IAS officers’ training focuses largely on fight against Covid-19

nNEW DELHI: From watching Virus, a Malayalam film on the 2018 Nipah virus outbreak, to understanding the Epidemic Diseases Act, the next batch of IAS officers graduating from the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration is gearing up to fight the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

The 182 officers currently at the academy are expected to join as trainee assistant collectors in districts across the country next month, provided the government lifts the lockdown, said an official at the academy.

The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers will complete their course on May 8. The Centre for Disaster Management recalibrated its course to instruct these officers about ways to tackle the outbreak.

“The online course in the academy is focusing on the legal ecosystem around Covid-19, such as extant rules [for] national disasters with a special focus on procedure,” said academy director Sanjeev Chopra.

A two-hour introductory session for this was held on the academy’s e-learning platform, GYAAN, on Thursday.

“The session was mostly about the National Disaster Management Act (NDMA),” a trainee officer of the Assammeghalaya cadre said. “It was conducted by our faculty members, some of whom have experience on the ground of having handled disasters in Tamil Nadu and other states.”

The trainee officer said Covid-19 is a nascent case study, though mitigation of the disease can be similar to other natural disasters. “We are still discovering things about Covid-19 but many steps taken for mitigation of disasters like floods can help here as well,” the trainee officer added.

A second trainee officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre said information about laws will help with their work in the districts.

“The DM [Disaster Management] Act, for instance, tells us about the exact responsibilities of a district magistrate and sub-divisional magistrate, ” he said. “We learnt we could requisition helicopters for delivering rations and ask private com