Incendio is the newly formed activity group in Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSoM) at IIT Kharagpur. Led by the class of 2009, it organized recently a lecture series cum seminar by so called reknowned management thinker Partha S Ghosh. The programme ran over three and half days and came to an end on Sunday, 17th Feb. The workshop was aimed at covering primarily three areas: Leadership, Globalization and Strategy.
A lot of students, who were made to attend the workshop (because of compulsory attendence requirement) felt quite bored with the programme. A few students who were listening to the lectures said that Mr Ghosh was a bit egoistic in his talks and he seemd to be defending his thoughts at times, when students counter argued the points made by him.
For eg. there was an assignment designed by him, to judge one's
personality and to judge if the person is a good leader or not. This involved two dimensions connectivity and perspective. At first he said that a person should be high on both dimensions and explained how his figure is higher in both of these. However when one student raised the argued that some of the questions for connectivity dimensions are such that they clearly indicate that one needs to have low score in it to be a good leader, Mr Ghosh started defending his arguement by saying that one need not be high or low on any of these dimensions to be a good leader, however these can be just used to identify the comfort zone of the person.
The views of the faculty were a bit different. May be because they could not say anything against the famous management thinker in public, because it was the question of the image of the b-school. Prof. Gautam Sinha, compared Mr Ghosh with Lord Krishna (Since Partha is Arjun in Mahabharta and his Sarthi i.e. the chariot driver was Krishna in the great war of Mahabharata, Partha Sarthi is hence Lord Krishna). So should we assume that Lord Krishna was in IIT Kharagpur for three and half days to give away the valuable gyan of Shree MadBhagvat Gita??? and we should feel great that we were lucky ones who heard holy words from the mouth of the prophet himself.
Mr Ghosh also stressed the importance of nationalism or I would say patriotism, I would say. He said that if he would have say in the government, he would form a ministry of ethics. He also stressed on the importance of the national anthem and said that it should be played in cinema halls during each show, so that people remember it and give it the due respect. However it was a mere pity that when the national anthem was being sung at the end of programme, Mr Ghosh forgot the fact that if one wants to give proper respect to the anthem, he should stand in attention with his hands completely straight and facing down beside the body, however his arms were folded since he was carrying a shawl/ cloth with IIT buildings made on it given to him as momento. The rules also says that you should sing the natinal anthem when it is being played or sung by others, but Mr Ghosh didnt seem to be singing it. Surprisingly he lives in the United States and he doesnt care for his ex-motherland any more.
I would like to end with a rather funny quote from another faculty Dr. R P Pradhan that leadership and econometrics are similar. Leadership says that you should work towards finding the best possible path in your life, and in econometrics we analyze data sets to find the best possible path/ relation among them.
A lot of students, who were made to attend the workshop (because of compulsory attendence requirement) felt quite bored with the programme. A few students who were listening to the lectures said that Mr Ghosh was a bit egoistic in his talks and he seemd to be defending his thoughts at times, when students counter argued the points made by him.
For eg. there was an assignment designed by him, to judge one's
personality and to judge if the person is a good leader or not. This involved two dimensions connectivity and perspective. At first he said that a person should be high on both dimensions and explained how his figure is higher in both of these. However when one student raised the argued that some of the questions for connectivity dimensions are such that they clearly indicate that one needs to have low score in it to be a good leader, Mr Ghosh started defending his arguement by saying that one need not be high or low on any of these dimensions to be a good leader, however these can be just used to identify the comfort zone of the person.
The views of the faculty were a bit different. May be because they could not say anything against the famous management thinker in public, because it was the question of the image of the b-school. Prof. Gautam Sinha, compared Mr Ghosh with Lord Krishna (Since Partha is Arjun in Mahabharta and his Sarthi i.e. the chariot driver was Krishna in the great war of Mahabharata, Partha Sarthi is hence Lord Krishna). So should we assume that Lord Krishna was in IIT Kharagpur for three and half days to give away the valuable gyan of Shree MadBhagvat Gita??? and we should feel great that we were lucky ones who heard holy words from the mouth of the prophet himself.
Mr Ghosh also stressed the importance of nationalism or I would say patriotism, I would say. He said that if he would have say in the government, he would form a ministry of ethics. He also stressed on the importance of the national anthem and said that it should be played in cinema halls during each show, so that people remember it and give it the due respect. However it was a mere pity that when the national anthem was being sung at the end of programme, Mr Ghosh forgot the fact that if one wants to give proper respect to the anthem, he should stand in attention with his hands completely straight and facing down beside the body, however his arms were folded since he was carrying a shawl/ cloth with IIT buildings made on it given to him as momento. The rules also says that you should sing the natinal anthem when it is being played or sung by others, but Mr Ghosh didnt seem to be singing it. Surprisingly he lives in the United States and he doesnt care for his ex-motherland any more.
I would like to end with a rather funny quote from another faculty Dr. R P Pradhan that leadership and econometrics are similar. Leadership says that you should work towards finding the best possible path in your life, and in econometrics we analyze data sets to find the best possible path/ relation among them.
