News items from XLRI

As an alumni of XLRI, I frequently get the updates of what's happening at the alma mater, and most of the time I read the mail and just file it away. But last week's mail made me notice two things that I just wanted to show to the readers.

Firstly, for the HR folks who read this blog, there's this exciting news:

- XLRI entered into an agreement with Accenture to design and deliver a 12-month Certification Course in Human Capital Management. The course, first of its kind in India, will be customised to the specific requirements of BPO industry, and will be offfered to selected HR professionals of Accenture. The course will be coordinated by Prof Madhukar Shukla.

It's interesting because the biggest challenge facing the BPO industry is in the HR domain and new approaches have to be developed to address the issues. Right now the industry is implementing solutions that have their origin in the IT or Manufacturing industry. I hope the course also focusses on the different nature of the BPO industry and customises solutions.

The more dramatic news item was this:

Rural Programme Initiative:
- The First Rural Programme Initiative was launched with the 05-07 of students. The purpose of this initiative is to sensitize the students to the 'reality on the other side'. During this term, all students from the new batch visited and stayed for 2-3 days in the villages. They interacted with villagers, with NGOs, local officials - and came back refreshed, shocked, reflective, and educated.

This is a great initiative. And initiatives like this must be started at a mass level if we are to bridge the India-Bharat divide. Divisions are addressed first by acknowledgement, and there can be no better acknowledgement than first hand experience.