Event On : 22 Apr 2016

iLEAD conducted a  one day workshop on ‘Holistic Effectiveness and Leadership’ on the 22nd April between 10am-12pm in the auditorium. The management students, faculty members and pupils from other disciplines were present to be a part this learning.

Professor Bidyut Kumar Sarkar, the Vice Principal and Associate Director of Rabindranath Tagore Centre for Human Values (located on the 7th Floor of Vishwakarma Building, Topsia) was the chief spokesperson throughout the session. With more than 18 years of experience in both teaching and administrative fields, Professor Sarkar is a known face in a number of public and private sector companies where these workshops are conducted for a week or so. He is also the Eminent National Speaker at several international conferences besides being an avid member of top-grade companies like IMCI, AHRD, ACP, NIPM, to name a few.

The session began with Vande Mataram, a rendition from Sri Dilip Kumar Roy (who was a devotee of Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry). He later emphasized on values, which are ‘endearing emotions determining our ends and means.’ The conflict between intellect and emotions was well brought out by him. With a sharp departure from the rote learning process, the session helped students distinguish between positive (human values) and negative (disvalues) practices in life. Also, he stressed on ethicality, which is nothing but a combination of human values and skills; while the latter when mixed with disvalues lead to un-ethicality. With problems being a part and parcel of life, Professor Sarkar essentially taught students how the society can actually be saved if disvalues are deducted from human to reach the highest point of ethicality. In order to restrain disvalues, he focused on the 6 origins of the latter that most students of this generation are unaware of- kama (desire), krodha (anger), lobha (greed), moha (delusion), mada (vanity), and matsarya (envy).

Following the lecture on holistic effectiveness, Professor Sarkar concentrated on the second part of the workshop- Leadership.  He recited ‘shlokas’ from the Bhagavad Gita to help students understand the need to go back to the Indian learning and not merely emote Western ideas. The nation which once ranked at the top in terms of world economy has degraded over time. This can largely be attributed to the non-spiritual nature and lack of respect for oneself and others- something that the best of leaders were replete with.

Professor Sarkar acquainted students with the only Indian model of Leadership called the ‘Rajarshi Model’, comprising the values that a ‘Raja’ is expected to have (humility, righteousness, sacrifices, self-control) or the ‘Rishi’ (solitude, simplicity, wisdom before knowledge).

The interactive session cum workshop provided the audience with a new learning experience that most professionals are catered to. Grasping all the information together would no doubt be a little difficult, but iLEAD’s initiative in bringing an expert to talk about something that shapes our personality to a great extent was a commendable one.