IIM-L students catching them old

REGULAR ATTENDANCE and good conduct, are two things that any IIM student knows anyway. So, when one heard these two aspects being emphasised in a classroom at IIM-L on Thursday, one wondered what was wrong.

REGULAR ATTENDANCE and good conduct, are two things that any IIM student knows anyway. So, when one heard these two aspects being emphasised in a classroom at IIM-L on Thursday, one wondered what was wrong.

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A peep into the classroom was enough to indicate that this was not one of the usual IIM-L classes. The students were not wearing branded wear. They looked rather odd and out of place and the most surprising part of it all was that IIM-L students were playing teachers themselves! The lesson that one heard being taught was, “How are you, sir?”

A few queries later, one realised that this was the launch of a novel drive by IIM-L students to educate the uneducated adults. The adult-education campaign, that started off from the management campus, would in due course, fan out across the city with IIM student volunteers deciding to take time off to devote to the uniquely noble mission of educating adults. What’s more, unlike the run of the mill programmes of this nature, the IIM students have set a deadline to make the completely illiterate, semi-literate (signature, reading and writing of basic Hindi) in 50 days, thus making it the first such programme of its kind across all IIMs.

“Initially, the adult education programme would focus on illiterate employees and relatives of those living on the IIM-L campus. Gradually, we would move out across the city,” said Sumanta, a postgraduate programme II student of IIM-L.
The initiative, coming from Bhavishya, the students’ social welfare committee, of IIM-L is even more unique because it is being conducted with the aim of making the illiterates completely literate within an year’s period besides helping those who wanted to run some business but were unable to do so because of their illiteracy.

A totally student-oriented campaign, it is guided by Prof DS Sengar, chairman, students affairs of IIM-L who also inaugurated the campaign by distributing kits among the ‘special students’ on Thursday.

“Before undertaking the campaign the students created a database of all the employees who were illiterate and fed all the relevant information on their computers. Well armed with facts and figures, they then launched the education campaign on Thursday,” Prof Sengar said.

The students undertook a study of the best practices employed in adult literacy in India and have finally zeroed in on certain scientific and proven techniques to make the learning process smoother and faster. “To this end a software product customized for the understanding of adults would be used,” Prof Sengar added.

Sumanta, who is busy devising various scientific tools to help the ‘special students’ said that about 3 student-volunteers would take an hour long session everyday during lunch break. “The schedule has been so designed that those IIM students who are free during lunch hours would take sessions. And since we already have adequate information about the participants in our classrooms due to the pilot study that we did between February-April 2006, there won’t be any problem when student-volunteers change,” he said.

What’s more, to encourage participants take to learning and writing faster, Prof Sengar has decided to give away prizes periodically for better performance. “We are also thinking of announcing some prizes for our student volunteers too,” he added. Prof Sengar invited the youngest participant to light the inaugural lamp and highlighted that a highly motivated and an educated youth would be a potent weapon of mass-development!

The phrase “socially responsible MBA” will be an oxymoron, no longer!