Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussorie. (Express photo)

The new batch of 180 IAS officers, who are now preparing for deployment in the districts for the first time, are being provided in-depth training in enforcing the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, and the Disaster Management Act, 2005, along with best practices in policy intervention in the country’s efforts to manage the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) in Mussoorie, where the elite civil servants are trained, began online classes this week to finish the curriculum before the officers, of the 2019 batch of the IAS, are posted to their first jobs in a couple of months. Like the rest of the country, the LBSNAA too, is in lockdown.

The young officers will be in charge of the smallest administrative blocks on the ground, where mitigation measures might still be in place by the time they take up their posts, government officials said.

“Even if the lockdown is lifted, a lot of restrictions will be in place. In that context, how to implement the Epidemic Act, the Disaster Management Act, and other government directives so that preventive actions are enforced, will be important. Normally we would not have gone into an in-depth study of these Acts and aspects. But this year is different,” a top government official told The Indian Express.

The detailed term paper that the young officers are usually required to do from the field, will be done from the campus this year. A scheduled examination could not be held two weeks ago because of the lockdown, so assignments are given through the classes now, trainee officers said.

Sanjeev Chopra, director of LBSNAA, said: “We have started online classes from yesterday. From the 15th, we will be teaching them the Epidemic Act and the Disaster Management Act. We have ramped up the syllabus.”

The Epidemic Diseases Act and the Disaster Management Act are the principal instruments with which the states and the Centre are designing the various outbreak-mitigation measures, including the lockdown.

The young officers are collating best practices of policy intervention across states for study. “Every district has one or two nodal officers. They are sending their best practices, which we are studying. (We are studying) Things like the Telangana government tying up with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for delivery of services, etc,” a trainee officer of the Telangana cadre said.

“In public administration we have questions like, what will we do if we are going to an aspirational district which has issues with health infrastructure; how will we focus on each indicator,” a Maharashtra cadre trainee said.

The new officers have also joined the Corona Network, a nationwide platform for serving civil servants to connect and exchange notes on the subject.

At the locked-down academy, the library is open for a couple of hours on alternate days, and some 200 shortlisted books are issued to the officers. Locked in their hostels, the young officers have started internal communication platforms where they have panel discussions, music, and reach out to anyone who might be feeling lonely.