Some thoughts on Leadership and Knowledge

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