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The initiative was Advani’s. It was he who spoke to the two experts and they planned the workshop in tandem with the Home Ministry. Advani attended the session on both days, spending more than an hour each day.

This was the second such workshop, complete with an interactive session where Secretaries made presentations on what could be done differently in their departments. The first workshop was held in April 2002 for three days and Advani had spent many hours attending it.

Arun Jaitley and Vasundhara Raje Scindia, who was then Minister for Personnel, had also participated. ‘‘Last year we held a workshop on Leadership and Management of Change,’’ Department of Personnel and Training Secretary S S Dawra told The Indian Express.

‘‘This was a follow-up meeting. Six presentations were made. The Civil Aviation Secretary presented a paper on the changes brought about at Delhi airport in the last one year. The Tourism Secretary made a presentation called Incredible India.

‘‘The Labour Secretary presented a case study of how negotiations averted a strike in a coal mine. Another presentation was on training the IAS. An NRI from the US spoke on civil services reforms in India. The idea was to motivate officers,’’ Dawra said.

The next workshop is slated for November and it’s expected that Central ministers too will attend.

The Parikh-Dholakia duo has held similar training programmes for Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh ministers. In both states, sessions were held jointly for the ministers and the senior IPS and IAS officers.

Advani who oversees the functioning of the entire bureaucracy — the DoPT now comes under the ambit of the Home Ministry — has been conscious of the need to motivate bureaucrats and build a better interface between ministries which are now far more interdependent.

Contacted in Ahmedabad, Indira Parikh said: ‘‘The idea behind the workshops is ultimately to so design governance that it makes a difference to people in their dealings with the government.’’

‘‘It has to be interactive. We can’t tell them what to do. These people are managing the country. We only deal with one department at our insitute.’’

Awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for the best Teacher in Management in 2001, Parikh said, ‘‘Everybody talks about what should be done, we have the best of institutions but everyone looks up to someone else. Unless we begin with ourselves and start with small steps, we will not be able to take the big leaps.’’

The need for training senior bureaucrats was said to have also been emphasised in a recent report to the Prime Minister by a group he had tasked to look at bureaucratic reforms.

The report is believed to have made out a case that the confidential report of an officer should be decided not merely through inputs from his seniors but should also take into account views which represent public perception of the person.