IIMA may start post-graduate course for IAS officers

The department of personnel, under the aegis of the ministry of home, has joined hands with the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad for developing a full-time post-graduate management course -- Post-graduate in Public Policy & Management -- for IAS officers.

The course, which is being developed on the lines of an existing course run by IIM-Bangalore, would also have civil servants from Africa, Sri Lanka and south-ast Asia, as IIMA has requested the Asian Development Bank to grant scholarships to overseas civil servants, who would benefit from the one-year course while sharing experiences with their counterparts in India.

A special cell consisting of senior faculty members of the IIMA has been created to finalise the on-campus course material, while the IIMA board has in-principle approved the new course, which may be launched in 2006, when IIMA would also launch its first Post-Graduate Programme for Executives, including for foreign nationals.

Sharing details of the development, Bakul Dholakia, director of IIMA, said, "We are introducing this course following keen interest shown by the home ministry as we had carried out a similar short-term course in 2002-03 for senior IAS officers in New Delhi. Basic focus of this course for IAS officers will be divided into two segments: issues of general management and whole range of issues in public management. The course will aim at providing a prospective on how the public management works abroad and also on how programmes are implemented overseas as we are targeting a significant participation of candidates from overseas countries."

Unlike the existing course run by the IIMB, which is mostly being sponsored by the government of India, PGPPM will be open to civil servants from abroad.

IIMA requested the senior-level ADB team, comprising six executive directors, who were present here on Friday, to grant scholarships to civil servants from other countries.

"This would eventually help ADB to implement its programmes in those countries more effectively as ADB works through the local government bodies in respective countries and civil servants play a pivotal role in implementation of ADB projects.

"Civil servants in India also handle some of the important enterprises run by the government like Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Gail India Limited, apart from the petroleum majors and dozens of such companies.

"This full-time course will expose IAS officers in mid-career to manage these companies more effectively and run corporates like skilled managers," Dholakia told Business Standard.

The course material is being developed by IIMA on the base of its own research output in the public management sector and initially the total intake will be 40 out of which 15 seats are likely to be reserved for civil servants from abroad.

"We have not yet decided the qualifying test for the civil servants for which talks are on with the ministry of home... it may even be similar to examinations like GMAT. The course is still on the drawing board and we hope to finalise things shortly, including the test that IAS officers would require to take for joining the course, as we cannot compromise with the brand equity that IIMA enjoys," added the director of IIMA.