A Month in Kolkata

 I have now lived here for over a month. I commute around 40 minutes each way to work, and it's not too bad. North Kolkata, where the campus is located, is semi-rural, and not as crowded as the rest of the city.

With my Exec. Assistant Shrabani, in my office

Below, view from my window 

Below- visit to the Agriculture dept. along with the Pro-Chancellor, VC and the other Pro-VC

 

The JIS University campus has multiple programs, in two or three different locations. The Management programs are in the heart of New Town area, a relatively new residential and commercial area. Salt Lake is not far from there, as also Eco Park, a huge park I am yet to visit. It has a Golf course within, so a good reason to go there!

The Agriculture dept. is near Kalyani, about an hour's drive, because 50 acres of land is needed for crop development and practical training of students.

Engineering, Education, Law, Pharmacy, Earth Sciences and a couple of other departments are located where I sit, and Hotel Management in another nearby location. 

The group also has other colleges, and is in the process of setting up a Veterinary Science college, the first by a private entity in the State.

Getting familiar with the workings of various departments and programs, and the students of some of the programs. It is a big group, with over 40,000 students in all, spread across the university and other institutions. Pretty competitive in terms of fees as well.

Hoping to improve admission processes, and interaction with industry. Maybe play some Golf as well, if possible.

A New Adventure Begins

 Joined JIS University on April 29th as Pro-Vice Chancellor. It's a private university with campuses in Kolkata and nearby. Spans a range of departments from Pharmacy, Science, Law, Management, Engineering to Agriculture and others.

My office is in Agarpara, on the outskirts of North Kolkata. There are possibilities of increasing reach, awareness, and perhaps upgrading the student and faculty experience, alumni support and so on. Probably similar to some experiences of mine elsewhere in a wide variety of institutions, or business schools. Other priorities will be set after discussions with colleagues at the top level and faculty, students, alumni.

Looking forward to also catching up with friends in the East, and visitors of different kinds- official guest lecturers to personal friends. I have a possible Golf-playing opportunity too, to be explored. Will keep readers posted. It's early days yet..

The Role of Jargon

 Jargon makes the world go around, Your Honour. Or so it would seem. Lawyer/court jargon, management/corporate jargon, Medical jargon, and so on.

A friend at IIM had constructed a matrix for generating management jargon. He created three columns, with complex words in each stack. Random mixing of any three- one from each column- generated a new term. Instant Jargon Generator was the name he gave it. It was great fun!

Maybe jargon is a shortcut for communicating with people in the same field, but it also leaves others mystified, most of the time. 

I learnt some law jargon by reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason series. Habeas Corpus, for example.. Mandamus or something similar too.. anyway, I rest my case. You go figure if it helps, or hinders ..

Undergraduate Programs in NMIMS

 We have quite a few innovative undergraduate programs in all the campuses including at Bangalore, where I now work. Not just a B.B.A., the younger cousin of M.B.A., but a program in Applied Statistics and Analytics, a B.Sc. Economics (Hons.), an integrated B.A./B.B.M. + LL.B. and a B.Com. (Hons.). Some of these are potentially job-oriented. All of them are rigorous, and add value to the plain vanilla courses offered routinely by others. Except for the Law courses, all others have an entrance exam conducted by NMIMS. 

We also have Post-graduate Executive programs at the Koramangala campus, specialising in Banking and Finance in partnership with CRISIL, and weekend programs too- one in Analytics, as well as a flagship MPE, an equivalent of the MBA for executives.

Cliches and Platitudes

The law will take its own course. How many times have we heard this one, about an ongoing investigation into the crimes and misdemeanors of the high and mighty, from politicians, businessmen to cricket players/admins/bookies and so on?

May I ask very humbly, what other course is the law supposed to take, if not its own?

We are seized of this matter. Again, usually an administration fobbing off demands for action. Since most administrations are ill-equipped for it, what this usually means is that they are having a 'seizure' with the thought that they have to move their butts and actually do something.

The benefits should go to the poorest of the poor. Anyone who mouths this usually has several layers between himself and the segments he/she is talking about.

Customers are our top priority. Barring about eight companies, this is a travesty of the truth, and of what happens on the ground. Aided by bull-headed, unfriendly rules such as KYC, which makes opening a bank account akin to scaling the Kanchenjunga. Except during Jan Dhan yojanas. Everest is renewing a license, or a passport. Why this needs planning like in an expedition never has been explained satisfactorily.

The Helmetian Dilemma

Hamlet was not the only guy with a dilemma. The helmet is also in a similar crisis of identity- the question in this case being, "Am I a legally required accoutrement (hope the word is right) or not?"

Man has debated several philosophical problems in his lifetime of a billion years, give or take a few, but he is yet to find the solution to the problem of whether a helmet is required to be worn by law in his neighbourhood/city/country.

This dilemma is sometimes comic and sometimes tragic. For every case of a two-wheeler rider perishing due to the lack of one, you hear of another where the person perished in spite of wearing one.

Many a time, it is tough to make out what a helmet is made of, and one wishes it was 'sterner stuff'. Like the joke about the airlines. A wise guy said, "If the black box is indestructible, why don't they build the whole airplane with that stuff?"

The weather in our country (India) being tropical has its own contribution to make. In summers, it is suffocatingly hot, making it dangerous to wear some of the badly designed helmets. In the rains, it actually is nice to have the head protected. So should it be seasonal, then?