It is now time for Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB) to showcase some of the successful welfare schemes of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to students of Stanford University.
A group of 16 students from Stanford University will be in Bangalore from September 16 to study Yashaswini, the health insurance scheme for farmers by Karnataka Government and the programmes of Management of Enterprises and Development of Women (Meadow), a self-help group based in Hosur.
The students will be studying both the schemes for a week.  The visit is a part of the Stanford-IIMB Link (SAIL) Community programme. Students of IIMB too will be visiting Stanford University as part of the SAIL programme.
 IIMB leadership team (SAIL) president Naresh D said the idea of considering the Self Help Group (SHG) for study is to understand the nature of the SHG movement in India and its impact on rural women. “We have micro-finance unit in IIMB actively working with various SHGs.
To begin with, we chose Meadow as it is associated with the institute. It makes an interesting study as how it has changed the lives of many poor women in Hosur. Management students will learn about some of the development activities on small scale,” he explained.
Meadow comprises 320 women engaged in various activities such as assembling wrist watch, jewellery designing, strapping of watches etc.
The SHG has a turnover of Rs 1.5 crore per annum. Another area, which the students will be studying is `Yashaswini’ , a micro health insurance scheme by the Karnataka Government.
The students will visit Narayana Hrudyalaya, one of the hospitals which is implementing Yashaswini, to understand the scheme and  its role in helping the poor patients. Poor people who are members of co-operative societies get free medical aid under the scheme.
The students  will also visit the companies  Infosys, Biocon, Google and among other companies.
The objective of the SAIL is to create cross-cultural opportunity for students to learn business and management in the US and India besides looking at the life-long relationships between Indian and American business students.