IIM-C students teach contract labourers in their hostels Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) has taken up the task to educate its hostel workers in English and basic Mathematics. This is expected to help IIMC's contract labourers find better jobs.IIMC's alumni batch of 1982 will provide Rs 15 lakh towards this cause.A few of the alumni of 1982 who have made it big across the industries and will fund this initiative include V Sudhakar Ram, chairman and managing director of Mastek, Vijay Sharma, senior VP, Iflex Bangalore, Charu (Arora) Narain, financial advisor of Merrill Lynch, Boston, Ashok Kishore, VP, Trammochem, Atlanta, P Laxminarain, president of Codman & Shurtleff Inc (a Johnson & Johnson Co.), Prakash Nedungadi, marketing director of Procter & Gamble, Dubai, and B Radhakrishnan, ED of Morgan Stanley, New York.The initiative will be carried out by IIMC's Initiative for Community Action.Formed in 1996, INCA is an initiative by the IIMC students where faculty members guide them on 'service to those who serve others'. INCA is IIMC's social service society that voluntarily offers free management consultancy services to voluntary organisations and others doing useful social work.INCA, at present, has 52 student-members and one faculty mentor.IIMC has about 70 mess workers working in various hostels at the institute. They are typically between 14 and 50 years of age. Most of them are uneducated and hail from Jharkhand, Bihar and the districts."Under this initiative, IIMC will recruit an administrative supervisor. Part of the Rs 15 lakh grant will be spent towards his/her salary. The remaining money will be spent on buying stationery products and other educational materials for educating the hostel workers," informed N S Mahadevan, IIMC's alumni secretary.The administrative supervisor will be a full-time person to ensure the day-to-day execution of the programme. The person will also be responsible for designing the curriculum for the workers, regular monitoring of its progress to ensure it is meeting the stated objectives and reporting to the 1982 batch. The person will also be responsible for ensuring continuity of the initiative by constituting a successor core group to take on the responsibility forward."We are in the process of finalising the course content for our hostel workers. A curriculum will be designed to sharpen the workers' skill and increase their employability," said Mahadevan.About fifty 1st and 2nd year students of IIMC have volunteered to educate their hostel workers.Educating the hostel workers will be an ongoing process and after the present batch passes out the subsequent batches will take over the responsibility. The hotel workers are all employees hired by contractors who run hostels and canteens.Depending upon the success of this initiative, it could be extended to other contract workers at IIMC and even to others in the nearby villages.The 1982 batch will fund the project for at least two years and based on the annual review, will extend financial support beyond this period. A working group will also be formed which will monitor the project, provide ideas and inputs, approve plans and budgets.IIMC's INCA has so far tackled consulting projects for close to 20 NGOs in Kolkata for free. The institute assists the NGOs in terms of performance improvement, managing HR and resources, etc.
