Govt wants “conducive frame of mind” for bureaucrats, organizes yoga camp, workshops on stress relief

Cover photo of Harry Cohen's "Demonics of bureaucracy"

COME Saturday, the Central government’s new initiative of stress relief-cum-rejuvenating programmes will formally begin in New Delhi. The department of personnel and training (DoPT) will first hold a two-day programme this weekend on stress management for officers of DoPT and the cabinet secretariat. It will be followed by yoga camps, workshops, sports, cultural events etc. for IAS and other government officers across the country. According to the official statement, this exercise will help bureaucrats maintain a “conducive frame of mind” and ensure…
a “harmonious well-being”.

The government believes, the work load and office stress have increased recently, and this kind of activities will rejuvenate the officers’ energies. Union minister of state in the PMO Jitendra Singh recently said that such efforts would not only help in rejuvenating the energies and spirits of officers who are subjected to increasing work load and office stress but also help in bringing together the fraternity of civil service officers from all over India, thereby promoting a spirit of comradeship among them. 

The officers of the level of deputy secretaries and director and above belonging to DoPT and cabinet secretariat are now registering for Saturday’s stress management programme to be conducted by the Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhan Sansthan at the Civil Services Officers’ Institute (CSOI) at Vinay Marg, New Delhi. From April 1, 2015, Yoga training is also being organized in association with the Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga at 40 centers in and outside Delhi. 

In fact, the DoPT wants to make it a pan-India exercise. It has also mooted a “stress management” segment in the induction course for new employees joining state services in the three states of Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. And if the experience from those three states is encouraging, the same practice would be replicated in other states too. 

Minister Singh has recently said that increasing accountability and rising expectation level in administrative work are taking a toll on babus, and therefore “in-house provisions for stress management are called for”.