session on governance ideas. Some saw it as a modest version of companies holding their “offsite”.
The concept has now been brought to Delhi with all central ministries being told to hold ‘chintan shivirs’, or introspection camps. The minister-in-charge has been asked to head the brainstorming sessions with officials and staff members.
News18 reported that the Ayush ministry has decided to hold a ‘chintan shivir’ over two days at Guwahati. At the PRAGATI review meeting earlier this week at Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked chief secretaries of the states to also hold similar ‘chintan shivirs’ at the district-level so that new ideas emerge.
Last week, the prime minister went to Chanakyapuri to hold a ‘chintan shivir’ for the ministry he heads – the department of personnel – and spoke for over an hour with officials over the issue of public grievances and pensions. He impressed upon officials to study the ‘Swagat Portal’ started by him as Gujarat CM in 2003 to handle public grievances, where he would directly listen to 1,200 to 1,500 complaints online in a single sitting.
How will this help?
For years, government meetings involved reviews inside a closed-door office environment with mundane discussions. As the CM in 2003, Modi tried something different by starting ‘chintan shivirs’ in which he gave speeches to officials in settings outside office. It was seen as a pioneering initiative taken towards vibrant governance in Gujarat, which had no precedent in administrative history of the country.
The Gujarat government brought out a coffee table book terming the initiative as a “meeting of minds, collective thinking, free expression of ideas and brainstorming led to the resolution of many issues that were faced by Gujarat”. Modi would take his entire cabinet, BJP MLAs and senior bureaucrats as well as police officials for the three-day ‘chintan shivirs’, where discussions and debates took place.
The idea is to replicate this concept in Delhi in all ministries. Like, one ‘chintan shivir’ in Gujarat had led to the birth of the idea of ‘Swantah Sukhaya’ scheme to reward and recognise initiatives of officers doing innovative work apart from their routine assigned work. Officials were motivated to take up a useful public project through their initiative, which is different from their routine chores and gave them internal joy and a sense of satisfaction. The idea was to let them “think out of the box”.
Last year in October, the PM addressed a two-day ‘chintan shivir’ held at Surajkund in Haryana, which was attended by home secretaries, state DGPs and DGs of Central Armed Police Forces. There he gave the idea that the identity of the police across the country should be identical with the concept of ‘One nation, one uniform’.
“It is always inspiring and motivating to hear the PM in such settings. One feels the energy to come back and do something different that contributes to nation-building. New ideas are the fuel of good governance,” a senior secretary-level officer told News18.
Another secretary-level officer said the exercise to build an agenda for the upcoming ‘chintan shivirs’ in different ministries had thrown up new ideas. “Holding such sessions outside office settings is the key,” the secretary added. The ‘chintan shivirs’ may not be like the fancy corporate offsite but seem to be working.
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