Lacker and the India Business Conference at Kellogg

Hi everyone,

Things have been chugging along so fast this quarter that I neither knew whether I was coming or going. Taking a moment to pause was like death by choice. Recruiting can be so overwhelming, and keeping up with classes concurrently, very stressful. Yea, everyone carries the Grade Non Disclosure (GND) flag like it is the life savior of every individual. But a quick look at the intensity of the assignments set on a weekly basis, gives you a better understanding of how, GND ends up having us work so much harder, just to keep pace. So the concept of coasting through a class is as rare as sitting in the Summer Garden at the HPC building, in a t-shirt and jeans on a cold February morning.

One such class which scales new heights of intensity is Understanding Central Banks, taught by Professor Kashyap. It is amazing how each professor here manages to break new heights when it comes to impressing me. Just when I think I have met the school rock-star, another one comes to present his case for sainthood. Every minute of his lectures can be valued in gold; last quarter some friends of mine, came up with the estimate that each 3 Hour class session per week costs us about $450. If I look at the pace at which Prof. Kashyap teaches his class it is like $900 for every 3 hours. I walk out of each class, clear on what I came in confused about, but with a million more questions.

Being a macro-econ buff of sorts, more through a random series of events rather than a absolute consciousness, his lectures are fascinating, and so are the guest lecturers he invites. We has Jeff Lacker from the Richmond FED. The man held a great lecture,but what was more fun was the Q&A session, of which we had 1hr and 20 minutes dedicated. I was scared there wouldn’t be enough to ask and we would all embarrass our selves. But as always my fellow GSBers show me why we recently got the top spot on Business Week’s MBA rankings. While I had my issues with some of his comments, which i shall not voice cause they are too technical, what was great about sitting in class as he interacted with us was how he walked us through his thought process of understanding data, indicators of macro economic conditions, and forecasting. Truly phenomenal, almost like being at a magic show and having the magician teach you his tricks. As we however draw towards the end of the quarter, and UCB’s has been my most intense class till date, I do feel a little disheartened. Most of the Central Bank issues are dated, and while they provide a good understanding of mistakes made and raise predicaments, I feel studying about the Reserve Bank of India, the central Bank of Thailand, would be particularly more fascinating than looking at Canada, but that is just my personal preference. Also being Indian, I truly feel having someone like Kashyap sharing his opinions on RBI and the macro-economic conditions in India would be invaluable.

Continuing on about a subject close to my heart, I also attended the India Business Conference at Kellogg on Saturday. After a hiatus for a couple of years Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and after the tremendous success of ChicagoGSB’s India Business Conference last year, came back with a bang. The morning started with Shashi Tharoor; this was the first time I was watching him speak. I remember reading Midnight to a Millennium (his first book) and Riot (both about India as it has grown through the years) and thinking here is a man who has assessed the successes and failures of our nation in a refreshingly unbiased manner. It was a great speech, and his euphemisms were a testament to one of the greatest things the British gave us Indians, an understanding of the English language (although this was not equitably distributed to all). If I had one criticism to make, it is that the speech harped on about things I already knew, I didnt get to learn who Shashi Tharoor was. I do however take a very cynical approach to assessing people everyone else is swooning over, and so was the case with the next keynote Mr. Rajat Gupta; his speech was like sitting in an economic army base where we were registering what went right in the past, and what needs to happen in the coming years. There was an emphatic note of disapproval, not for India but for a tendency of Indians to get lazy after experiencing a brief string of successes. But again, it was not this speech that I enjoyed the most, his Q&A was phenomenal. The man came into his own, and I was left in awe, despite all the success he has seen through his career, he continues to have fire in him to continue playing a pivotal role in leading the private sector to mobilize social upheaval in India. I have known only little about his work in India, but here comes another man with the sincerity of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, to help change the way we look at Individual Social Responsibility. I am a huge fan of the TV series Rome on HBO, and the best way to contrast the two key notes I have mentioned might be similar to Shashi Tharoor’s being Brutus’s speech at the funeral of Caesar, poignant, intellectual, and carefully partisan and Rajat Gupta’s was like Mark Anthony throwing Caesar’s blood drenched toga into the masses, demanding an urgency to continue conquering the world. This is probably quite an exaggeration of the entire event, but consider it my sensationalized interpretation .

Some of the panels were also good, and very educational. In addition to all this what was remarkable was the closing address by a Professor Balachandran aka Big Bala, as he was introduced by Dean Jain. The guy was pure entertainment, a great sense of humor and a very jovial disposition. Truly seemed like one of those professors you never forget and always talk about at reunions. I also have a great amount of respect for the level of involvement Dean Deepak Jain had in the conference. To highlight his humility, when Ronen Sen, Indian Ambassador to the US, was speaking, Dean Jain walked up to the podium and poured a glass of water and served him. It may seem trivial but it was nice to see a Dean do something like that without hesitation. While we all claim to have a respect for labor, it is such acts that show us whether we practice this in our lives. The camaraderie and collegial environment of Kellogg had a character of its own.

That being said, Kellogg has set the bar this year in Chicago, by having their conference before us, Wharton had an amazing conference, a look at the depth and breadth of their panels will show the same. I feel eager and excited to stamp the GSB insignia on this city and the MBA community at large come May 5th. As always we at the Chicago GSB, shall strive to make the conference unique, like our school USP, we plan to step away from convention and make this a conference which ask the questions that haven’t been asked and tell the stories that have not been covered in every newspaper. It should be fun…

I shall try my best to be more frequent with my posts from now on…