School for budding leaders coming up at Pune

Pune-based Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT) Group of Institutions is planning to establish an institute called MIT School of Government that will offer a course in social and political leadership.

It will be a residential course in Pune. Former chief election commissioner, T N Seshan, will the chairman and dean of the school.

The MIT School of Government (MIT-SOG) will offer a one-year master's diploma in government. The admissions will start by August 1 and the the course will begin by August 15.

The course is targeted at aspiring MPs, MLAs, bureaucrats, head of NGOs and political leaders and aims to produce future leaders in politics, bureaucracy and the NGO sector.

"This will be a new kind of school of the government runs and functions. There are many who do not know how to read the budget or how does the Indian economy work in the overall sense," said Seshan. The school has been modelled after the J F Kennedy School of Government in the US.

The intake for the first year of the full-time residential programme is expected to be around 60 students. The course will cost the students Rs 3.5 lakh in all.

This includes hostel fees, free lap-top, foreign trip of two-three weeks to study British and US institutions on the functioning of their governments and public administration systems, national tour to Parliament and district offices, course material, reference books and food. The fees are payable in three installments at the beginning of each of the trimesters.

Of the 60 seats, 100 per cent scholarship will be offered to ten per cent of the students on a need-cum-merit basis. There will be about 8-10 full-time faculty while most of the others will be visiting faculty.

Some of the visiting faculty would include leaders from across different national political parties including L K Advani, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Margaret Alva, A B Bardhan, Pramod Mahajan, Renuka Chowdhary and George Fernandes.

The MIT Group of Institutions is part of Maharashtra Academy of Engineering and Educational Research (MAEER).