Since we last interviewed Adil Zainulbhai in August 2022, nearly 9 million people from over 100 departments have signed up on iGOT—the Government of India’s learning management system—accounting for 32 million course enrollments with a 70% completion rate. It’s a massive scale-up that reflects both the ambition and urgency behind a national effort to upskill India’s public workforce.
When we spoke to Zainulbhai for this piece, I asked him what prompted the Government of India’s colossal target to train over 20 million bureaucrats. “We inherited a British-style civil service which was designed to frame and enforce rules,” he told me, “but we want to make sure our civil servants are citizen-centric and future-ready to deliver public services.”
Zainulbhai, formerly Chairman of McKinsey & Co, India, is the chairperson of India’s Capacity Building Commission. Its mission is to assess and improve the competencies of federal public servants and, in doing so, enhance the effectiveness of public service delivery. The government formed the Commission in 2021 with a goal of reforming the Indian bureaucracy – a goal that dates back to Independent India itself.
The origins of civil service reform
In April 1947, a small group of new probationary officers gathered in Metcalfe House — the erstwhile civil service training school in Delhi. Sardar Patel, who would soon take office as independent India’s first deputy prime minister, addressed them — the first batch of officers in the newly-minted All India Administrative Service (IAS). He said to them:
“Perhaps you are aware of a saying which is current in India regarding the past civil service, which is known as the Indian Civil Service, that it is neither Indian, nor civil, nor imbued with any spirit of service. In a true sense, it is not Indian because the Indian civil servants are mostly anglicized, their training was in foreign lands, and they had to serve foreign masters. The thing is now going to change.”
The impulse to reform a rules-based institution to a more citizen-centered workforce has therefore existed for 7 decades. The task went beyond simply “Indianizing” the civil services — it was (and continues to be) about reforming the institution and empowering public sector workers with the tools and skills to tackle increasingly complex public problems and improve the lives of the people they serve. Mission Karmayogi therefore focuses not just on the elite IAS cadre officers (who number just over 6000), but also on the over three million people who form the sprawling backbone of India’s public sector — railway staff, police officers, clerks, and municipal workers, among others, whose daily work shapes the public’s experience of government. The philosophy driving Zainulbhai’s work is simple: if civil servants understand the tools of the future, they’ll find ways to use them to serve the public better.
How are they doing this?
First, by providing civil servants across India access to over 2000 free courses on topics ranging from AI to RCTs (Randomized Control Trials) to legislative drafting, customer service, and even yoga.
Second, the commission worked with over 100 central government ministries and departments to create “capacity building plans” at the individual level to identify competency gaps within the service.
Third, they accredited 160 out of the 700+ government training institutes across the country to improve the quality of training programs those institutes offer.
The commission compiled the 2000+ courses from various sources including these government training institutes, elite universities like the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), NITs (National Institutes of Technology), and IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management), as well as private sector providers like Microsoft and Cisco.
“Do it somewhere, show it works, create a buzz”
The sheer scale of adoption — and the way the government tells that story — showcases the Modi government’s mastery of narrative-building. Their approach, which Zainulbhai described as a “buzz-building strategy,” combines actions designed not only to get individuals to enroll in courses but also to get entire departments to sign up at once.
They claim that no department was forced to adopt the training. Instead, by demonstrating high demand and uptake in early pilots with departments like the railways and the central police, the CBC generated internal “buzz” around e-learning, which encouraged more departments to offer the training to their workforces.
But perhaps the biggest push came from the Prime Minister himself. In October 2024, Prime Minister Modi declared a “National Learning Week” to encourage government employees to adopt a new “fast-paced approach” and urged them to “continue learning and innovating.”
The launch event (and its buildup) featured all the typical glitz, snazzy social media videos, and posts that people now associate with Prime Minister Modi’s announcements. He asked all civil servants to complete at least 3 hours of training on iGOT during National Learning Week.
Throughout the week, the commission organized webinars, talks, and training sessions on topics ranging from AI to healthcare to music, art, and public policy. The goal was to foster a habit of e-learning — and the results impressed. The number of iGOT learners surged from 3 million to 8.5 million in a matter of weeks — to the point that several state governments reportedly expressed interest in offering similar training to their employees too.
Designing demand-driven learning for adults
Those approaches, though, don’t fully explain the 70% course completion rates on iGOT (industry averages hover between 5–20%).
Zainulbhai attributes the high completion rates to two factors. First, the average course on iGOT lasts no more than an hour. This is a deliberate choice, he says: “For adult learning, if you go beyond 60 minutes, the drop rate for courses is 95%.” So instead of long sessions, the platform takes a modular approach: each course module lasts one hour, but learners can stack 10 modules together for deeper expertise.
The second reason, he says, is that course topics reflect real demand. The commission asked civil servants what they wanted to learn, and they either created or acquired courses based on those responses. This bottom-up approach, he believes, leads to higher motivation among learners. Many of the most popular courses on iGOT appear as a direct result of learner-driven demand — including “behavioral” courses like yoga and stress management, and “functional” courses like parliamentary affairs and legislative drafting.
Challenges
With high course completion rates and millions of enrollments, the platform clearly appeals to learners. But as with most government training programs, measuring real impact remains difficult.
In some instances, such as the Jan Seva training program the CBC created for 100,000 railway ticket collectors, they conducted citizen surveys before and after the training to assess changes in service delivery. But in roles without direct citizen interaction, real change may be more subtle — and harder to measure.
Change is also slow and often depends on institutional support. Much of the training aligns with current political priorities, particularly those of Prime Minister Modi, who strongly backs the program.
When we asked Zainulbhai how he would ensure the program survives a change in leadership, he responded that these initiatives only need an initial push (like the one from PM Modi) to reach a tipping point. Once that happens, he believes, the programming becomes institutional. Their philosophy is simple: if the course content is good, people will take it.
If everyone understands what AI is, they’ll find a way to use it
Another popular topic is Artificial Intelligence. While the Ministry of Electronics and IT leads on AI policy and infrastructure, Mission Karmayogi and the CBC have prioritized building AI literacy among civil servants.
So far, 1.3 million learners have taken AI-related courses on iGOT, which offers 15 courses covering AI fundamentals and sector-specific applications in agriculture, healthcare, and more.
Zainulbhai says the goal is for every public sector employee to take at least one hour of AI training in 2025 and to cultivate a culture of informed experimentation. He imagines a future where someone working in agriculture or healthcare can draw on basic AI knowledge to explore new applications. “If everyone understands what AI is, they’ll find a way to use it.”
In the coming months, the commission will also embed AI within the iGOT platform. First, they will use it to translate course content into 12 Indian languages. Second, they’ll build a recommendation engine to curate personalized course lists for each learner based on their department, function, and role.
The broader idea, Zainulbhai says, isn’t to standardize competencies across 3 million civil servants. “There are different competency needs at different levels, and the CBC’s competency model seeks to meet those needs. Our focus is building citizen-centric and future-ready capabilities and delivering them to learners anytime, anywhere, on any device.”
