I think the greatest risk taker in life is a politician, because even when he detects the risk, the emerging risk, he cannot avert it, but embraces it, and then at the end attempts to manage it. So, I think if you were to do studies on the life of a politician, and how knowingly he embraces risks and manages them, it will be a great study for management institutes.

Every time in the morning you get up, you take a bus, you take a risk. You walk out on the street, you cross the road, you take a risk. You go out in a restaurant and eat; you take a risk,because there’s nothing that happens in life without a risk.

Knowing well that you are at risk all the time, you should constantly be conscious of the fact that you have to manage it if you want to survive, and that we try and do in our daily lives. But that’s of course at the individual level. When you get onto a plane for example, there is very little you can do, because you cannot manage that risk. There’s a machine that flies you, there’s a pilot who takes care of the machine and you are at the mercy of someone else. So, someone else is managing your risk, because he has to make sure that you actually reach the point where you want to go, without risking your life. So, in a sense, somebody else is managing your risk. Then, of course, when you go to larger entities like social structures: the state, the national and the global economy, there is nobody who is managing that risk for you.

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P Chidambaram is the Union Minister of Finance

I’m very happy to be here to inaugurate the 38th National Management Convention. The subject is important. We are on the threshold of the 12th plan which will begin in April 2012. The theme of the 11th plan was faster and more inclusive growth and the theme of the 12th plan is also faster, more inclusive and higher growth. In the initial years of economic reforms and liberalisation, the emphasis was and I think rightly on growth. I think we need to get away from our belief that India can’t grow at more than 5% or so and that with reforms, with liberalisation with greater openness and competition India can grow at 8 or 9 % was something we had to believe in first before we could have achieved it. It took some time for the Indian people including the business community to believe that we have a capacity to grow at more than 8%.
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Mr BJ Panda, Then member of Parliament.

I want to share with you some of my life’s lessons. You must have heard “Do what you love doing and you’ll never have to work another day in your life”.

I have personally experienced this. I started out as student being very fond of languages and the studies in humanities which includes history and English but my parents told me that I must do something more practical and study science and engineering, which I did. I did have the marks for it but I gradually found that I found much more satisfaction in doing things that came naturally to a student of English and history than to a student of engineering and management and in a way I turned full circle because now in public life I find that I have to communicate a lot and if I have to communicate a lot I don’t know how much engineering helps me but the point of all this is that the opportunities in India that are coming up are phenomenal and they are across the board. Continue reading →