Q&A with Shobhit Mathur

What was the idea behind starting Rashtram School of Public Leadership?

The idea of Rashtram School of public Leadership stems from the urgent need to generate leadership in India. The absence of an institutional framework to train leaders has led to uncertainty around the competency of future leaders. This uncertainty along with the global shifts in the contemporary world are outpacing current education frameworks and institutions. We need leaders born with a purpose and devotion to the betterment of people's lives; leaders who have the ability to connect to the nation’s ideas. Rashtram's aims to populate the country’s institutions with competent leadership in order to drive systemic change. Rashtram will train young change-makers to become future public leaders in the domains of academia, civil society, and politics. These change-makers will then take up the mantle in leadership roles across institutions.

What are the changes in policies and strategies that the organisation has initiated to successfully run this model?

Rashtram is an autonomous institution. This is unlike what we see in India. Being an autonomous institution gives us the freedom to innovate our curriculum and pedagogy to best suit the needs of our Learners. We have designed a mentorship model for all our Learners to keep in close contact with them. A low student-mentor ratio (10:1) also ensures that each Learner gets abundant attention and guidance. Rashtram Mentors will be experienced and accomplished industry experts who have already tread the path of public leadership with extraordinary results. Our course is personalised to each individual’s unique talents because leadership is organic and comes from within. Only 50 Learners will be selected for our programme.

Do you have any prior experience in leadership? If so, please share.

 We have been training and guiding people in public policy for nearly five years now with Vision India Foundation. In these 5 years, VIF has conducted executive education programmes on public policy and governance with over 1500 alumni. Beyond this, training future public leaders is an elaborate responsibility and the guidance of current accomplished leaders is monumental to this effort. Rashtram has assembled a team of distinguished multi-disciplinary faculty for this purpose, including former MPs, diplomats, career academicians, bureaucrats, and Padma Shri winning social workers. Sh. Jayaprakash Narayan, Sh. P.D. Rai, Sh. Jay Panda, Padma Shri Awardee Mahesh Sharma, Padma Shri Awardee Phoolbasan Bai Yadav, Dr Mukul Asher, Dr Mala Kapadia, Dr K Ramasubramanian, & Dr R Balasubramaniam are a few names from the list.

Can you share a few success stories of your students.

Suryabhan Jadhav is a VIF Fellow who has worked in the grassroots for creating a model and sustainable village, and public systems related projects in communities. Through his NGO ‘Gram Vision Foundation’ he is working towards turning his native of Gopuj to become a model village. He has worked in conjunction with Paani foundation and successfully turned his village into a drought-free village by conducting projects on watershed management and rainwater harvesting. The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has adopted the Gopuj Gram Panchayat with a RS 1.5 Cr project for a 100% watershed project and overall capacity-building of community members. He aims to contest elections to become a political leader of his home constituency.

Mahesh Gondi is a VIF Fellow in the development sector who is the CEO of Timbaktu, a farmers’ cooperative organization based in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh, who provide safe, clean and healthy food grains to the people. He has also introduced a digital initiative named ‘UTTAR-A’ – a first of its kind portal to address the grievances of the public in a transparent manner. 2300+ grievances were registered via this portal. He has trained many Panchayat leaders and aspires to establish the institute to empower the elected representatives & functionaries of Panchayat Raj Institutions. He has also initiated the Jan Sunwai Programme which was a grievance redressal program wherein people came with their problems and a committee headed by the MP addressed the issues.

How are you planning to expand in the future?

We want to start cultivating meta-skills and leadership qualities in change-makers from a young age. Currently, our programme is a postgraduate diploma programme but we will soon reach out to college and high-school students as well to guide them. We are also planning to release programme modules or bite-sized courses in collaboration with universities, that can be taught online or be taken up as an elective. Over a longer time frame, we aim to develop Rashtram as a centre for intellectual Indic thought that can provide ideas and solutions to India’s and the world’s pressing concerns.