Meeting Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Prof Ashok Rao!

It was indeed a pleasure to speak to Paranjoy Guha Thakurta - an independent journalist and an educator with over 33 years of work in different media: print, radio, television and documentary cinema; yesterday for over a hour and a half at the IIMB! He is such a down to earth man and yet such a deep thinker! Blood & Iron is an extremely courageous movie - Bravo Sir! Inspiring...

The day before (Friday), the first public screening of his movie Blood & Iron at IIMB auditorium left a lasting impression on me. It is a deeply disturbing/heart-wrenching movie on the nexus between criminals, politicians, and businesses; it makes your blood boil because as if they (the mining mafia) are running a republic of their own and no one can do anything at all, the system is helpless. Our national resources are being rapaciously plundered without any second thought. The ecological devastation, economic harm, social injustice/exploitation and national fallout is of a degree just too high for us to ignore!

PLEASE DO VIEW IT & SPREAD THE WORD! More details here: http://www.dhonuk.com/page/social-1/

In the evening met or was lectured by another radical and inspiring professor, Prof Ashok Rao (IIT, IISc) at IIM Bangalore. His view though radical I was able to relate to most of them due to some overlap in my thoughts, philosophy and lifestyle!

The Enlightened Leadership

Is the B School all about business, money and management? NO. Last weekend was an example. We had a workshop on Enlightened Leadership. It was about changing ourselves. It was all about, with the help of eastern & ancient philosophy and positive psychology to self transform, motivate others and become true leaders!

Drawn on various un conventional thoughts derived from Indian & Buddhist tradition, it was conducted by Mr. Sanjeeb Patra, an IIM Calcutta alumnus and Director, HSBC. The session was interesting since, whatever concepts were discussed during the session were backed by his own personal experiences during his 18+ years stint at HSBC.

With the fast moving world, most of us falls in a mechanistic mode or rather a in-different, unmotivated mode. As leaders or managers, this is the most un acceptable thing and the workshop touched on all aspects of it. Backed by examples from solid research from world's leading universities, Mr. Sanjeeb gave some interesting tips and tricks.

Some of the areas that were discussed during the one day session were:

- Happiness and skillful ways of living life
- Developing mind strength/control and the benefits of meditation
- Motivating others and team members

The session also briefly touched on Hindu and Buddhist philosophy to tackle some of the most important  questions of life. It was not about philosophy, but more of what can be applied in a day to day basis for a more happier life!

six months as a PGSEMer...

A Long journey well begun..OK … Well! let me say at least began :).

Though I have been an active sport, off late I have been wondering if I ever participated in anything as mammoth as current. (The Trinity of Professional – Professional - Personal)
Asian games might have just ended, our game doesn’t. I am in the middle of a Decathlon in which only the first two legs have ended while quite a few more to go. What has gone by has been unprecedented, at least to me (may be for 75 of us here). Incidentally, there has been no single minute of the two events, which stopped anywhere short from being surprising, challenging and changing.

The demand is always on a high and the supply nowhere near it..Hence, the equilibrium always on a deficit. If I think that is only for me, then I am wrong, the aggregate supply follows suit. Every time, the semester starts the Marginal Productivity of our brains is high but what follows, follows the law of diminishing marginal returns. Ultimately, once the exams are done, the deflation in weight is what remains. But somehow the juggernaut rolls on because there is an expected ROI and has to go on with new found confidence and expectation raising supply to new level.


There are some normal expectations and a few abnormal expectations (we may call it Outlying expectations) to be fulfilled over time here and beyond it. What is quite normal is to learn the crux of the business game theory but what‘s lying outside is the bounded rationality to choose anything about the ways to play them.

The first two legs where run in a jiffy. Loads of stories, specialties and fundas heard, lots of number crunching and lumps of data collected..It feels like a cow, eating everything at once but have got to assimilate little by little later, otherwise what’s gonna happen is, drain down memory lane.

I could just rightly say, it is a long puzzling trekking endeavor that has just kicked off. The means to the end unravel at every step and what’s important is how well we understand and move ahead.

~ Abhishek,
  (PGSEM 2010)