It may not directly result in getting them that coveted job from their dream recruiter during the final placements. Nevertheless, students from the premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are pretty serious about playing a part in the social ventures on campuses.
Take the case of Vista 2008, the annual festival of the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B), which was held from October 10 to October 12. The student organisers were in for a pleasant shock when the experiment of introducing a social event called Sparsh along with strategy games and quizzes turned out to be a big hit on the campus.
Sparsh is a real-time strategy test, where teams were introduced to NGOs and their problem areas. For three days, the teams were expected to study these problems and draft practical recommendations on how they could overcome them. The winners were the teams whose recommendations were deemed practical and were implemented by the NGOs.
“The response was unexpected. Nearly 40 teams, comprising students from Indian and international business schools fought their way to enter the finals. Next year, we will plan the event on a grander scale,” said Krishna Chaitanya, one of the student organisers of Vista.
IIM Ahmedabad also linked its way to social upliftment through Prayaas, an NGO founded by its students. The NGO imparts education to children of construction workers and those from nearby slums. This year 17 children from Prayas have been admitted to a private main-stream school and more are likely to be added next year. The Forum for Industry Interaction (FII) team of IIM Ahmedabad 2007-08 batch is also learnt to have made a financial contribution to the NGO.
Not satisfied with contributions from the campus, there are some like Aditya Kumar from IIM Calcutta who undertook his summer internship in February this year with Solace, an NGO in Assam.
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Aditya’s dream is to work towards the eradication of rural distress, illiteracy and child labour. His counterpart at IIM Indore, Maninder Singh Mann, has started a portal called unite4action which tries to bridge the resource gap in social sector, and caters to those professionals and students who feel like contributing to society, but do not know how.
Apart from a sense of satisfaction, most students who participate in social events feel that the exposure teaches them management lessons that books and lectures do not. They also point out to the fact that such events add up brownie points for them during interviews with potential recruiters.
“We use our expertise to aid companies or NGOs without the resources to hire professional consultants. Along with valuable consulting experience, it also makes a good CV point for us,” said Kaushik Saha, from IIM Calcutta. Saha is part of the Initiative for Community Action, a student-managed free management consultancy service to voluntary organisations and and social work groups.