The Hindu : National : IIM student opts for placement in hotspot

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 24, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

National

National

IIM student opts for placement in hotspot

Indrani Dutta

To work with NGO on rural distress in Assam

Micro-credit to be one of his focus areas
May start his own NGO

KOLKATA: While some of his batch mates sit in plush urban cubicles and dream of glamorous postings, this young Indian Institute of Management student will work with a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in largely strife-torn north-eastern India during his summer placement.

Such placements often decide an IIM graduate’s future, and may fetch up to Rs. 10 lakh for two months. But Aditya Kumar, 24, a first-year student of IIM Calcutta, will go to Solace, a start-up NGO in Assam. He will work on rural distress in areas near Guwahati and Kamrup.

“This may well be a turning point for me,” he told The Hindu from the Joka campus near here.

Born in Delhi, Mr. Kumar has been exposed to north-eastern India thanks mainly to his father’s official postings there. As an Indian Police Service officer’s son he has watched for five years how poverty, child labour, domestic violence and trafficking of women, combine to make a vicious circle which makes many sections of the population, especially those in the rural areas, targets for recruitment into insurgency.

Micro-credit and its availability will be one of his focus areas during the training, at the end of his first year at IIM-C in March. “This will be a learning experience, but I hope to use my knowledge of management to find the real causes of rural distress and examine the feasibility of micro-credit in the area,” he said. Mr. Kumar is interested in agriculture, and IIM faculty members are giving him valuable insights so he could add value to his work. The idea of starting a non-profit organisation based on insights gathered during the stint is germinating in his head, he says.

Like his senior Deepak Dhamija, an IIM-C student who opted for a similar posting last year, Mr. Kumar is chasing a passion. IIM Calcutta, which counts among its graduates the likes of Indra Nooyi and Ajith Balakrishnan, takes pride in such exceptional students. So does Mr. Kumar’s family. “But for their support I could not have done this,” he says.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National