Public Service

Our commitment to public service is grounded in the University’s founding vision. Over the next decade, we will seek to strengthen our engagement with local communities and advance our contributions to national and global policymaking.

Objective I

Engaging with our local community

Our schools, institutes and research centres have initiated and promoted engagement with local communities in Sonipat, Haryana, and in neighbouring states through research at the school level, policy institutions working on social issues. The Jindal School of Government and Public Policy (JSGP) will play a key role in this effort, in addition to other schools, institutes and centres. Over the next decade, the University’s community engagement will be deepened through programmes conducted in collaboration with the district administration and the local community in Sonipat and other districts of Haryana. We will explore ways to serve wider communities within the country. We will also vigorously promote a culture of public service among our students, staff and the wider JGU community, and ensure that our existence and growth remain grounded within a spirit and tradition of public service enshrined in our vision.

Priorities

1. We will enhance institutional support, encouragement and participation for student-led socially relevant activities. We will build on our ongoing engagements, past learning and our sense of future possibilities. We will particularly boost support for student-led initiatives that directly impact our public and social engagements, such as the student-run Clinical Legal Society of the Jindal Global Law School (JGLS) that organises legal literacy camps, and works on legal aid and good governance with paralegal volunteers, District Legal Services Authority, and lok adalats.
2. We will strengthen intra-school collaborative activities to impact issues such as women’s education, human rights education and rural literacy expansion.
3. The design of relevant elective courses will maintain focus on studying and addressing the disconnect between the expectations from laws, government policies and programmes, and actual reality. It will involve student engagement with local populations on issues including right to food, social security, education, health, sanitation, anganwadis, panchayati raj, voting rights, right to information, provisions for legal aid, and legal literacy.
4. Expand JGU’s Village Adoption Programme; strengthen the University’s Social Services Society; expand institutional collaborations with local institutions; and widen sensitisation of our students and staff on key issues affecting communities.
5. Widen access to the mental health counselling services and behavioural studies programmes provided by the Jindal Institute of Behavioural Sciences (JIBS) to schools in the National Capital Region as well as local communities.
6. Support cleanliness drives in local educational institutions as part of the Prime Minister’s Swachh Bharat Mission.

Objective II

Strengthening our contribution to national and global policymaking

We have made important contributions to policymaking in India and globally over a short period of time through our research, consultancy projects, and collaborative exercises. We will continue to work towards shaping policymaking in meaningful and substantial ways through our socially relevant research, outreach, and student and teacher activism.

Priorities

We will work towards establishing deeper partnerships with Central and State government ministries and agencies, and other leading institutions within the country. For example, the Jindal School of International Affairs (JSIA) will focus on working closely with the Ministry of External Affairs, the Office of the National Security Adviser and the Prime Minister’s Office, on providing policy inputs when demanded. The Jindal School of Art & Architecture Architecture (JSAA) could provide useful inputs into national urban policy and development of intelligent futuristic cities. e International Institute for Higher Education Research and Capacity Building (IIHEd) drafted the State Higher Education Plan for the State of Haryana under the Government of India’s Rashtriya Uchchtar Shiksha Abhiyaan (RUSA). The institute will continue to provide consultation and policy advisory to state governments and other government agencies on higher education policy. In order to sustain our vision to become a model of higher education excellence in India, we will also engage more deeply with regulatory agencies, relevant state and central government departments, and peer institutions to share best practices in institution building.

Given the quality of our faculty, the institutional mission to contribute to national development and our experience so far, we are well positioned to contribute meaningfully to the processes of policymaking. We believe that such participation will be mutually beneficial to both the sides.

Governments at the central and state levels may find it useful to access latest research relevant to particular areas of policy interest benefitting from outside-the-system perspectives and the researchers will profit from gaining insights into real world challenges. In the coming years, we will intensify our collaborations with governmental agencies and seek active partnerships in projects directly relevant to ongoing policymaking.