Mandatory school duty for senior government officers from 2015

NEW DELHI: Starting next year, senior government officers will spend at least an hour every week interacting with school students and discussing a variety of issues including ethics, nation building, development and good governance under an initiative planned by the Narendra Modi government.

Although the bureaucrats will engage in a freewheeling chat with the students, they will not encourage any criticism of the government, according to the draft guidelines prepared by the department of personnel and training ( DoPT).

Schools will soon be instructed to set aside a slot, preferably between 7 am and 9 am every Tuesday and Thursday. Under the initiative, which could be titled 'Rashtra Nirman (nation building)' or Garv (pride) or Sampark (communication), senior government officers, preferably who have done a foreign stint or have been trained abroad, will be encouraged to visit Navodaya Vidyalayas and Kendriya Vidyalayas.

The officers will make presentations on a topic, followed by an interaction with students of Class VIII onwards.

The exercise, aimed at nation building, will be conducted jointly by the human resource development ministry and DoPT.

DoPT has invited suggestions to the draft guidelines of the programme till the end of this month and the initiative will be formally launched on January 1, 2015.