Some guest lectures. Really.

Oflate we are having some really good guest lectures.

A week or two back we had Mr. Robert Blake, Deputy Chief of Mission at the American Embassy at New Delhi to give a talk on Indo-US Bilateral Relations. The lecture was captivating since it was designed primarily to be a question-answer kind of a session. I noticed a couple of interesting things. One, Mr Blake was all praises for IITs and IIMs and he plauded these institutions and their contributions to countries (both India and the U.S.) often times. In contrast, I noticed in students a stark negative attitude towards America. All queries were sarcastically structured to question the motives of America. I attribute this to the post-Iraq incumbency... That he diplomatically evaded all sensitive issues is a different thing altogether. Afterall, he is a true diplomat!

Today we had Mr. Adi Godrej (Chairman, Godrej group) in our campus. He's apparently been to our old campus during the convocation for the third batch of students. That was the time when the new campus just started. This time around he explained about the success of Godrej, and the internal policies and efficiency measures leading to it. He mentioned about a lot of innovative things happening in the company. I had a couple of questions for him. First of the two, he mentioned that anyone from Godrej family who's got an MBA or equiv degree will be entrusted with the director level work. My pretty obvious question was: how could anyone be sure that an MBA would perform the job? That too without any field ex? He didn't have time to attend all questions.

What is the true purpose behind these lectures anyway? My answer is simple. It instills a strong feeling of importance just getting the privelege to listen and question such speakers.

Running afront: We are also expecting our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in a month or two. It should be exciting. Waiting to hear what he has to say...