Yashada,a learning ground for IAS officers

Describing it as the first learning place of the IAS brigade in the State,Sharma said Yashada’s training is of tremendous help to new IAS officers who are little nervous as it is their first attempt at the country’s top job. “But the nervousness disappears once you are at Yashada. It stills in you a sense of confidence and gives you enough knowledge and expertise to take on the world,” he said.

Nikita Kamthekar,a collegian,who is preparing for her IAS exam,said,”I had been to Yashada and found it to be place where you can start dreaming about the big job.” She said some of her friends who are preparing for IAS exam are regulars at Yashada. “They always speak glowingly about it.”

The apex administrative training institute of the Maharashtra government,Yashada’s aegis includes training government officers of the state,equipping executives of NGOs with capacity-building acumen and also implementing various State and Union government projects.

Conceived as Administrative Staff College (ASC) in Mumbai in 1963,the institue was relocated on the Rajbhavan campus at Pune in 1984. It was made autonomous and renamed as Maharashtra Institute of Development Administration (MIDA) in 1986. It was christened the current moniker on November 26,1990,after Y B Chavan,the first chief minister of Maharashtra and deputy prime minister of India. “Thousands of officers have been gleaned by the institute in the past 46 years,” stated Ramesh Vaswani,assistant professor and officer incharge,publication cell,Yashada.

Vaswani said apart from its primary function as a training facility,the institute also indulges in high-profile research projects in association with World Bank,UNICEF,UNDP,DoPT. A highlight of the last four years has been the training of officers from 28 states in the nitty-gritty and implementation of the Right to Information Act. YASHADA has assisted grampanchayat members and office holders of Zilla Parishads through the Backward Region Grant Fund used fro the implementation of rural schemes,as well as State Action Plan. “An ambitious watershed development plan is being chalked out an implemented in the state. The Research and Documentation Center has prepared a Directory of NGOs in Maharshtra. Carried out evaluation of schemes of the agricultural department,produced District Planning Guidelines in Marathi issued by the Planning Commission,government of India,and implemented micro planning projects for village development.”

Vaswani said of the main activities in the last three to four years,one of the major one was training of thousands of officers in as many as 28 states on the Right to Information. “This has been the major contribution of Yashada in the implementation of the Act. The competitive centre has successfully coached students for the examination and many of its students have now joined the state and central services. As many as 31 students belonging to the centre’s recent batch of 50 students have passed the UPSC prelims,” he said.

YASHADA consists of a number of major insitutes and centres such as State Institute of Rural Development,State Insitutut of Urban Development,Centre for Public Governance,Centre for Environment and Development,Right to Information Cell,Centre for Disaster Management,Watershed Development and Management Centre,Centre for Information Technlogy,Centre for Power Sector Development,Centre for Cooperative Training and Research,Centre for Equity and Social Justice,Research and Documentation Centre,Management Development Centre,Centre for Human Development,Dr Ambedkar Competitive Examination Centre and Centre for Media and Publications.