Meet the Committees of YIF 21

The Student

Committees

Admissions and Outreach Committee

The first contact prospective fellows have with the fellowship is with the Admission and Outreach team. The Admissions and Outreach committee has been the guiding light for candidates during the admissions cycle. The committee conducted various sessions to familiarise candidates with the various facets of the fellowship. Normally, they host meet and greet events throughout different cities in India for the candidates but, this year due to the online medium, they conducted, “A Day at YIF”, a series of curated sessions designed to give aspirants a glimpse of a day at the Young India Fellowship.

They have also conducted the ‘YIF pathways of possibilities’, a series of interactive and informative sessions with YIF alumni who share their personal and professional journeys after the YIF and the ‘Professor with see you now’, a live and interactive webinar series where YIF faculty have a candid conversation about their journey and their course. The committee has worked diligently and conducted live guidance webinars regarding the entire admissions and financial aid process for candidates.

Representatives

Glen Bala Vasudha Arushi

Nikita S Afshana Nehal

Placement Committee

The Placement Committee works in tandem with the Career Development Office of Ashoka University to ensure that the graduating batch of the University gets full-time job offers from the companies/industries of their choice. The Placement Committee has representation from all the graduating cohorts of the University and unlike the other committee formation processes, this one is done by careful selection rather than student election. The work done by the Placement Committee is notoriously known as the "thankless job" in an institution and here they act as a bridge between the students and the recruiters, ensuring that both sides find the right match and have a smooth process. The Placement Committee works towards keeping everything updated about the candidates using the infamous "Superset" (which remains down or glitchy most of the time) and are known to organise several official and unofficial resume review and building sessions, mock interviews, case practices, and several other awareness and knowledge gathering sessions about the myriad of job options available after an intensive year of studying liberal arts in India. These people are usually night owls and the number of calls they receive is inversely proportional to the time left for an application deadline.

Manu

Representatives

Anamitra Mukul

Peer Learning & Guest Lectures Committee

Peer learning, near and dear to our hearts, is one of the core components of the Fellowship. And to enrich the learning experience of the fellows, the Guest Sessions and Peer Learning Committee and the YIF Programme Team have been organizing peer learning sessions where Fellows conduct workshops or training sessions for their cohort.

The topics are wide-ranging from – Economics, Business/Finance/Management, Analytics, ArtFine Arts/Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Social Sciences, Media/Journalism, Literature/Language, Athletics/Sports/ Martial Arts, and more!

This year the committee arranged peer learning sessions on Marketing, College Applications, Vipasana, Folk Dances of India, etc.

Guest sessions were also extensively organised to provide industry insights to the fellows. Guests invited ranged from Amit Chandra (impact investing) to Harsha Bhogle (Indian cricket commentator) and the Basus from the television and film industry (Anita Kaul Basu and Siddhartha Basu).

Representatives

Bhavya Anmol

Communications Committee

The Communications Committee includes Fellows passionate about writing, photography and design. To carry the story of the Fellows’ experience is their purpose.

In an online year, this became even more exciting as the fellowship experience of the cohort was vastly different to that of the previous batches.

The committee in its endeavours hosted events where fellows could express their talents on Ashoka’s official social media platforms.

The cohort saw fellows participating in these events with great enthusiasm. Its surprise for the year was publishing Young India Fellowship’s first official newsletter, Communique.

This saw the cohort and alumni contributing actively to express their love for the Fellowship that never ends! The Committee's creative initiative of coming out with the first-ever official YIF newsletter 'Communique' started a legacy that the four members dearly wish the upcoming cohorts will cherish and take forward.

Representatives

Ankita D Arjun

Throughout the duration of the programme, the committee strived towards primarily catering to the fellows’ needs and concerns pertaining to academic matters. In particular, our work involved addressing and resolving relevant grievances, ensuring that the feedback cycles are in order and serving as an efficient link between the cohort and the programme team. While at it, in addition to its core tasks, the committee was also active in voicing alternate concerns subject to refunds, campus transition and other matters that indirectly influenced the academic experience.

Considering the peculiarities of the online medium of education, the committee’s responsibility was all the more significant. Over eight terms, it worked towards addressing the individual and collective challenges propelled by the changed medium and attempted to positively alleviate the pandemicinduced distress. At present, the committee is working towards creating a repository of pedagogical material pertaining to all the courses taught during the year with the intention of making available a comprehensive academic resource accessible to every fellow.

Representatives

Varun Shambhavi

Govind Debaleena

Alumni Relations Committee

Alumni are key to an institution's growth, that is why it is always crucial to maintain a constant connection between the individuals who are helping in establishing the brand of the university across the globe and the ones who aspire to do the same in the future. Throughout the year, the Alumni Relations Committee(ARC) have put in their best foot so that the fellows could get the expected guidance from the respective Alumnis. The committee well articulately designed a Alumni Relations Mentorship programme, so that no fellow is left behind and can receive the right guidance to reach their goals as smoothly as possible. The committee ensured an efficient communication channel between the current fellows and over 252 different alumni, with whom the fellows can have one to one sessions. This year of utmost uncertainty saw an insanely certain level of dedication from the ARC who scaled up their role from just an interface between the Fellows and Alumni to a proper guiding light for all the fellows, looking for a diverse set of opportunities at the fellowship. From holding podcast sessions for Alumnis to share their journeys to helping fellows meet the alumnis, they did it all, that too in an online setup, without hassle. Doesn’t that sound amazing ? Whether it’s life or liberal studies, connecting dots will make the difference, but dots can only be connected when you have the right joiner by your side. ARC has been that right joiner and have created a significant impact in the fellowship. As the fellows step onto the other side of the fellowship in the pandemic, ARC will always be remembered as the guiding facilitator who stood with a torch at the end of the tunnel!

Representatives

Aryaman Deshna

ELD Committee

The Experiential Learning Development committee acts as a bridge between the students working on their Experiential Learning Modules(ELM) and the ELM faculty and program team. This year the committee had an additional responsibility of handling the challenges associated in conducting the ELM in an online setup. From helping fellows understand the nuances of the Experiential Learning Module to voicing the fellows opinions to the program team, they did it all. The ELM is a core component of the YIF curriculum, where the fellows work in groups to solve real life problems. Needless to say that every group has a diverse set of people with diverse viewpoints and opinions. With things going online effective communication started to disappear among the team members. But all thanks to the committee, time and time again they have stepped up to ensure that there is a steady frictionless execution of work. The ELD team was also responsible for interacting with all the fellows closely and understanding projects (problems) from diverse backgrounds. At the same time, they happily helped with all queries/issues related to project planning and execution, client communication, etc. This year saw a paradigm shift in the working of the offices due to a raging pandemic, in such troubled times, the ELD team very well understood and incorporated the importance of empathy in the day to day working of the ELM teams, thus making the space more inclusive for the fellows, leading to greater productivity of working even in such testing times.

Representatives

Kartheek Jai

Student Engagement Committee

The Student Engagement Committee’s mandate is to organise cultural events for the cohort and inculcate a sense of community in the fellowship. For the Committee of the YIF’21 batch, there was an additional role in hand - bridging the online gap and bringing everyone together to get to know each other virtually. Getting their creative juices flowing, the Student Engagement Committee kicked off its first event titled “Jab We Met” for the cohort on October 24th, 2020. The event officially brought the fellows together for a fun-filled evening with refreshing mixers and cohort dance. After a warm welcome and discussion on creating a vibrant student engagement life, the event proceeded with the "Fellows Group Speed Dating" mixer where the fellows got a conversation starter prompt and were randomly sent to breakout rooms to discuss the prompt with other fellows under 3 minutes. The beauty of it was that the shuffling happened randomly each time which allowed everyone to meet with someone they didn't know before. Some of the prompts given were 'What would the title of your autobiography be?', 'You’re going to sail around the world, what’s the name of your boat and why?', and 'What is the craziest thing you have done in your life’. But the night was just getting started, post the speed dating mixer, fellows were ready to tap their feet and get into Garba dance mode. After 5 minutes of initial awkwardness, fellows fixed their zoom screens and started dancing and jigged to the tunes of popular Bollywood songs. The night became more LIVE as it broke the ice between many fellows, and everyone enjoyed the sheer energy and fun enthusiasm of our cohort. This event became the foundation for the committee to organise few more events which included games, songs, dance, and late-night fun conversations. The SEC also organised some discussions with fellows of the program to celebrate and explore their talents and successes. The committee managed to break the ice between the fellows of 2021 despite the absence in our physical proximities :)

Representatives

Devansh Sweta

Resident Assistants

Being a Resident Assistant is, perhaps, a job like no other. It requires one to be available, empathetic, understanding, prompt and tight lipped at required places and occasions. We help in creating a safe environment for our fellow classmates and help foster an environment that embraces diversity. But unlike how it is also generally viewed, the job of being an RA is also extremely fulfilling. Throughout the process of brainstorming, planning, holding events, listening to students etc., one gets to meet a variety of people who teach us a new thing or two. This is especially true with regards to what we learn from our own residents. Lastly, being a tiny little arm of the Office of Student Affairs makes for a delightful learning experience from professionals and seniors throughout the year. Our year as Resident Assistants has been one of fulfilment, growth, learning association and in many ways, emancipation.

Representatives CASH

Ashoka University aims at creating a safe space. CASH , Centre Against Sexual Harrasment, is one of the bodies which works towards realizing this goal. The committee, besides the CASH Chair and other members in the panel, comprises student representatives which assist in having a fair hearing and ensuring that due procedure is followed. CASH Support provides the necessary help and counseling needed to students should they approach it. Maintaining the privacy of the individuals involved in a case is mandatory. Ashoka University does not tolerate sexual harassment on it's campus in any form. The Committee has been active even on a virtual medium in the recent past. Having served as the student representative from YIF, the tenure was a learning experience as well as a challenging one. I hope that CASH continues its good work and provide even safer campus space to students.

Representative

Soumya