Q&A: 'Reservations alone can't equip students to face competition'

Infosys Technologies with the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, has just concluded the first course of a Special Training Programme (STP) for SC, ST students aimed at enhancing their employability.

T V Mohandas Pai, director, human resources, Infosys, spoke to Dhanya Krishnakumar about the programme:


Are you looking at expanding this programme beyond Karnataka?

Ideally, there should be a similar effort in every state. Currently, we plan to conduct pilots in five other states, including Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Orissa. A successful pilot will convince state governments of its need and feasibility. In Pune, we are collaborating with the Symbiosis Institute for a pilot in September. We are talking to two other institutions and we'll finalise things soon.

How did the idea for such a programme come about?

During a meeting with Narayana Murthy, Union minister for social justice and empowerment Meira Kumar asked him to come up with a programme to empower students from the socially disadvantaged classes. We believe that reservation alone cannot equip students for a sound future. The basic premise of STP is to equip these students who have done well in their engineering courses, but lack of resources or opportunities have not been able to get access to good quality higher education.

What are the skills imparted and how are students selected?

Anybody who has finished her engineering a year or two ago and belongs to SC/ST is eligible. We worked with the department of social welfare, government of Karnataka to come up with a list of candidates who would qualify for the pilot project. The training process is similar to the one we provide to those who join Infosys. Our usual process takes about five months, but the STP course is seven months.

We also train them in personality development, confidence building, articulation and communication because often people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds suffer from low esteem and it's essential to change that. The average perfor-mance of the STP batch was comparable to a typical batch at Infosys.

What about placements post this training?

From our first batch of 90, close to 76 got placed in companies like IBM, EDS, HP, MindTree, Wipro and Infosys itself. We made 23 offers, but only 15-16 joined us which shows the power of this programme. It made them competitive enough to have choices. Placement is based purely on merit.

What's the investment in this programme?

For the pilot, we invested Rs 3 crore. Starting with the next session, we are looking at Rs 1 crore with a 50-50 partnership with the state government. The government has the funds but lacks the capability to plan and execute something like this. That's where we come in. We also got support from our partners like HP, Canara Bank and some other corporate houses.