Abdul Kalam’s IIMA students frame development policies

Thanks to former president APJ Abdul Kalam, some students of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) are now working on framing policies to address various issues facing the country. The initiative is a part of the course named Globalising and Resurgent India through Innovative Transformation (GRIT), taught by Kalam.

The course will be conducted on the campus for the third time this year. While the GRIT 2010 course is scheduled to begin in September, the students who have opted to participate in the elective course have already begun their home work. Around 80 students are conducting researches to form various innovative policies to be presented before and discussed with Kalam.

A group of four students of PGPX who have chosen education as their area of research have already begun their project. As a part of their projects, the four students - Jyothi Swaroop, Shankar Gajendran, Vikrant Nanda and Venkatesan Krishnachari - have started analysing the existing policies in the education sector. Said Swaroop: “Many of the existing policies in education sector have not either been very effective or not been implemented at all. After studying them, we are trying to come up with new and innovative policies.”

Giving a glimpse of the ideas they have in their mind, Swaroop said: “We are looking forward to incorporate technologies in the policies. For example, we are thinking of using the UID (Unique Identification) to leverage the education of the children of the migrant workers. With easily accessible data of the migrant workers through the UID, re-admission of their children to another school as they travel will be easier.”  Swaroop added that they need to do more research to come up with specific and concrete suggestions.     

Another group of students, including Nagesh Shukla and Gaurav, are trying to evaluate the central government’s ‘Project Tiger’.

“Despite the existence of the project, a positive result against the steep decline in the tiger population has not been achieved. The purpose of this study is to comprehensively evaluate wildlife specific to tiger conservation and policies. We will be suggesting changes to effectively implement the project,” Shukla said. He said: “In spite of the advancement of technology, the technology used in the tiger project is outdated. We will look into the matter and try to find a sustainable model of funding the project, so that it does not lean on the public money all the time.”

Similarly, Amit Chaturvedi, Gautam Modi and Anuroop Talwar are working to come up with a suggestion to help clear the backlog of the pending cases in the country’s high courts. Chaturvedi said, “There are around 40 lakh cases pending in the country’s high courts.

To clear this backlog, we have come up with an idea of employing the retired judges and lawyers, who are willing to become part-time judges.

Thus, more number of part-time judges could be employed for the states where there is more number of pending cases. The project is still at a very preliminary stage.”

With 80 students participating in the GRIT course this year, there would be more than 20 such projects from these students, in different areas and issues, ready to be presented to Professor Kalam this year.