The recent award of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (2025) to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for their work on innovation-driven growth and the idea of “creative destruction” offers a critical lens through which to view the national endeavour embodied in Mission Karmayogi. Their work informs us that disruption need not always mean abrupt collapse; rather, if managed wisely, it can become a gentler, absorbable form of change embedded within a system. In the context of Mission Karmayogi ~ the Government of India’s initiative to build a future-ready civil service anchored in new roles, competencies and continuous learning ~ this notion of absorbable dissonance is particularly relevant.
I would like to argue that such an approach can yield a more enduring transformation than the kind of sweeping upheaval that creative destruction usually evokes. The Nobel prize winning work emphasises that sustained growth arises when new technologies or ways of doing things replace older ones, in a process that Joseph Schumpeter termed “creative destruction”. In their model, established firms, routines or institutions may be displaced by newcomers, but the result is a fresh cycle of innovation and progress. The word “destruction” normally triggers alarm.
One imagines jobs lost, institutions vanishing, and roles demolished. That kind of disruption, while sometimes necessary, introduces the risks of social dislocation, resistance, and the possibility that the system simply breaks down rather than adapts. The Nobel committee itself noted that the conflicts arising from such a process “must be managed in a constructive manner”. Mission Karmayogi orchestrates this managed transition. Its aim is not to dismantle the machinery of governance, but to evolve it; not to wipe the slate clean, but to gently nudge habits, norms, roles and capacities so that the system takes them on without fracturing.
Mission Karmayogi rests on the key shifts of moving from rule-based to role-based frameworks; from one-size-fits-all to competency-driven, continuous learning; and from operating in silos to active collaboration. At its heart is the idea that each official’s role should be defined by what they must accomplish (with the requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes), with access to “any-time, any-where, any device” learning, rather than merely by seniority or rank. That is a kind of structured and managed dissonance. The old model persists, but its underpinnings shift; the designations and routines remain, but the orientation changes. In other words, the disruption is not aimed at radical change but at helping the system absorb new behaviour and embed it over time. Why is gentle absorption preferable? First, because it honours the fact that institutions have inertia.
Civil services, bureaucracies, administrative systems are built over decades; they carry tacit knowledge, culture, and in-built understandings. If you try to obliterate them overnight, you risk loss of institutional memory, you risk the machinery seizing up. A more gradual shift allows continuity of purpose even while new capabilities are built. Second, because the people within the system – the officials, the civil servants, the managers – need to internalise new roles. When you ask them merely to survive change, you encourage compliance; when you ask them to learn, adopt, adapt and grow, the change is more likely to stick. Mission Karmayogi’s emphasis on lifelong learning, role-based competency, and aligning individual career paths with organisational intentions means that the change is lived rather than imposed.
Third, when change is absorbed rather than exploded, you build durability. A system that evolves over time incorporates resilience; the new becomes part of the fabric rather than an external shock. In the Nobel prize context, the creative destruction process becomes sustainable when society allows the transition to happen – when old firms do not block new ones, when institutions allow mobility, when knowledge builds on knowledge. That is a form of absorption. The metaphor of gentle absorption versus dramatic destruction matters. In practical governance terms, it means rather than firing large numbers of officials or dismantling agencies, one shifts the competency framework, develops new learning platforms (such as the iGOT-Karmayogi platform used under Mission Karmayogi), aligns performance management systems, creates new roles and supports transitions. That means the system retains its integrity but changes its muscle, its reflexes, its orientation.
The cognitive dissonance is slight yet persistent; individuals are asked to think differently, act differently, over time. The system absorbs the change, adapts, and eventually, the new ways become default. This is transformational. Transformation is a journey that, when allowing the system to carry its history forward, becomes more permanent. In the context of Mission Karmayogi, the old bureaucrat as “karmachari” is asked to become a “karmayogi” ~ someone aligned to role, result, and service. The capacity building landscape is re-imagined. The HR management system shifts from length of service to mastery of role. The system itself becomes more flexible, responsive. That is the kind of change that will last. Linking back to work that won the Nobel prize, these three laureates show that innovation-driven growth is not guaranteed; it depends on openness to change, on the mechanisms that allow new ideas to flourish, on institutions that do not block the arrival of novelty.
Similarly, Mission Karmayogi puts in place the conditions for civil service renewal ~ institutional framework in the form of the Capacity Building Commission, digital architecture, competency framework, monitoring and evaluation, role profiling etc. If a system resists the dissonance, if the learning platforms are ignored, if the HR systems remain rule-bound, then the change will fail ~ just as innovation fails when resistance is too high. The key therefore is to manage the dissonance such that it is absorbable ~ enough to stir the system, but not so much as to break it.
Disruption need not equal destruction. It can mean introduction of friction that provokes adaptation and organizational learning. In the context of governance, that friction is the awareness that the world has moved, the citizen demands are higher, technology advances, roles evolve. Mission Karmayogi offers that conduit for adaptation ~ the civil service learns, adapts, evolves. The system becomes capable of continuous renewal rather than episodic radical overhaul. This continuous renewal is a lesson from the Nobel-winning research, which shows sustained growth arises when knowledge builds on knowledge and institutions specialise in learning.
A civil service that learns continuously, adapts its competencies and roles, and aligns itself to new demands will avoid stagnation. The system will move forward not because of a single disruptive shock, but because it has absorbed change and made it part of its DNA. For India, with its size, diversity, complexity, what matters is not a promise of overnight transformation but the building of an ecosystem that allows gradual yet persistent change. Mission Karmayogi is that ecosystem. By introducing role-based capacity building, by aligning individual learning with organisational purpose, by creating the digital learning architecture and institution-wide monitoring, the initiative places the Indian civil service on a path of evolution.
The dissonance is real; new competencies, new mindsets, new digital orientation are emerging continuously. But the change does not mean chaos. It means absorption. And when absorption becomes transformation, the result is more permanent. Because the system no longer resists; it integrates. When that happens, the old and new co-exist until the new becomes natural. Disruption becomes a gentle current rather than a jolt. The politics of change becomes one of enabling rather than uprooting. In summary, the Nobel prize reminds us that growth through innovation demands change, and that change carries friction and conflict if unmanaged. M
ission Karmayogi shows how public administration in a large democracy can orchestrate that change in a way that the system itself carries it forward. The goal is not to tear down bureaucracy but to make it alive, adaptive and citizen centric. In our context, that should be the standard for reform ~ provoke enough dissonance to awaken, yet moderate enough for the system to absorb. In doing so, we create change not as spectacle but as structure, not as rupture but as renewal. If our bureaucracy becomes such that every officer sees themselves as a ‘karmayogi’, continuously learning, collaborating, aligned to role and outcome, then we will have achieved the kind of durable transformation that matters.
(The writer is a development scholar, policy advocate, leadership trainer and author. He is the Member-HR at the Capacity Building Commission. Views expressed are personal)