Singapore’s diplomat-turned-writer Kishore Mahbubani is known for his provocative ideas on the “power shift” from the West to the East. To contribute in his own way to this ‘power shift’, Mahbubani has built what is so far a unique “Asian” institution in the field of public policy, to compete with Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) and the Science Po in Paris.
Just over five years since being set up, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) has become a unique meeting and training ground for public officials and students of public policy from China, India, the whole of East and South-east Asia and even countries of Central Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Indian officials like Anjana Dube, Director of the Ministry of Statistics, Suresh Chandra Gupta, Permanent Secretary to the Union Minister for Women and Child Development and Rupinder Brar, Additional Commissioner of Income Tax at the Indian Revenue Service, are examples of scores of Indian students who come to LKYSPP and share classrooms with counterparts from around the world, including China. Affiliated to the National University of Singapore, ranked among the top 30 universities in the world, LKYSPP is funded both by the private sector, including multinational firms, and the Government of Singapore.
As an Asian rival to Harvard’s KSG, LKYSPP is the only Asian school to be admitted into the Global Public Policy Network (GPPN) — set up by SIPA of Columbia University, LSE and Science Po in Paris. Inspired by LKYSPP’s success, the proposed Indian School of Business (ISB) campus at Mohali is seeking a tie-up with KSG to offer a public policy programme in India.
LKYSPP has a diverse range of students — till date 386 have enrolled from 49 countries. The intake from India is the third largest, comprising 15 per cent of the student body. Students from India come from varied backgrounds, both public and the private sector. Students come from the IAS, IPS and the RBI; as well as from Goldman Sachs, UNDP and Harvard University. Around 55 per cent of the Indian students are recipients of the schools’ competitive scholarships, which include a waiver of tuition fee, free housing as well as a monthly stipend.
Public policy is the amalgamation of a number of social science studies such as economics, sociology and politics; taught with a focus on practical application. Traditionally, public policy graduate programmes clustered in the West, with the John F Kennedy School of Government (KSG) at Harvard, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton and the Masters in Public Administration program at the London School of Economics (LSE) being the hub for the discipline. Yet today, the rise of Asia has shifted public policy academia to the East, resulting in the growing importance of schools such as LKYSPP.
Students have the option of doing a double degree with GPPN partner schools, along with the University of Tokyo and Geneva — many of which are fully paid for by the school. Indian students have also gone on exchanges with Georgetown University, as well as Tsinghua University.
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Academically, the school offers three graduate courses: Masters in Public Policy (a 2 year program aimed at young professionals), Masters in Public Administration (a 1 year program targeting mid-career managers) and Masters in Public Administration (a 1 year program for senior managers in both the private and public sector).
The Dean of LKYSPP is Kishore Mahbubahni, who served as Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the UN and in that capacity, was the President of the UN Security Council twice. Speaking about the importance of the school to Indian students, Mahbubani told Business Standard, “The school provides cultural diversity in terms of students and faculty and helps expose them to the issues they would need to deal with in the world later.” He also highlighted the fact that Indian students stood to gain more from a campus situated in Asia and connected to the West through high-level exchange programs and professors from all over the world.
Kamal Nath, P Chidambaram, Tony Blair, Pascal Lamy, Amartya Sen, Shaukat Aziz, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Robert Zoellick and Paul Volcker are a few personalities the students at the school have had a chance to interact with. The school also recently inducted Nobel Laureate Kofi Annan as a Li Ka-Shing Professor.
The school has five research centres working in the areas of competitiveness, global governance, information and innovation, water and Singapore’s own public policies.
India needs to cultivate global leaders who are able to interact with their counterparts to solve the ever-increasing international problems arising in the world. The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy provides an Asian alternative to build our Indian leaders.