– Avtar Nehru (Delhi)

Shobhit Mathur is executive director of the Delhi-based Vision India Foundation (regst.2014) and co-founder and dean of the Rashtram School of Public Leadership, located within the newly promoted Rishiwood University, Sonipat (estb.2018). A highly qualified alum of IIT-Bombay, University of Washington and ISB-Hyderabad, Mathur previously worked for Amazon.com in Seattle and served as Joint National Organizing Secretary of Youth for Seva, a Bangalore-based NGO.

Newspeg. The Rashtram School of Public Leadership, an initiative of Vision India Foundation, was all set to start its two-year fully residential Masters programme in leadership, but has deferred its launch to next year because of the Covid-19 national lockdown.

History. Together with IIT-B classmates — Sahil Aggarwal, Kumar Subham and Raghava Krishna — Mathur conceptualised and established the Rashtram School of Public Leadership (RSPL) in 2019. Prior to undertaking this initiative, the team has been running an annual Policy BootCamp and providing fellowships and governance programmes under the aegis of the Vision India Foundation. The rising popularity of these programmes attended by 1,300 fellows in four years led to a 12-month accelerator programme and eventually to the Masters programme and promotion of RSPL.

According to Mathur, the promotion of RSPL is inspired by Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques (Sciences Po), France and The Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, Japan. “We need thought, social and also political leaders rooted in the soil to represent the will of the people and place the nation above self. There is a dearth of this type of leadership in contemporary Indian society,” says Shobhit Mathur. Graduate students of RSPL will be trained in three domains — academia, politics and civil society.

Direct talk. “During my days at ISB, Hyderabad with nothing to do on weekends, I started working with Youth For Seva. It was then that I discovered that our youth are disconnected from society and there is need to re-connect them with the country’s grave socio-economic problems. After I moved to the US, I retained contact with several of my IIT batchmates. And then one day, I decided to pack my bags and head homewards because I wanted to pursue my passion of creating impactful change agents and joined the Vision India Foundation. That was the start of my journey to actualise my ambition of making India a better nation through interventionist leadership training,” recalls Shobhit Mathur.

Future plans. Looking ahead, Mathur believes that generating awareness of the civilisational riches and wisdom of ancient India in executive education programmes can produce a new generation of leaders. “Currently, RSPL has five areas of focus: civilisational studies, wellness, foreign relations, innovation in governance and social leadership. By integrating these focus subjects into a postgrad study programme, we can produce the type of leaders India urgently needs,” says Shobhit Mathur.

Wind in your sails!