APPLY NOW




Facebook Twitter Youtube Linkedin

Let’s Get Started

Apply Now

Dear Parents, Teachers and Significant Others!!!

Let me extend my sincere gratitude to you for reading this Longish letter and giving the Gandhi Fellowship Program a chance.

I am tempted to share a story of the parent of a former Gandhi Fellow who when introduced to me responded by saying, “Oh, so he is the one who misled my daughter.” It’s not half as potent as the Hindi version which went thus, Hamari beti ko bargala diye hain!

Like some of you, her parents too had sent their daughter to Miranda House (DU) so she would eventually take the next natural step – take the UPSC exam. She found her way to the rough and tumble of the Gandhi Fellowship instead. She later went on to become the Gender Lead in Bihar government that spearheaded girls’ education reform back a decade ago. She has been the Lead Specialist at Manila’s International Rice Research Institute leading Women Farmers work across the country.

Was she an exception? Or was she plain lucky? What happens to my ward? What will she get from it? What is the Fellowship in the first place? Is it even safe? How do Fellows live and learn? Why should she join the Fellowship? 

This letter hopes to address these – your – concerns and questions

In 2008, when we launched our first batch of 11 Fellows in Rajasthan, Mr Ajay Piramal, our Chairperson and visionary, also Chair, Piramal Enterprises Ltd, invited the parents over for a tête-à-tête in New Delhi. He went on to announce to the anxious parents that they and their children would not regret the decision to join the Fellowship. In what was a promissory note of sorts, he committed to hiring all the young people as Management Trainees in case they failed to be snapped by the best anywhere in India. All the Fellows were placed in good organizations in the domains of their choice – and happily, the offer letters remained just that. Their careers trajectory since then is yet another story.

Today, we have 3000 plus Alumni across the world.

Give me 1000 bright young minds and I will change India, Swami Vivekanand is said to have declared years ago. It was this call to young men and women of the country that spurred the advent of India’s biggest Fellowship program.

The Gandhi Fellowship is a 23 months’ full-time residential program, or shall I say, an opportunity for the conscientious and committed young people to familiarize themselves with the country’s most pressing problems – and come out leaders at the other end.

The way I see it, the Fellowship is a springboard for each of us to skill up for the 21st century and find our individual expression of it. The Fellows do it by living with grassroot communities, understanding everyday issues and implementing creative solutions to attempt change in self, society and the local systems. You – dear parents and teachers – do so by giving them your informed and enthusiastic consent.

Parents of a former Fellow, Shruti Sriram were corporate leaders and her elder sister, a chief economist at a bank in New York. They drew a blank when their girl – an SRCC graduate – decided to join the Fellowship. She later got a scholarship to Columbia University. “My high point came when I contested the South Asia Society elections which became rough at some point. But my learnings with the Fellowship, particularly in Non-violent Communication – stood me great stead. That my family had realized the value of the Fellowship was only too evident.”

That brings me to answering why the Fellowship could be a turning point in your ward’s career and life.

The Gandhi Fellowship Program is as thoughtful about inner transformation as it is passionate about outer change. The two feed into each other. Our logo – the Möbius Strip – is emblematic of this continuum. The program is designed to help Fellows practice a cyclic process of Plan-Act-Reflect. At the end of two years, your children are equipped with a diverse skillset they don’t teach in the best of colleges. They learn to manage themselves as well as relate to and work with peers from vastly different backgrounds. Every day, their work teaches them to negotiate with conviction, influence without authority, adapt quickly to change and deal with challenges of an uncertain environment. These skills, once thought of as soft, are critical to 21st century living.

Their karma-kshetra – place of action – is not a slick city. It is very often a far-flung village in a district town of India, the name of which is unheard, and sometimes a testing tongue-twister as one of the siblings of a Gandhi Fellow said, when asked, where her sister was. “Some place remote in Odisha. Jagah ka naam kabhi suna nahin”, she said. Wherever they are, Fellows live as part of the local community who hosts them. They broom and dust, cook and bathe, herd goats and weave baskets… and do everything that all other members of the family do on a given day. Living with the community instils in them that very valuable quality – fellow- feeling.

Ask Shadan Arfi and he will tell you that his feudal upbringing in Bihar and student leadership days at Patna University insulated him against respecting a different opinion and negotiating for his own. “The Fellowship taught me to respect women, listen to the other and be watchful of my conditioned reactions to practically everything in life.” Or Sahaj Parikh, from IIT Chennai, who believed his degree was the summum bonum of life. “At the Fellowship, I understood there was so much I did not comprehend – I succeeded because I was able to learn from Fellows coming from different pedagogic processes and often from smaller towns.” Khush from upper-end Ahmedabad credits Pune’s Abhishekh Pardesi from a lower middle class Pune family with their success in organic farming. Khush went to Brown University after the Fellowship, carrying in his heart a life-long friendship. And Abhishek designs agro-finance products at a NBFC. What can be more organic to emotional and intellectual growth than such associations!

 

Speaking of associations, the Gandhi Fellowship supports its Fellows by offering them interactive sessions with all kinds of leadership from diverse sectors. This helps them identify and take to career paths they choose. The Fellowship is a network as fertile and profitable as any – except that the profits here go far beyond the financial.

So, no, I don’t promise an easy two years for your Bacchas. But then a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. A Harvard, an Oxford or a Columbia await for them as does a top role at the intersection of Samaj, Bazaar and Sarkar. It is just that their expressway will be lined with the dust of distant, humble India. They will work in challenging conditions but please be assured, they will be safe. From Central Ministries and Missions, Niti Ayog to state governments and the District Magistrates as their custodians, the Fellowship is well-acknowledged, and I dare say, admired. The communities recognize us and this young tribe and look after them as their own.

All kinds of revered leaders from the country, our much-esteemed former President Abdul Kalam; Former Dean of Harvard Business School Nitin Nohria; Former Chair of TCS Ramadorai Sahab; Eminent scientist & educationist Prof Mashelkar; Adil Zainulbhai former Mckinsey Chairman; Mr Amarjeet Sinha a very respected IAS officer; and not to forget our own Chair Mr Piramal; scores of luminaries could well be our spokespeople.

But these are your Bacchas we are talking about. You must find it in your hearts to do the right thing by them.

For any concerns that you might have, please feel free to call me.

Best Wishes,
Vivek SharmaVivek Sharma
Founder-Director, Gandhi Fellowship Program
Piramal Foundation

+91 9891297111
Vivek@gandhifellowship.org

Not Registered Yet?

Sign in and complete your application form.

Sign In
Sign Up

Fill Up The Form and Download the Magazine

Fill Up The Form and Download the Magazine

Fill Up The Form and Download the Magazine

Fill Up The Form and Download the Magazine

Fill Up The Form and Download the Magazine

Fill Up The Form and Download the Magazine