Srinagar/Aug, 9 : Saurabh Bhagat Director General, J&K IMPARD on Monday presided over a joint inaugural function of three training courses here at M. A. Road, Srinagar. These courses included “Participatory Administration & Collective Decision Making”; “Life Style Skills”; and “Development of Smart Cities”.
Addressing the trainee participants, who belonged to various department of J&K Government, Saurabh Bhagat highlighted the relevance of these training programs. He said that a good officer is the one who is a good listener besides being a good decision maker as listening to front line workers provides him/her feedback about ground realities which in turn helps him work with others like a team in a productive and creative way. He said that the training course on “Life Style Skills” has been so designed as to inculcate a sense of creating balance in the psychological set-up of Government functionaries who, he said, should possess emotional, and spiritual balance which are needed in various aspects of life like time management, stress management, and goal setting at the workplace especially in these covid-19 pandemic times when stress levels are already very high. He revealed that IMPARD has entered into an understanding with the Police Department to train/help Police personnel to carry out their work with a human approach. This training would be all about the Art of Better Living even when the work is rather stressful. Elucidating upon the concept of applying human approach to work, he said that developing smart cities includes doing things in a smart way which in turn includes preserving our heritage and natural beauty while modernizing. For example, we should not cut chinar trees when constructing roads, flyovers, buildings, and so on. He said that the concept of smart city should not be blind modernization but smart handling of waste, providing better transport, preserving natural beauty, controlling pollution so that the modern city becomes liveable for humans. He laid stress on the fact that we should not copy modernization of other cities, but should create our own modernization models to suit our own needs”.