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| Latest
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| 02nd
Aug 2010 / Business Standard |
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Asian school beefs up Indian bureaucracy
Singapore’s diplomat-turned-writer Kishore Mahbubani
is known for his provocative ideas on the “power
shift” from the West to the East. To contribute
in his own way to this ‘power shift’, Mahbubani
has built what is so far a unique “Asian”
institution in the field of public policy, to compete
with Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG)
and the Science Po in Paris.
Just over five years since being set up, the Lee Kuan
Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) has become a unique
meeting and training ground for public officials and students
of public policy from China, India, the whole of East
and South-east Asia and even countries of Central Asia,
Europe and the Americas.
Indian officials like Anjana Dube, Director of the Ministry
of Statistics, Suresh Chandra Gupta, Permanent Secretary
to the Union Minister for Women and Child Development
and Rupinder Brar, Additional Commissioner of Income Tax
at the Indian Revenue Service, are examples of scores
of Indian students who come to LKYSPP and share classrooms
with counterparts from around the world, including China.
Affiliated to the National University of Singapore, ranked
among the top 30 universities in the world, LKYSPP is
funded both by the private sector, including multinational
firms, and the Government of Singapore.
As an Asian rival to Harvard’s KSG, LKYSPP is the
only Asian school to be admitted into the Global Public
Policy Network (GPPN) — set up by SIPA of Columbia
University, LSE and Science Po in Paris. Inspired by LKYSPP’s
success, the proposed Indian School of Business (ISB)
campus at Mohali is seeking a tie-up with KSG to offer
a public policy programme in India.
LKYSPP has a diverse range of students — till date
386 have enrolled from 49 countries. The intake from India
is the third largest, comprising 15 per cent of the student
body. Students from India come from varied backgrounds,
both public and the private sector. Students come from
the IAS, IPS and the RBI; as well as from Goldman Sachs,
UNDP and Harvard University. Around 55 per cent of the
Indian students are recipients of the schools’ competitive
scholarships, which include a waiver of tuition fee, free
housing as well as a monthly stipend.
Public policy is the amalgamation of a number of social
science studies such as economics, sociology and politics;
taught with a focus on practical application. Traditionally,
public policy graduate programmes clustered in the West,
with the John F Kennedy School of Government (KSG) at
Harvard, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs at Princeton and the Masters in Public Administration
program at the London School of Economics (LSE) being
the hub for the discipline. Yet today, the rise of Asia
has shifted public policy academia to the East, resulting
in the growing importance of schools such as LKYSPP.
Students have the option of doing a double degree with
GPPN partner schools, along with the University of Tokyo
and Geneva — many of which are fully paid for by
the school. Indian students have also gone on exchanges
with Georgetown University, as well as Tsinghua University.
Academically, the school offers three graduate courses:
Masters in Public Policy (a 2 year program aimed at young
professionals), Masters in Public Administration (a 1
year program targeting mid-career managers) and Masters
in Public Administration (a 1 year program for senior
managers in both the private and public sector).
The Dean of LKYSPP is Kishore Mahbubahni, who served as
Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the UN and
in that capacity, was the President of the UN Security
Council twice. Speaking about the importance of the school
to Indian students, Mahbubani told Business Standard,
“The school provides cultural diversity in terms
of students and faculty and helps expose them to the issues
they would need to deal with in the world later.”
He also highlighted the fact that Indian students stood
to gain more from a campus situated in Asia and connected
to the West through high-level exchange programs and professors
from all over the world.
Kamal Nath, P Chidambaram, Tony Blair, Pascal Lamy, Amartya
Sen, Shaukat Aziz, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Robert Zoellick
and Paul Volcker are a few personalities the students
at the school have had a chance to interact with. The
school also recently inducted Nobel Laureate Kofi Annan
as a Li Ka-Shing Professor.
The school has five research centres working in the areas
of competitiveness, global governance, information and
innovation, water and Singapore’s own public policies.
India needs to cultivate global leaders who are able to
interact with their counterparts to solve the ever-increasing
international problems arising in the world. The Lee Kuan
Yew School of Public Policy provides an Asian alternative
to build our Indian leaders.
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