IIM awaits 'professor' Abdul Kalam

Ahmedabad: Reducing the urban-rural divide, energy security and water conservation - these are some of the themes former president APJ Abdul Kalam will be teaching at the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A). And students and faculty are eagerly waiting for his special classes to start.

"The process has already started and 70 students have been admitted to the course 'Globalising a Resurgent India through Innovative Transformation' [GRIT] which Abdul Kalam will begin teaching from September 12," said IIM-A professor Anil K. Gupta.

The special course, which is in tune with Abdul Kalam's vision for India-2020, is for second year students of the post graduate programme for executives, the post graduate programme in agri-business management and for foreign students.

The course has been designed by Gupta and Abdul Kalam. And the former president has already written to students about the programme.

'Highly motivating'

"[Abdul] Kalam has already written to the students on 10 themes a student would have to primarily build upon," Gupta said.

"The themes are highly motivating. For instance, one of them is on reducing the urban-rural divide, the second is about energy security, third is about water conservation and the fourth is about governance with discrimination. The 10 issues are all basic issues relating to governance and policy-making, synergy between agriculture, industry and the service sectors," Gupta said.

Abdul Kalam will guide the students individually as well as in groups.

After the initial lectures, students will be required to submit project proposals for creating scenarios based on multiple options for specific policy and institutional changes.

"The outcome of the course is also likely to be shared with the parliamentary standing committee as well, which in turn could take it up with the respective bodies to initiate any changes they feel plausible," Gupta said.

The students who have received letters from Kalam will pick one area of their interest and think about implementation methodologies of Abdul Kalam's 2020 vision.

"This would indeed be useful for many students and in case they step into politics, their priority could be development, which is not the case with contemporary politicians guided mostly by their political priorities," Gupta added.

Abdul Kalam's last two sessions will be held November 26-27.

The IIM-A has earlier also devised courses where students across disciplines were given the opportunity to work with parliamentarians on constituency management.