A leadership centre will be set up in Jaipur with a two-member board of trustees. The two members are recently retired finance secretary Ashok Chawla and State Bank of India (SBI) Chairman O P Bhatt, whose term will come to end later this month. The centre will be funded by SBI.
Chawla is also part of a committee that is addressing the issue of India’s natural resources and how they should be valued. Bhatt’s post-retirement plans are not known yet.
Little is known about the centre, believed to be Bhatt’s brainchild, beyond the fact that it is located close to Delhi. Chawla said he got a letter in his mail, asking him to be a trustee, and he agreed.
In collaboration with the Indian School of Business (ISB), the country’s largest lender also runs a cell, the SBI Cell for Public Sector Leadership, at ISB, Hyderabad. This is supposed to study innovation, change management and leadership comparisons between public and private sector management.