By Shaba Ahmad (Consultant – Capacity Building Commission)

अनुभव। संवाद। दिशा।

Across generations, some of the most meaningful journeys of learning have been shaped not only by formal education, but by the presence of someone who could guide, question, encourage and help another person see a situation differently.

India’s intellectual and spiritual traditions offer several such examples. Young Narendranath Datta’s engagement with Sri Ramakrishna shaped the journey of the person the world came to know as Swami Vivekananda. Amir Khusrau found spiritual and intellectual guidance in Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Ananda’s long association with Gautama Buddha became a journey of continuous learning, reflection and service.

The Bhagavad Gita offers another enduring example. When Arjuna found himself confronted by doubt and uncertainty, Krishna did not merely provide instructions. Through dialogue, questions and an expanded perspective, he helped Arjuna understand his responsibilities, regain clarity and arrive at conviction before acting.

The contexts are different, but the underlying idea remains relevant even today: people grow not only through what they are taught, but also through conversations that help them understand themselves, their choices and the larger purpose of their work.

This is the essence of mentorship.

The philosophy of the Karmayogi Mentorship Programme is captured in three simple words:

अनुभव। संवाद। दिशा।

• अनुभव represents the wisdom, perspective and learning that a mentor brings from years of experience.
• संवाद represents the open, respectful and reflective exchange through which mentor and mentee engage and learn from each other.
• दिशा represents the clarity and guidance that emerge from this relationship, enabling the mentee to navigate his or her professional journey with greater confidence and purpose.

Together, these three ideas describe what meaningful mentorship can offer to public service.

अनुभव: Learning from Experience

Formal training gives an officer knowledge, frameworks, rules and skills. Public service, however, frequently presents situations for which there is no ready-made answer.

An officer may understand a policy but still have to determine how it should be implemented in a difficult local context. There may be competing priorities, stakeholder pressures, ethical considerations, limited resources or circumstances where the written rule provides only part of the answer.

It is here that अनुभव becomes invaluable.

A mentor brings more than knowledge. A mentor brings the accumulated learning of having faced difficult situations, made decisions, experienced successes and setbacks, and understood institutions and people over time.

A simple way of distinguishing teaching from mentoring is that a teacher often teaches the “how”, while a mentor helps one understand the “why”, “when” and “where”. Formal learning develops skills and competencies; mentorship helps place those competencies within the context in which they must actually be exercised.

The Karmayogi Mentorship Framework recognises that capabilities such as sound judgement under ambiguity, navigating ethical dilemmas and balancing competing priorities cannot be developed through classroom or online learning alone. They also require experiential learning, reflection and interaction with experienced public servants.

Mentoring itself is not new to Indian public service. Officers have traditionally learnt from seniors, faculty members at training institutions, supervisors during field postings and experienced colleagues who took a personal interest in their growth. Many such relationships developed organically and continued well beyond the initial years of service.

The Karmayogi Mentorship Programme seeks to build upon this valuable tradition by providing an enabling structure within which such relationships can be initiated, sustained and strengthened.

संवाद: The Relationship at the Heart of Mentorship

Experience alone does not create mentorship. Experience becomes useful when it is shared through संवाद.

Mentorship is a developmental relationship between two individuals based on trust and a mutual desire for growth. It is the sharing of knowledge, experience and wisdom to help another person think through challenges, make decisions with greater clarity and progressively realise his or her potential.

It is at once a relationship, a process and a commitment.

As a relationship, mentorship is trust-based and non-hierarchical in spirit. The mentor is not another reporting authority. The relationship supplements formal administrative structures rather than replacing them.

As a process, it facilitates the transmission of experience, tacit knowledge and institutional wisdom over a sustained period of time. Importantly, this learning can be bi-directional.

As a commitment, mentorship requires the mentor to help the mentee think through confusion, build conviction, act with purpose and subsequently reflect upon that action.

The Karmayogi Mentorship framework therefore envisages the relationship as developmental, confidential and distinct from formal processes such as performance appraisal, vigilance matters, postings or transfers.

Dr. Balasubramanium, Member, NITI Aayog, and former Member (HR) CBC has very meaningfully explained the role of a mentor through each letter of the word MENTOR:

• M - Manage the relationship with care, intentionality and clarity of purpose.
• E - Encourage the mentee to explore, take risks and grow beyond comfort zones.
• N - Nurture potential with patience, compassion and a non-judgmental attitude.
• T - Teach not just skills, but the ‘why’ behind decisions and actions.
• O - Open doors to new possibilities, networks and perspectives.
• R - Respond to the mentee’s evolving needs.

This explanation captures an important feature of mentorship: a mentor does not need to have an answer to every question. A good mentor listens, asks questions, shares relevant experiences, helps the mentee examine alternatives and enables independent thinking.

The purpose is not to create dependence upon the mentor. It is to strengthen the mentee’s own judgement.

संवाद under the Karmayogi Mentorship Programme is also not intended to be one-directional. Reverse mentoring forms an important part of the approach. Experienced officers may bring institutional knowledge, administrative judgement and lessons accumulated through years of service, while younger officers may bring familiarity with emerging technologies, data analytics, artificial intelligence, digital governance and contemporary ways of working.

The programme thus creates an opportunity for inter-generational learning, where experience and emerging knowledge can enrich each other.

दिशा: From Conversation to Clarity

If अनुभव is what a mentor brings and संवाद is how the relationship develops, दिशा is what meaningful mentorship seeks to create.

The mentor does not determine the mentee’s path. Rather, the mentor helps the mentee see that path more clearly.

This is especially important during the formative years of public service. Newly inducted officers are simultaneously learning the formal systems of government and discovering the less visible dimensions of administration: how institutions work, how teams are managed, how competing interests are balanced, how difficult conversations are handled and how decisions are taken while remaining anchored in fairness and public interest.

Questions inevitably arise.

How should an officer respond when two legitimate priorities compete? How does one deal with failure? How should one build trust within a team? How does one remain citizen-centric while navigating procedural requirements? When should one persist with an approach, and when should one change course?

There may not always be a single correct answer.

Mentorship creates a safe space to reflect on such questions. Through repeated conversations, the mentee can develop greater self-awareness, confidence and clarity of thought.

In this sense, दिशा is not an instruction. It is the clarity and guidance that emerges from the संवाद

Why a Karmayogi Mentorship Programme?

Mission Karmayogi seeks to build a competent, ethical, citizen-centric and future-ready civil service. Formal training, competency mapping and continuous digital learning are important components of this effort. Mentorship complements these mechanisms by addressing another dimension of capacity building — learning through experience, reflection and human interaction.

Recognising this potential, the Capacity Building Commission initiated the Karmayogi Mentorship Programme – Pilot to explore how mentorship could be introduced in public service in a structured and enabling manner.

Beginning with a pilot was deliberate.

Several questions needed to be understood through actual implementation: Would officers seek mentorship? Would experienced officers volunteer to mentor younger colleagues? How should mentor and mentee be matched? How much structure should be provided without making the relationship mechanical? And how could technology facilitate the relationship while preserving confidentiality and trust?

Rather than attempting to answer all these questions through guidelines alone, the Commission adopted a learning-oriented approach — implement, learn from experience, obtain feedback and progressively strengthen the model.

Demand for mentorship was first assessed among officers at the initial stages of their careers. Experienced officers were subsequently invited to volunteer as mentors, while eligible officers were provided an opportunity to participate as mentees.

Both mentors and mentees have also been oriented on the objectives of the Programme, their respective roles, professional boundaries and approaches for meaningful mentoring engagement.

How is the Programme being implemented?

Technology is being used as an enabler of mentorship, not as a substitute for the human relationship at its centre.

Under the pilot, the UNNATI platform supports creation of mentor and mentee profiles and technology-enabled matching based on relevant parameters.

Once a mentor and mentee are matched, technology can facilitate continuity by supporting the scheduling and logging of interactions and programme feedback. At the same time, the substance of mentoring conversations remains confidential.

The intent is therefore to provide enough structure to sustain engagement without over-formalising a relationship whose strength ultimately comes from trust and openness.

The broader mentorship framework also envisages developmental goal-setting so that conversations are linked with the mentee’s professional growth rather than remaining isolated interactions.

This reflects a fundamental principle of the Programme: technology can make mentorship accessible and scalable, but it is meaningful संवाद that makes mentorship valuable.

From Individual Development to Better Public Service

The immediate beneficiary of mentorship may appear to be the mentee, but its potential impact extends much further.

A young officer who develops greater self-awareness, judgement and clarity of purpose becomes better equipped to navigate complex administrative situations. An experienced officer who mentors a younger colleague is exposed to new ideas, technologies and perspectives. Institutions benefit when knowledge and experience are shared rather than lost.

Over time, mentorship can contribute to a culture where seeking guidance is regarded as a commitment to learning and mentoring another officer is regarded as an important responsibility of experienced public servants.

Indeed, mentoring a younger public servant should increasingly come to be recognised as an honour associated with experience, integrity and exemplary service.

The larger aspiration of the Karmayogi Mentorship Programme is therefore not merely to create mentor–mentee pairs. It is to strengthen a culture of continuous learning in public service — one where competence is supported by character, experience is shared across generations, and authority remains anchored in service to citizens.

Public servants occupy a pivotal position between policy and its implementation. The quality of their judgement, values and decisions has a direct bearing on citizens’ experience of governance. Strengthening their capacity to think, reflect, learn and act with purpose can therefore contribute to better public service and, ultimately, to the aspirations of Viksit Bharat.

The journey can perhaps be expressed most simply through the three words at the heart of the Karmayogi Mentorship Programme:

अनुभव - wisdom and learning are shared.
संवाद - experiences and perspectives are exchanged.
दिशा - clarity and purpose emerge.

अनुभव। संवाद। दिशा।

Three words that capture a simple idea: when experience becomes dialogue, it can provide direction not only for an individual public servant, but for stronger public service itself.

AI disclosure: The author used ChatGPT to support editing, improve clarity, and refine the structure of this article. The ideas, analysis, and conclusions are the author's own, and the final text was reviewed and approved by the author.