In 1964 as I was preparing to join IIMA faculty, Labdhi
often came to me to discuss if he should join PGP/MBA at Ahmedabad. He was
completing his BA at Jodhpur, when I was teaching in the University. He was
very shy, low profile and an introvert student. I must say he was quite unsure
of the future of the new management course and whether it would be a good
choice. I remember we had two or three discussions in which he was trying to
seek reassurance that he was making the right choice. I was myself very
enthusiastic about management education and trying to change my own
professional track from the basic discipline of Sociology to applied behavioural
sciences. I encouraged him to seriously consider going to IIMA.
Finally he did decide to join IIMA, and found the
first few months really tough, involving a lot of hard work and long hours of
studies. To my surprise, I discovered that within 4 to 6 months at IIMA he was
a completely transformed person with amazing levels of self-confidence,
communication abilities and a very smart presentation of self in all
encounters.
In my life I had never witnessed such a radical
transformation of a student personality in a few months mainly due to teaching-learning
engagement, and peer group interactions in and out of class room at IIMA. His
rapid progress as an outstanding student of remarkable personal and
professional qualities can only be recognized through differences I observed in
him at Ahmedabad after Jodhpur.
I have no doubt that if he had continued his
professional journey he would have achieved great eminence as a management guru
of global reputation.
*Prof. Kulbhushan Kothari is Chairman and Managing Trustee of Pratham Rajasthan and a noted educationist.
Editor's Note: Growing up, we only ever heard stories of how brilliant LRB was and his many qualities were often spoken of as if they were innate. In that context, Prof. Kothari's account is important. The remarkable transformation that Prof. Kothari refers to was something that LRB himself acknowledged. In a letter to his elder brother in 1969, he called IIMA his 'break in life', where he was thrown in the deep end and had to learn to swim or sink. At least in 1969, he felt that such a transformative break or opportunity is something that everyone will eventually get, and its up to them to use it to make their own destiny.
