Gurugram: Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon, has appointed Rajya Sabha MP from Odisha Dr. Sasmit Patra as a Distinguished Professor.
Dr. Patra brings with him a rich experience of academia as well as public policy and governance. An academic by profession, he has taught courses in the areas of organisational behaviour and human resource management. He also has experience of working in industry.
Dr. Patra has wide-ranging experience of working across all four pillars of democracy – legislature, executive, judiciary and media. As Vice-Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, he brings with him deep knowledge of legislative practices. Having worked closely with the Odisha government, he has wide experience of working with the executive branch as well. Trained as a lawyer, he is also putting up a pro bono law practice. As media coordinator of the Biju Janata Dal, he has handled the IT and digital platforms for his party.
One of the priorities Dr. Patra sees for B-schools is “is engaging with legislators in the public policy space, engaging and aligning with management practice and thereby creating a seamless value addition between public policy, management and legislature”.
“And that is where we could probably work towards a programme,” Dr. Patra said. “We could start the country’s first legislator-based public policy management programme.”
“This is because many of the legislators go on to become ministers. And ministers are part of the executive,” he said. Dr. Patra said that such a programme can start at the top with Parliament and then percolate down to the next level, the state, and finally to the panchayat level. “The real transformation,” he said, “is happening at the panchayat level.”
In this connection, Dr. Patra also referred to Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s mantra of 5Ts – time, technology, teamwork, transparency and transformation.
“Can MDI Gurgaon bring these best practices together and build a repository of knowledge that could disseminate that kind of understanding?” he remarked.
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