Some thoughts on Leadership and Knowledge

Abstract

Thank you Prof. Mehrotra, for your very kind introduction. I would also like to thank Dr. Goel who has been my scientific escort here, I mean for today. At the outset I must say that I am very pleased to be here again at the National Metallurgical Laboratory at Jamshedpur. I had the privilege of corning here quit-2 a few times and had inter-actions with a number of scientists. 1 have seen it grow over the years and I would like to start my lecture by wishing a great future for the National Metallurgical Laboratory. I am quite honoured, I must say, to have been asked to deliver one of the Diamond Jubilee Series Lectures. My first reaction to the invitation ofProf. Mehrotra was that should I talk on industry or should I depart from the trodden path and do something else ? Then I thought, the Diamond Jubilee Lecture Series is something special and may be a departure is justified. Over the last few years I am concerned with one issue that is constantly on my mind i.e, leadership and whether we work in a scientific community or academic community or industry or in society at large, I think leadership is one issue. that looms large over our head. So, today what I would like to do is share some thoughts on leadership and some thoughts on knowledge also. These are principally ideas only and, [ would like to believe, nothing more that that. But I thought I may share these ideas with you because by sharing ideas, one can test the validity of the ideas from the response one gets from the people who are willing to hear the ideas. Now to start with, one thinks he knows what leadership is all about, One can go and look up in a dictionary to find tiTe meaning of leadership. But, I would like to caution you because i think there isn't any global, universal definition of leadership and I would try to explai i that in a short while. My premise is that you cannot find a global definition of leadership because there is no such thing as global leadership or universal leadership. My thesis on the other hand is that leadership is highly contextual, I will, therefore, start with that particular perspective that leadership is contextual. I think each one of us, at some point or other in our life, asks a question to himself or herself: who do I consider as my leader, who is my hero. I have thought of it myself quite at length and I will tell you who my heroes are. One is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or Mahatma Gandhi, as we call him, or the Father of the Nation. Another one is Albert Einstein and then I would also like to mention Abraham Lincoln. One belonged to the Asian continent, one to the American continent, and one originally to the European continent. That's just a coincidence. The point is that all three of them belong to different spheres of life and society. I would like to take Mohandas