A course to produce empathetic students

We have established globally recognised institutions, yet there is a huge gap between the highly educated and the illiterate, half-literate and badly literate masses

The pivotal point of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s journey to becoming Mahatma Gandhi began when his “political guru” - Gopal Krishna Gokhale – advised him to travel around India to understand India's people better if he were to fight the British regime. Experiential learning (the selling lingo used by many renowned universities) in the form of "Bharat Bhraman" gave him a heart wrenching first-hand exposure to the pain of people, enabling him to connect with people better than anyone else.

We might not see the next Mahatma anytime soon. However, to restore the glory of our culturally rich and diverse country, the education system in India must become the torchbearer. We have established globally recognised NITs, IITs, AIIMS and IIMs, yet there is a huge gap between the highly educated and the illiterate, half-literate and badly literate masses. The suppressed in rural and urban India are large chunks who are content living on the crumbs of the modern education-driven development process. The biggest question staring at us right now is, how can education bridge this enormous gap?

One way is to develop empathy. What better place to start this, than from school? Unfortunately, the New Education Policy (NEP) of 2020 doesn’t include many ways to accomplish this. As per a study on empathy among individuals across sixty countries conducted by William Chopik, et. al., India ranks thirty-fifth. Unlike us, other countries such as the US help sensitise the future citizens regarding Emotional Quotient (EQ) with the help of institutes such as Yale.

In India, we share experiences from a course on social movements offered at some IIMs for the last few years. The course attempts to develop an understanding among students that movements are not always disruptive and some of them have played important roles in addressing the issues of injustice in society.

Dissent is an important ingredient of democracy to stop it from degenerating into authoritarian rule. As future corporate managers, the students should evince a holistic understanding of situations where the corporation is adversely affecting the lives or livelihoods of local communities and be able to sensitively resolve the issues.

The students learn about the struggles of traditional communities and adivasis to save their natural resources from corporate exploitation, of marginalised communities like women, Dalits, LGBTQIA+ so that they can be treated equally, any case of sexual harassment should not be pushed under the carpet for the fear of humiliation of institution but must be dealt with squarely.

The similarities between black rights in the US and Dalit rights in India, Martin Luther King being described as an ‘untouchable’ in South India, movements for political democracies across the world, how Muslims stepped up to defend their citizenship during the anti-CAA, NRC movements, farm laws in America that troubled farmers there, and great traditions of Kabir, Meera, Sai Baba, Guru Nanak, Swami Vivekanand and Mahatma Gandhi that held India together — all these are taught.

This course has no exams. Students make presentations in the class on any movement of their choice. They interview an activist to understand the movement and report their learnings in a reflective journal. The most important assignment is to understand the lives of the marginalised in India by connecting with one family belonging to a socio-economically weaker category at a personal level and trying to do something in their lives to bring a qualitative change in the psychological or material status of the family.

The students’ testimonies say that the course helped them to see the world in a different light.

(Ostwal is a PGP student at IIMB; Pandey has taught Social Movements at IIMA and IIMB and IIMI)