E-Paper
Covid-19: IIM students to help govt panels
An internal note for the secretaries of the empowered groups states that the government has started discussions with the IIMs and other premier institutions of India such as IITs and IISC about “how these partnerships can be leveraged to support the efforts of the Government in fighting the Covid-19 crisis”.
The government has reached out to the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to get MBA students to help the recently-formed empowered groups of secretaries. Eleven such empowered groups have been formed to combat different aspects of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic.
An internal note for the secretaries of the empowered groups, prepared by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said that the government has started discussions with the IIMs and other premier institutions of India such as IITs and IISC about “how these partnerships can be leveraged to support the efforts of the Government in fighting the Covid-19 crisis”.
“One of the outcomes of these discussions is that the IIMs can provide MBA interns to support the empowered groups in data analysis and evidence-based policy inputs,” the note said.
Each empowered group might be assigned two or three such interns in key supporting roles as data and evidence play a crucial role in determining India’s strategy to contain the virus.
The government has also said that the empowered group will need to appoint a nodal officer on its behalf to assign tasks and get outputs as required by the group from the interns who will be working remotely on the work assigned to them.
The entire collaboration will be managed through different channels created for each interested empowered group using the Slack app, which allows for group chats.
The secretaries of the empowered groups have been asked to inform if they would require the support of the MBA interns. Once the DoPT gets the requirements, it will assign the shortlisted interns to the groups.
The Narendra Modi government on March 29 established ten empowered groups and a key strategic task force to look into all aspects of the pandemic. The measure turns at least 68 senior bureaucrats into a consorted planning and implementing machinery as India fights against the disease that continues to kill thousands across the world.
The groups have been assigned tasks such as “the medical emergency management plan” or ensuring “availability of hospitals, isolation and quarantine facilities, disease surveillance and testing and critical care training” and “facilitating supply chain and logistics management for availability of necessary items such as food and medicine”.
A six-member Strategic Task Force has also been formed, which will exclusively deal with issues related to the three-week national lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 25.
Afzal Amanullah, former parliamentary affairs secretary said, “It’s always good to engage management students from India’s premier institutes. They are trained for this purpose and it will help them to be a part of the government’s strategy to contain this unprecedented pandemic.”
