IIM students sold on Brand Politics

An admirer of L K Advani,especially after he met the leader last month,Harsh Vardhan Chapparia is a second year student at IIM-Calcutta and has also studied computer engineering at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

And while he plans to join a business consultancy firm in June,Chapparia has more than a passing interest in politics. The president of the students’ council at IIM,he admires Lee Kuan Yew,Barack Obama and Mahatma Gandhi apart from Advani,of course.

Sources in the veteran BJP leader’s campaign office said that after the launch of his website,as many as 5,000 volunteers — including a large number of professionals — had signed up,wishing to contribute in various capacities to Advani’s campaign.

Meanwhile,the IIM-Ahmedabad student,who wishes to remain anonymous,has written to one of his course supervisors to facilitate his training with Congress MP Rahul Gandhi.

Several students in other IIMs,too,want to be associated with ‘mainstream political parties’. Most of them see the Congress or the BJP as their ‘natural option’,but at least one of them,hailing from Warangal,wants an association with a regional party.

With a gloomy placement season ahead,however,they don’t want their names to be revealed in the media.

It was Chepuri Krishna who started the trend of IIM students interning with political parties. A student of IIM-A,Chepuri worked with the CPM’s central office in 2008 and produced a paper on the ‘unorganised workforce in the country’.

This was made possible after a visit of CPM leader Sitaram Yechury to the institute for a guest lecture as part of a course on the ‘Indian Social and Political Environment’.

Chepuri has since joined the Monitor Group,a business consultancy firm,but hopes to contribute to the economic cell of the CPM after the Lok Sabha elections. While at the IIM,he had floated the idea of students working with parliamentarians for a course on ‘how best to spend MPLADS (Member of Parliament Local Area Development Division) funds’.

While the idea in its original form didn’t find favour with the faculty,it was reworked and expanded and a new course on ‘constituency management’ is being run at in the institute.

Three MPs — Madhusudan Mistry (Congress) Harin Pathak (BJP) and Sitaram Yechury — are working with a group of students there as part of the course that tries to work out ‘specific priorities’ for various MPs’ for their respective constituencies. Srijan Pal Singh,a member of the group pursuing the course,who loves the idea of being a social entrepreneur and then a political entrepreneur,has already decided on a full-time career in politics.