Beyond Business

Updated on: Wednesday, January 12, 2011

During the Golden Jubilee Year of IIM-Calcutta, over a period of 5 months, the Initiative for Community Action (INCA) and CRY – Child Rights and You – teamed up to bring the issue of Child Rights to the forefront of the IIMC students’ minds.

The continuous, phased-out awareness and engagement programmes not only shed light on the numerous issues faced by millions of underprivileged children in India, but also helped generate a buzz within the IIM-C campus, motivating students to stand up for child rights.

The initiative was spearheaded by a team from the Initiatives for Community Action (INCA) whose members are first and second year students of the PGDM/PGDCM course at IIM Calcutta. The small team from CRY makes up for their few numbers by sheer energy and commitment. They specialise in tapping what, Anupama Muhuri from CRY, calls ‘the changemaker gene’ that they believe is lying dormant in most of us. “What we do is to constantly engage with people,” says Muhuri. “What we involve them in is the nature and scale of the crisis that children in India are grappling with today.”

The first event was organised during Mandi 2010 – a campus event where students put in their best efforts to design strategies to sell their products. To meet the holistic objective of pooling-in views and generating public opinion on the varied aspects of child rights, the INCA-CRY team also organised a Blog competition on ‘The other side of Life….’ to stimulate students to spare a thought for those outside the IIMC campus, and indeed beyond the comforts experienced by most students. The subsequent stage involved creating awareness among people outside the campus, which was carried out through an event – the Inaugural Tech CXO conclave. Finally, in the month of December 2010, the ‘CRY torchbearer of the campus’ competition was held to create a buzz about child rights and CRY, and motivate students to think of innovative ideas to add value to CRY’s work.

The INCA-CRY initiative was a great success, with active participation of over 50 students in the different contests and many more students being sensitised to the issue of child rights in India. “Today, students are more socially aware than before and want to contribute in whatever way they can, but do not always have a platform where they can speak their minds. The events held through this initiative gave students a platform to speak on a subject very close to everyone. It was heartening to see people contribute not only through their blogs and entries, but also through contributions to help CRY in resource generation,” says Akshay Prabhu, a student of IIMC.

But perhaps the most significant impact of this initiative is that it has influenced the thought processes of India’s future businessmen and businesswomen who, in addition to shaping the future of the country, will also have the knowledge and the power to make a difference.

Beyond Business

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