Pranab Mukherjee to teach public policy at IIM-A

New Delhi: Management students at the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad (IIM-A) will have a new teacher, former president Pranab Mukherjee.

Mukherjee, who has spent nearly six decades in public life, will teach a new course called “Public policy for Inclusive Development of India” at the IIM-A School of Public Policy. The brand new course will have 22 sessions, of which more than half will be taught by Mukherjee.

The course deals with a broad overview of the interplay between the desired end of inclusive development and the system of parliamentary democracy in India, the B-school said in an email on Saturday.

“This new course is housed within the JSW School of Public Policy at IIMA and Shri Pranab Mukherjee, former President of India, is to be the faculty for at least 12 out of 22 sessions”, IIM-A said, without explaining whether the service of Mukherjee is free or will be paid for.

The course draws on the experiences of Mukherjee to reflect on the theory and practice of public policy for inclusive development. All students, from its MBA programme, agri-business programme and full-time executive programme will attend the



course.

Mukherjee will take classes on broader themes like “Constitutional Provisions for Socio-economic Inclusivity: Theory and Parliamentary Practice; Policy and Institutional Intervention for Financial Inclusion: A Legacy to be Built Upon, and Articulating Policy and Institutional Agenda for Future Transformation of India.

Vijaya Sherry Chand, Chairperson of JSW School of Public Policy, and Anil Gupta, a senior professor, will be Mukherjee’s colleague in teaching the course. Chand said, “Listening to Shri Pranab Mukherjee, our students should develop a better understanding of the politics of inclusive development. In a complex democratic society such as ours, technically ideal solutions to public problems have to be balanced by the management of conflicts that are inevitable when there are multiple and contradictory pulls. This should also help in understanding why the idea of inclusion goes beyond narrow economic perspectives on poverty and its alleviation.”

Mukherjee is not the first president to turn a faculty member at an IIM. Former president APJ Abdul Kalam, post retirement, had taken up teaching and at IIM-A, he taught a course titled “Globalising and Resurgent India through Innovative Transform”.