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In an era when business landscape is changing faster than many FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) products and leadership is being consistently challenged by geopolitical uncertainty, technology and purpose, only a Debashis Chatterjee can sit with utter ease, discussing business transformation and the human spirit behind it. An educator, acclaimed writer, author, commentator, thinker and institution-builder whose work continues to shape how future leaders are prepared for a world in flux, the Director of Indian Institute of Management – Kozhikode (IIM-K), Mr. Debashis Chatterjee carries a fine balance of academic intellect, management acumen and human insight in him. In a candid conversation With Sanjeev Kumar Jha, Editor, Entrepreneur India recently in lush green IIM-Kozhikode campus situated on oxy-rich hillocks in Kunnamangalam area, he spoke at length on changing role of management institutes in a world driven by disruption, the future of leadership in India and how institutions like IIM-Kozhikode are preparing minds not just for careers, but for meaningful impact. Here are the excerpts of the conversation:
I always wanted to know the philosophy behind it, so let me start from here itself. What is this idea of ‘Globalizing Indian Thought’ that finds its place in IIM-K logo? What does it actually stand for?
Yeah, I got your question, so the thing is that you have one-sixth of humanity that is within the politically independent India. So, one-sixth of humanity jostling around in this space, from one-sixth of humanity you curate 0.001 percent, you take the CAT exam and may be 0.0001 percent make it to the exam.
So, this is the density of intellect on a hilltop, which is the essence of Indian intellectual capability. If I cannot talk about the world from here, where else can I talk about? So, all I am saying is that we represent one-sixth of the human force in the world. So, I am just sensing that India is already a globalized entity, even if I do not talk about it, it is still a very global entity.
You will be surprised that the market, in one of the largest markets of the world, you will hardly see a single Indian product. Even if it may be there, it is not visible. On the other hand, the invisible India is everywhere. Every computer has an Intel chip inside it, but every Intel chip has an Indian mind behind it, you know that. The highest, the latest generation of AI chip has an Indian mind in it.
….In that way, Indian thought is already globalized.. isn’t it?
India is in the visible domain, you may not be that visible in the market place. You go to Tokyo, you go to Milan, you go to New York, you will not see a single Indian product that is dominant in the world market, you will not see that. But, if you look at the quality of the mind, if you look at the empire of the mind, then you will see India's empire is the largest and the biggest, and historically the longest, because our influence has been for a long long long time. It is not just a short time. So, if you look at globalizing Indian thought, I am simply saying that I am simply discovering, not doing globalizing the thought. Doing is one part, but I am simply discovering what is already there. Everyone is running behind desires, without looking at what he already possesses. Before desiring to acquire something that you desire to have, see what you have inherited that is utterly yours. That is dispersed in time and space.
So, the more I see, the more my eyes open up to oh my God! There is a wealth of ideas that was always there and we never took notice of this. So, that's how the idea of globalization came. I saw when I travelled around the world, I saw Indian print everywhere, Harvard has some 22% faculties from India. Be it China, Japana, Kyoto… Indian Gods & Goddesses are symbolized everywhere. There are temples and encryptions in Sanskrit… Buddha temples.. And people across the world come there to see, to offer a prayer. I see them amused, inquiring about Buddha. Coming from a small village of northern India, a Siddhartha becomes Goutama the Buddha and people from across the world travel tirelessly to have a glimpse of his statue!!
With this thought, what I can sense is that we are all Dhurandhar.. But not as visible on screen like Ranveer Singh, but behind the scenes more like Aditya Dhar… Right?
Aditya Dhar, kind of thing. But he is the director, you know. So, we are more of that kind of people or that's why we are not so known. In that sense, yeah, you are right.
So, the thing is that there are two ways to grow. You can be a McKinsey consultant or you can be a Tata Steel chairman. One is the path of the Rishi (Monk), the other is the path of the Raja (King). The path of Rishi is reflection, whereas the path of Raja is of action. Now, Indians have been very good in reflection. That's why we did so well in software and other things. Correct? Because this is the nation that believes in education as sacred.
So, cultivation of the finer capabilities of the mind happens here. And so, natural tendency is to take the path of Rishi. But we have also produced Rajas. Just go to Silicon Valley. And you will see that wherever Raja and Rishi had to be one, Indians have rocked.
Thats why all the industries, Indian CEOs are making trillions and billions. Satya Nadella, IBM Chief, Microsoft chief…see anywhere and wherever there needs a fine mind, you will see an Indian sitting there on the top. Indians have always dominated there. In addition to that, we have the advantage of English language. So, the world of commerce is ruled by language.
So, your original question was whether you are this or that. We are like either we will do, or will make someone do it. And now, we are good at both.
Here comes a challenge of becoming global while keeping our local essence intact. What kind of challenges do you face in uncertain times like these?
See, first of all, our essence is never local. It is always global.
When India thought, it thought differently from rest of the world. You know, our monks came out of the forests. Western philosophers came out of cities. Planes. So, they think differently, it has to be different. People coming from forests always think in sync with the ecosystem as a whole. What is connected to what.. the ecosystem. They are thinking ecologically. At the same time, people coming from cities and planes think ego-logically. Me and like-minded. Right? So, it is a linear process. In India, it is a multilinear process.
Now come to the Essence part. What does it mean..? Essence means - our human model is Sat, Chit, Ananda. Sat means reality. Chit means awareness of the reality. Ananda means fulfilment that comes from being real.
Right? So, what is real? So-called geopolitical space that you call global is not global. Between Germany and France, there is no difference. Just that land is called Germany, this land is called Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, there is no difference.
So, what you call, there were no passports five centuries back. There was nothing called passport. So, it was one world. We have compartmentalized the world into countries, nationalities, and customs. And then we are saying we are globalizing.
Globalizing, which means I am going back to the same space where I had the, you know, entire universe as my space of enquiry. So, I am asking this question, you go to Romania, you see people from Allahabad and they had settled as, these are called gypsies. You know, they have their own, they have horses and cows with them.
So, you see, gypsies could not find any other place as, they were rejected in Asia, Central Asia, they landed in Romania, which accepted them. So, the gypsies have created their country culture in Romania. And so, all I am saying is that what you understood as globalization is only a late phenomenon.
The ancient mind was never local. They were always thinking of global elements. And therefore, the globe, although physically was not visible to us as a map, but mentally it was always accessible to us.
Why do you think of planets and made it part of our horoscope? So, you think this is any less of globalization? No. No, that's correct. That's the formalization of what you call globalization.
But then, there is something which only IIM Kozhikode or for that matter only IIM Kolkata has. Or maybe any of the IIMs or IITs have. And we have to have a balance. So what is it that only IIM-K have and where has it been leading this institute to?
IIM Kolkata only has a centre. We have a whole institution. And we started that centre, by the way. But I got your point and this is exactly what I was asking about. We have a challenge in that sense that we have something very original, very authentic. And we have to take this to which you call a local audience from here to there.
But they have their own systems, their own things to do with. So, do you think there is any challenge taking IIM Kozhikode to Oxford or to Cambridge or vice versa? The only challenge is perception. I taught in Oxford, I taught in Harvard. And when I went and taught the class, you know, Oxford's dean was here. And he said, your this campus is 10 times bigger than that of Oxford.
And then so, Oxford is not what it looks in imagination. I went to teach there for the first time and I was asked to teach a leadership class. It was raining and I thought to buy an umbrella. The shopkeeper happened to be a Sardar Ji from Afghanistan. So he asked me where I was from. And then he enquired about which class I was about to take. And then he asked politely, can I sit in your class? I am not educated, he told in English. I said, no, you are educated in your own way, I am educated in my own way. My education, in my education, I take people from their head to the heart.
You take your buyer from the heart to the head. So, your products are built to there and then he makes a buying decision. That is the only difference.
So, he started understanding what I said. The point is this that when you go to this country, this Harvards, Oxfords of the world, you realize that they have become very big in the imagination of people. And this is because they were never thinking of themselves as a global institution. They attracted talent from all over the world. This, this talent made them move there. Right?
Yale University is actually an Ivy League school. The very first donation to it came from a carpet maker of Madras. You can see it documented in Yale Museum. So, you have no idea about what India has got.
Again, the point is that when you go to these places, then we realise how big we actually are. When we were competing, we never competed in the global league. We always feared of not making in global lists ever.
People used to say - IIM, IIT is top. We are in the top 58. We are in the same league.
Because IIM Kozhikode now stands alongside recognized universities such as University of Princeton, Australian National University, University of Southern California, Texas, NIM University, University of Leeds, in the same level right now, in the global ranking. But we neither benchmarked ourselves ever, nor did anybody recognize that. Now it is being recognized.
So do you think AI is taking centrestage among most desirable courses in IIMs, especially at IIM-K?
No, AI can never take centrestage. AI is a productivity tool that can only curate already pre-existing information.
Teaching, learning is not about information alone. It is about knowing how information should be placed, in what sequence, in which order. So it is not about information, it is about wisdom. And when you talk about wisdom, AI will not be able to bring that wisdom. It will only, see it can measure things. But it cannot tell you the meaning of what you measure.
Let’s take an example. Government has permitted mining activities in Aravalli range on the basis of AI study. And AI has not taken into account what will happen to people who live there. What will be the distress that will happen to the natural world.
You need to understand that map is not the world. So you take a map and you say, map will tell me in education. Where I need to go. Map will give you direction. But you have to go there yourself. Physically. So teaching learning is a process of refining perception. It is not just adding information. Because perception is not refined.
You have been an advocate of something humane, something emotional, which AI is apparently not. On the other hand, AI is new normal and even IIM-K has joined the race of launching AI-centric courses since some time. Do you find yourself divided on it?
You see the thing is... In terms of courses that I am talking about. We have set up a committee to create an AI policy for us. You should have a policy. But before the policy is framed, it changes. The AI changes its face everyday.
Every quarter you can't have a policy which will change overnight. So before we formulate the policy, I said first use AI. Understand by using AI, what AI can do, what AI cannot do. If you don't use it, you will not know. So liberally we are asking you to use it. But we are saying look, after you use AI for a term paper let's say, you should add 10%, 15%, 25% of your own and say this is AI generated, this is my own. Then we will know what you have learnt from AI. What you have learnt to do differently from AI. What prompts you gave.
There is a convergence in style of all those using same AI, but this shouldn’t be the case. You must know that only 100 people in Silicon Valley are doing the course for what you call AI today. And the whole world is now following it. Now those 100 people who are limited, what is AI? It is nothing but an extension of natural intelligence. Of 100 people. You ask generative AI, ask who generates generative AI? It is not AI that is generating, it is me that is generating it.
So we have to understand how the human brain works when the cognitive load of doing something faster, quicker, cheaper is taken over by the machines. What is left of you? See what you can do very quickly through cause effect, machine will do better than you. But what takes a long time to do, machine will not be able to do it. Like nursing a person, AI will not be able to nurse a person. AI will not be able to teach a person who is a different kind of learner. Let's say AI is able to teach and guide a person suffering from learning disability. But they can never have human empathy.
So, educational institutions like IIMs and IITs are launching AI related courses in a hurry, or are they just doing right thing on right time?
No, no. Many people are in a hurry. In New Zealand, they started something in University of Auckland. They started a course where AI had to design the course, AI will be taught, AI will teach and AI will evaluate. Students refused to take the course. They said, we will return our money. You don’t come to a university so that machine can teach you. I have come to university to be taught. How to learn. What to learn AI will tell you. How to learn AI cannot tell you. You know, this is a productivity tool. How long can you use a tool? You can’t play with same toy again and again.
You are known for bringing non-conventional courses to the lime light like courses on stress management… May be next time a course on digital well-being… So How do you perceive this shift from traditional management courses to modern one?
People are telling you how come I can give you an early bird discount. I will tell you ten ways to beat stress. They are giving problem solving skills. But nobody tells us about problem-preventing tools and techniques. You go to them, they say you have this problem and then they suggest solutions. But nobody is telling you how not to have that problem in first place! For that, you need a perfect mental balance.
Its like developing a virus and then creating anti-virus. You need to understand that it is the same mind that creates virus and anti-virus both!
So where is the source? The source is training of the mind. How do I train the mind? I can't train the mind with a device that the mind itself has created. How can I train my mind with a device the mind itself has created? So I have to train the mind by going beyond the mind.
What according to you should be key 2-3 lessons/tools that every management student must have to deal with conflicts and uncertainties of prevailing times like the one we have been facing today?
Only one skill. One value, one skill. In Hindi, I call it Jaagte Raho. You must be awake. Everybody extracts it, nobody says I have to awaken your potential. Nobody is thinking of curating potential.
Suppose I have a maid servant at home. How often have I thought of raising her capability a little bit. Sending her to English speaking class. Giving her a better dress code. Telling her about table manners. Do I do that? No.
Now from this you have to move to the mind of the creator, of the producer, of the generator. That mind comes from farming, from cultivating. You have to cultivate the mind, refining the mind. You have been extracting it, my Sutra is – stop it, at least now.
One of the IIMs to one of the top-3 IIMs in India...What does it take?
It takes a lot of committment, grit, patience and positivity. The fact is, we have never been in any such race. You know, this is a 30-year old institution and we have been pioneer of so many things over years. EPGP (Executive Post Graduate Programme) is our brainchild which was started way back in 2001 and dedicated campus for it was started in Kochi in 2013 and is now being replicated by number of universities and institutes. We kept adding relevant courses. Above all, our team within the campus has been continuously working on shared goal of progressing toward future.
