BHOPAL : Students at Indian Institute of Forestry Management, one of the premier institutes in forestry management, have proved that money does not matter specially when it comes to working for development of society. What matters more is job satisfaction and to see that society progresses. Free Press brings you what a section of IIFM students have to say. Excerpts
Rajat Shah
PG DFM (Banking and Microfinance)
Graduated with BE in civil engineering from Indore, he holds a three-year experience. As he wanted to help the socio-economically backward people specially those who live in rural areas, he enrolled himself in IIFM. He is doing his PG diploma in the banking and microfinance. He said he could have done PG diploma from other colleges but he didn’t want to work in a conventional setup.
He said he wants to help people in rural areas, most of whom rely on forest for livelihood, with his knowledge in banking and microfinance. He wants to be employed as a relationship manager or an area manager in rural areas.
Sandeep Kumar Sinha
PG DFM (Rural Livelihood Mission)
Having done BBA from Manipal University in Sikkim, he has worked with the state’s rural livelihood mission and Swachh Bharat Mission in Bihar. Sharing his experience, he says that having worked for people in rural areas, he realised that benefits of government welfare schemes don’t reach them to the required level. On the other hand, sincere efforts are needed to change their habits. An example is stopping open defecation in villages. Narrating an incident, he said block development officer had to stop ration supply of people in order to stop them from defecating in open. Expressing his desire to work for rural masses, Sinha said he wants to adopt bottoms up approach to help the deprived sections of society.
Bonela Deepak
PGDFM (Development Sector)
Hailing from Vishakapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, he wants to work towards eliminating poverty, illiteracy, ecological imbalance to name a few. He is more interested in working for the community development. He adds that working with an NGO, he realised that all NGOs work in the same model. But NGOs don’t succeed everywhere as India’s problems are diverse and therefore diverse approaches are required to solve them. According to Deepak, resources are available but “we are not able to maximise them. The reason is that you need to develop diverse skills to solve diverse problems in these areas.”
Hariprasad
(Corporate Social Responsibility)
He has worked closely with the CSR sector. He says despite allocation of funds, the companies do the work and forget about it later. There is no proper follow up of their CSR activities. Citing an example, he said managers are not trained specifically for the CSR sector. The CSR provides for the development of rural sports. But companies spend this fund, for instance, on organising three-day day cricket tournament. This way, the funds doesn’t meet its purpose. Hariprasad said he wants a holistic development of society through CSR fund. “Nonetheless, it is a boon to work for the company and also for the society simultaneously,” he said.
