Patna: Moving beyond classrooms and case studies, students of the Development Management Institute (DMI), Patna, will spend four weeks living in rural communities in Punjab to gain first-hand insights into how agriculture, dairy, cooperatives and grassroots institutions drive development.Five teams, comprising eight to nine students each, will leave for Punjab on Oct 5 and work in villages around Mohali, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar, Amritsar and Ludhiana. Rather than making brief visits, the students will stay in the villages full-time and follow the daily routines of the communities they are studying.The field immersion programme aims to expose students to the real-world complexities of development management by helping them understand what works, why it works and whether successful practices can be replicated elsewhere.DMI director Debiprasad Mishra said agriculture and dairy production, along with Punjab’s strong cooperative culture, play a crucial role in sustaining rural livelihoods. Students, he said, will study these strengths and innovations while also sharing development experiences from Bihar, including those linked to Jeevika and other govt programmes.The initiative seeks to turn rural India into a living classroom. During the two-year PGDM programme, nearly one-third of the students’ learning time is spent in the field. Having already visited villages in Bihar, they will now be exposed to a different socio-economic and institutional environment in Punjab.Programme coordinator Iliyas Kanchan Sheikh said the students will interact with farmers, social workers, panchayat representatives, govt officials, entrepreneurs and practitioners from the cooperative sector.They will assess both the strengths and challenges of local development initiatives and explore how successful models can be adapted for use in other regions, he added.
