The Master’s Programme in Human Development Policy and Practice will focus on understanding, assessing, and acting on the challenges of social and economic transformation, while covering the following themes from the point of view of human development:
This Master’s Programme has two distinct parts. The first roots the study of human development within a broader set of systems, including governance, financing, infrastructure development, and planning, as well as economic and environmental systems, with an emphasis on India. It does so to ensure that human development is understood as part of a broader set of urban systems and that students have a foundational and interdisciplinary understanding of the urban.
It then equips students with the theoretical foundations in thinking about human development, not just as poverty alleviation but as social transformation towards more inclusive societies. Students will be able to understand core approaches to reducing urban inequalities across sectors and disciplines, with a focus on housing, work, infrastructure and services, health, and education.
The Master’s Programme focuses on theory as well as policy, programmes, and practice. Graduates from the Programme will be equipped with a core understanding of policies and programmatic interventions within human development and trained to design and implement interventions and programmes in the complex reality of Indian cities and settlements. This will be done through multiple modes of applied, case-based, and experiential learning built on a foundation of taught theory courses. The final component of the Programme is rigorous training in interdisciplinary methods of urban research and practice, as well as specific training in advanced methods in the study of human development.
The Master of Arts in Human Development Policy and Practice is a two-year, interdisciplinary, full-time degree programme. Each academic year consists of three terms of around 11–13 weeks each.
Core Courses are undertaken in the first year, where an interdisciplinary foundation locates human development within larger social, economic, spatial, ecological, and political urban systems.
The second year is composed of Elective Courses that allow students to concentrate in different themes within human development, such as affordable housing, social protection, health, education, and livelihoods community development. The second year ends with an independent internship, project and/or dissertation.
Foundation Courses, focused on holistic and integral personal development, run through both years. It is this framing of Foundation, Core, and Elective Courses that allows the University to pedagogically achieve interdisciplinary knowledge in a transformative manner.
The Foundation Courses are a set of learning experiences, interactions, and credit courses grounded in Indian culture and experiential contexts, including local and traditional knowledge. These will help build a set of personal and professional capacities through experiential learning outside conventional classroom settings and enable the student to imbibe a set of sensibilities and capacities grounded in the values enshrined in the Indian Constitution.
Foundation Courses facilitate holistic human development and integral learning engagement with the importance of being situated, committed, and empathetic while handling situations outside one’s comfort zone and dealing with potential situations of conflict. Some of the skills, abilities, and sensibilities that students will be exposed to include Physical Culture, Art and Labour, Nature and Environment, Self-Awareness and Reflection, and Philosophical Orientation and Ethics.
Year 1, Terms 1 and 2: In the first two terms, students take three kinds of Core Courses that are required for all Master’s programmes at the University. These are Core Theory Courses, Core Methods Courses, and Core Practica. These courses lay the interdisciplinary foundation across a set of urban systems and help students see the process of urbanisation through social, economic, spatial, governance, infrastructural, and ecological lenses. They also establish competence in core skills and methods, including qualitative, quantitative, geospatial, and mixed methods; and expose students to place- and field-based applied learning.
Core Practica is a field-based applied learning course, where theoretical concepts learnt in the classroom are applied in the field through learning-by-doing. Based in neighbourhoods of Bengaluru, students first learn how to observe, document, and analyse different aspects of an urban neighbourhood. They then move to propositions, suggesting solutions to problems they observe and identify.
Year 1, Term 3: Students start specialising in the specific themes of this programme in the third term. Through a set of required courses, the third term introduces Students to human development through courses in multi-dimensional inequality and vulnerability; the political economy of human development, and theories of urban social protection. These will be located in the context of ongoing global and regional evolutions in systems to tackle inequality, poverty and vulnerability, and evolution in social policy and protection systems.
Year 2, Terms 4 and 5: Students choose from various interdisciplinary Elective Courses offered in this programme. These allow in-depth learning in health, decent work, affordable housing, education, social inequality, social protection policy and practice. Students may also take up to two Elective Courses from other Master’s programmes offered by the University. Additionally, they pursue skill enhancement Electives rooted in human and social development practice, as well as more inter-sectoral skills, methods, and practices.
Year 2, Term 6: This term is focused on learning through doing. Through an external internship with an organisation working within human and social development, Students will apply what they have learnt and transition into post-graduation employment pathways. Students can also choose to be part of IIHS teams working on ongoing projects and/or do independent research dissertations, mentored by faculty.
The Master of Arts in Human Development Policy and Practice programme welcomes candidates from diverse academic and professional backgrounds looking to tackle India’s entrenched developmental, social, economic, and spatial vulnerabilities and inequalities. The Programme will equip them to be both analytically and propositionally prepared to work across sectors like health, education, affordable housing, decent work, equitable infrastructure and services, social inclusion, environmental justice, and social protection.
Graduates of the Master of Arts in Human Development Policy and Practice will have a wide range of career options:
