GRAAM’s Online Certificate Program on “Public Policy” Concludes recently on a virtual program”

GRAAM & QCI signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) last year to build capacity of young professionals at QCI on public policy. The third batch of online certificates on the program “Introduction to public policy” was held between 29th September to 6th of October, 2020. The workshop concluded recently on a virtual valedictory program.

The chief guest of the program was Dr.Devendra Singh, Head of academics and associate professor at Dr.Ambedkar International Centre, under the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, spoke about the challenges faced by our nation due to pandemic. He said Creating sustainable livelihood is the need of the hour during this pandemic. More than 30 crore people have been displaced due to pandemic.  Government and non-government organisations need to help people to come out of this disastrous situation, by creating sustainable livelihood opportunities for the poor and the marginalised’’. In his speech he said that crores of people have lost their job and place due to the pandemic. He suggested GRAAM to Work on policies and programs for sustainable rural livelihood. 

Dr.Singh gave an open invitation to GRAAM to become its partner for conducting a two-week course on policy formulation and policy implementation along with Ambedkar International Centre New Delhi.

Mr.Anil Relia, Head for the Project Planning and Implementation Division (PPID) of  Quality council of India (QCI) under the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, Ministry of Commerce & Industry Govt. of India, said that ``QCI is involved in conducting survey, ranking, certification and accreditations. Thus, we prefer to train our employees on the nature and implementation of the public policy and we have signed a MoU with the GRAAM to conduct the course on this subject.  The feedback which we received from the participants was very good and thus we arranged for more sessions. We are sure that this course will help our employees to understand the public policies in a better way. ‘’

Chairman for the GRAAM and the lead faculty of the certificate course, Dr R Balasubramaniam said that the demand for GRAAM’s public policy program has been increasingly becoming popular.  . GRAAM has been conducting at least two programmes in a month on public policy. There is a good demand for our programme from across the globe.  ``We even received participants from Russia and Dubai for the courses conducted for non QCI professionals ’’ he added. 

GRAAM has conducted about six programs/courses since pandemic in partnership with QCI and Indian institute of democratic leadership (IIDL) an organization under Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini a not-for-profit organization Established in 1982 in memory of the Rambhau Mhalgi.

Executive Director for GRAAM Dr.Basavaraju R Shreshta, started the program by introducing the guest and welcoming all to the program. He recalled how partnership between GRAAM and QCI has unfolded. He appreciated the leadership of QCI for valuing the positive feedback given by the participants and continuing to conduct workshop, despite pandemic on a virtual mode. With completion of three successive batches about 90-100 QCI professionals have been trained on public policy.  While responding to Dr.Singh’s suggestion on sustainable livelihood. He briefed the gathering on GRAAM work towards developing sustainable rural livelihood at both policy and grassroot level. GRAAM has developed a rural social business model at Jaganakote Hadi of HD Kote taluk in Mysuru district and now working on expanding it to other taluks of Mysuru. Workshop organizing teams of QCI and GRAAM and participants of the course were also present in the program. Bhagavan Bidarakote, Senior manager –Strategic Consulting GRAAM was the Master of Ceremony and gave vote of thanks.