Manpower crunch may hit govt's aspirational districts plan: UNDP report

Challenge of getting trained hands at ground level could be overcome by providing dedicated personnel at each aspirational district and making hiring more flexible, study says

Though it has positively impacted the development target, some of the key challenges being faced by the Centre’s Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP) are lack of trained human resource and technical capacities at the district and block levels, an appraisal done by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said.

The challenge of getting trained human resources at the ground level could be overcome by providing dedicated personnel at each of the aspirational districts. And, also by adopting more flexible hiring methods, the UNDP assessment said.

“Even though districts have been provided support from the ‘Prabhari officers’ (officers in-charge) and NITI Aayog, there