FM tells alma mater to fulfil needs of 'aspirational class'

The Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) here invited one of its most famous and powerful alumni, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who has also been the face of an unusual fund-raising drive, to the campus on Thursday.

While the alma mater expressed a desire to be declared an institute of national importance, Jaitley, in return, urged the education fraternity to fulfil the needs of the "aspirational class" - people just below the middle class.

"Our middle class today is huge and is expanding. Below the middle class, you have a lot of people who struggle, who aspire. In this aspirational class, there is a hunger for education, for hard work," said Jaitley. "As more and more aspirational people get up, we need a break from conventional thought."

The finance minister, an undergraduate from SRCC in 1970-73, has backed an unusual experiment by SRCC since 2009. He has been the face of a fund-raising drive by the college from alumni, which has turned out generations of commerce and economics graduates. Among its famous alumni and contributors are Anshu Jain, chief of Deutsche Bank and the just-declared Supreme Court judge Rohinton Nariman.

Although SRCC, like other colleges of Delhi University, gets a grant from the Union ministry of human resource development, it has tapped into alumni funds to refurbish infrastructure. While it is a common practice followed by universities abroad, colleges in India have yet to catch on.

Poster boy
Jaitley admitted he has become the face of SRCC. "I have become an integral part of SRCC branding; that is probably the biggest honour," said Jaitley, as a crowd of 2,000 students in the basketball stadium of the college cheered.

The students said they were happy to be there, taking leadership lessons from someone who once sat in the same classrooms, albeit without air-conditioning, which has now been added with alumni funds.

"Because he is an alumnus, he shows you can reach such levels that you get recognised (for your work)," said Vartika Dhanuka, 18, who joined the much-sought college three weeks ago as an undergraduate.

SRCC courted controversy in early 2013 when it invited Narendra Modi - before he was declared the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate - for a talk on campus, where Modi declared his aspirations for Delhi, besides appealing to a generation of "mouse charmers". A delegation of students from Jawaharlal Nehru University had protested at the SRCC gates then, because Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat during the 2002 riots.