Centre for Public Policy and Public Affairs on XLRI Delhi campus

The Delhi-NCR campus of XLRI- Xavier School of Management will now have a Centre for Public Policy and Public Affairs (XLCP). The centre was inaugurated at a virtual event on February 26.

The guest speaker on the occasion was Benjamin M. Friedman, a globally American economist and the William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. Friedman spoke on ‘Why Study for a Career in Public Policy’.

The Centre will work closely with collaborators and partners across the country. It will be led by Shobhana Rana, a Harvard alumna and conflict resolutions specialist with over two decades of experience in public policy as a practitioner and teacher. She has worked in the public and private sector, in all major conflict hotspots around the world and in policymaking roles headquartered in New York City and Washington DC. She has also advised governments and private sector enterprises on governance and policy in India and overseas.

XLRI director Father Paul Fernandes expressed his delight at the opening of the Centre. “At this juncture of our history, there is a deep need for training in principled and effective public leadership and policy for future generations of scholars and practitioners. We need more creativity in the process of public decision-making, be it dealing with political pressure, an increasingly technology-driven world, shifting demographics, environmental challenges and a host of other pressing issues of our times. The recent pandemic has taught us to be prepared for catastrophic and unforeseen events that can disrupt our lives in a moment and yet bind us together as one world.”

The XLCP is a hub of cutting-edge ideas on areas as vast as corporate governance, conflict management and mediation, building effective public-private partnerships and public leadership. It brings together scholars and practitioners to engage in dialogue that impacts our world and helps in creating workable solutions to the policy questions of our current times.

“At XLCP, we will endeavour to train leaders who will strive to frame policies and lead organisations with a strong sense of ethics and integrity and set examples of building resilience in an uncertain world with great certitude. I am happy to have a strong team that will build the Centre as a hub of innovation and excellence in the hope of creating a better world for our collective future,” Fernandes said.