Editorial Board
Prof. Aryapriya Ganguly - Editor-in-Chief
Prof. Soumitra Mookherjee - Associate Editor |
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Letter from the Editor
It’s election year again, and we thought why feed you exit polls and drab stats when we can do what we do best!
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Multi-Disciplinary Analysis
National and State level Elections
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Educator Showcase
This section features write-ups about the career achievements of fellow educators, seeking to recognise the invaluable contributions they make.
Arunabh Singh, Principal, Nehru World School, Ghaziabad
Shikha Vij, Career Guidance Counsellor, Step by Step, Noida Read more |
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Alumni Spotlight
Alumni Spotlight on ISBF's Abhimanyu Bose who is a Sub-Editor at NDTV.
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It’s election year again, and we thought why feed you exit polls and drab stats when we can do what we do best! As our loyal subscriber/reader, you know we love to look at the real world through our collective academic lens. The elections serve as a bubbling melting pot of different disciplines jousting for analytical space, and so, voila!
Intuitive political psychologists, which is pretty much all of us, share their electoral hunches and theories in animated conversations over brunch, at their water coolers or on social media vents. By peering into this opinion “black box”, as we call it, we are inviting constructive, evidenced dialogue on what dimensions matter when approaching elections.
The jigsaw piece in this special issue reflects on some of these academic perspectives, examining how the intersection of Economics, Finance, Marketing and Strategy help in giving analytical sense to this fraught topic. The Elections quiz will enable your jog down the memory lane of Indian elections, and their chequered history.
Group identifications inform how individuals respond to the people and political stimuli around them, and these achieve pre-eminence in a country with strong collectivist values like ours. In the light of some progressive moves made by our judiciary in the past year, we, at ISBF, thought that celebrating certain group identifications with pride made a lot of sense.
‘Xenia, 2019: Rises with Pride’ is testament to these previously closeted group identifications that have been given a fresh lease of life, freedom and agency. It remains to be seen how such affiliations affect political fortunes in India. Perhaps the 2019 elections will blaze a trail, or not. What we know for sure is that ISBF-ians had an absolute ball celebrating this freedom, and spreading the cheer. Read on to know how.
(Editor-in-Chief) |
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| Multi-Disciplinary Analysis: National and State level Elections |
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ISBF at IC3 Conference Regional Forums
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The outreach engagement of our institute has gathered significant momentum with faculty mentors being invited for delivering multiple academic presentations at the IC3 Regional Forums organized in various cities in India and overseas such as Kathmandu, Dubai, and Dhaka between January - May, 2019.
The theme of ISBF’s presentation is " Preparing Counsellors for recommending career based solutions in the wake of new age uncertainties" and the emphasis is to deep dive into explaining how changes in teaching pedagogy, student engagement, collaborative learning, and technology exposure would shape the career prospects of the dynamic young graduates.
We at ISBF are playing a pivotal role in developing skills, harnessing talent to a level which will enable the student fraternity to deal with complex human resource challenges and advance their career progression. This is indeed a hallmark endeavour aimed towards being identified as change agents for empowering the student community in reaching new heights of excellence, and enabling counselors to pave the path to such excellence from their students. |
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LSE-ISBF Faculty Members in the News
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| The academic contributions of the eminent faculty pool of ISBF continues unabated - with distinguished academicians involved in composition of articles which have been subsequently published in various media platforms. This clearly reveals the passion, drive, academic background, diverse reservoir of knowledge of faculty members where they actively engage in revealing, sharing their thoughts and opinions on several contemporary business issues. |
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| Associate Professor, Dr. Yavar Ehsan and Associate Professor, Soumitra Mookherjee co-authored a Guest Column on “Discerning Tactics at Negotiation” for Human Capital Magazine |
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ISBF Student Societies pull off their two biggest events of the calendar with elan
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ISBF MUN
One fifth of the world population is constituted by the youth. This is a great number and continuous efforts must be taken to find about their hope, aspirations and dreams. It is our duty to encourage them to put forth their thoughts and ideas and help them work on building their views in an unbiased and morally and ethically correct manner.
Towards this endeavor, the fifth edition of ISBF MUN 2018 was organized between 17th and 19th of November, with the following four committees:
- UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME (UNDP).
- Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM) of the United Nations General Assembly.
- A special Indo-Pak meet.
- The United Nations Security Council.
This year's edition of the Conference saw over a hundred delegates participate in four different committees covering various agendas related to economics, women’s empowerment, politics and international border disputes. From the Balochistan issue to the Israel - Palestine conflict, to islamophobia and barriers to gender equality, delegates and executive board members deliberated and debated over two full days to make working papers and draft successful resolutions aimed at solving the problems in hand |
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Xenia, the annual cultural fest of Indian School of Business and Finance was an exciting two-day affair. Held over 7th-8th February 2019, this year’s theme was Pride (LGBTQ+).
The college was decked head to toe in the colors of the rainbow. The extravaganza began at 10 in the morning, and despite the biting winter chills, had a turnout of over 1000 enthusiasts!
Xenia was a wonderful amalgamation of music, dance, quizzing, business strategies, debates, film making and of course, the latest rave PUBG. We’ve heard of sweet beginnings, but since we at Xenia, always like to do something different and something unique, we decided to give our fest a beautiful and sweet ending, with a Slam Poetry Competition which was exactly the kind of warm hug this festival needed. Our existences are an amalgamation of burden, repressed feelings, rejection, things we don’t believe the world will care to understand about us. And this was the forum to let it all out. Let it all go. Live happily. Break the sadness within. And take pride at every step of the way. Xenia 2019, came to a beautiful end as the night started and the super hardworking Xenia Crew took a sigh of relief as they had managed to make Xenia Great Again! |
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Business World HR Excellence Awards
ISBF Faculty members were recently invited to attend the Business World sponsored HR Excellence Award at the Hotel Four Season's Mumbai on 21 December, 2018. This was a great forum for faculty members to interact with a group of industry professionals who evinced interest in forging a strategic alliance with ISBF and strengthening the institute- industry interface. Most renowned organizations like Mondelez, Bombay Dyeing, Keys Hotels, HVS Anarock, etc revealed their willingness to involve our students in short duration projects and absorb them as full time employees.
Placements kick off
Reputed Market Research agencies, Banks and Financial institutions, Management Consultancy firms, FMCG firms like IMRB Kantar, Veris Consulting, Fin-Edge Advisory, PWC Analytics UK, TCS Cognitive Business Solutions, PMV Maltings conducted on campus/ off campus interviews and were delightful to offer students specializing in finance and management full time positions in their organizations and that too at an astonishing monetary package, which clearly reflects the recruiter's confidence in the enormous potential of our student community.
Several other interviews are in the pipeline and the recruitment drive is in full swing at the campus. The faculty pool at ISBF remains committed towards executing preparatory work, conducting mock interviews and delivering training sessions to make our students market-ready, thus maximizing the chances of our students being selected by prospective recruiters. To see these efforts bear fruits is heartening!
Careers Week at ISBF
The much awaited "Careers Week" was organized at ISBF from 14th to 25th January, 2019 to familiarize students regarding the sector specific opportunities, and the requisite strategies to perform successfully in campus interviews. This is a step in the right direction where faculty members at ISBF are able to share their knowledge, expertise, experiences with the students and facilitate their career progression.
Industry Visit gives UG & Graduate Diploma students a sneak-peek into real organisations
An interesting plant visit was organized for the graduate and post graduate students specializing in management for enhancing their learning and knowledge concerning business processes, supply chain structure of organizations, plant operations and logistics set up. This value based exposure has enabled students to gather significant insights on how firms could operate efficiently. |
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Arunabh Singh
Principal, Nehru World School, Ghaziabad
Mr. Arunabh Singh is a committed School Principal, Educationist, Innovator and promotor of Nehru World School, Ghaziabad. An Alumnus of Kings College London and Hindu College, Delhi University, Arunabh has been honoured with a national award for “Exceptional contribution to the field of Education” by Independent School Federation of India in 2010.
He has also been awarded “Innovation in Progress” Fellowships for two consecutive years at World Round Table Conference for Educational Leadership and “Global Teacher Accreditation” award from Cambridge Foundation for his Action Research on Continuing Professional Development of Teachers.
Mr. Singh is Co-chair of FICCI ARISE for UP West and a British Council School Ambassador. Alongside he is associated with other International Organisations such as Goethe Institute, Tony Blair Faith Foundation and CBSE. He frequently participates in TV debates and speaks on various national and international forums across the globe on topics primarily concerning education and progressive learning.
Along with his passion in the field of PK-12 education space he also a visiting faculty at the CBI Academy where he has trained officers from Central Bureau of Investigation, National Investigation Agency, Narcotics Control Bureau and Police forces to name a few.
Passionate about innovation, technology, entrepreneurship and igniting young minds, he is a proponent of distributed leadership model and firmly believes “Technology may not replace teachers, but teachers who use technology effectively will replace those, who don’t.”
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Shikha Vij
Career Guidance Counsellor, Step by Step, Noida
An M.Phil in Clinical Psychology from IHBAS (Delhi University), I have over ten years of experience in the fields of Socio- emotional Counselling and College Guidance.
In my role as a Counsellor, I got the opportunity to review plethora of college applications and essays and visited many school and college campuses as part of her work. With admissions for UBerkeley, NYU, Boston University, University of British Columbia, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, University of Cambridge, King’s College London, Imperial College London, University of Waterloo, ANU, NUS and University of Hong Kong etc., I got a platform to advise students on all aspects of Applications. I constantly wish to expand my knowledge base and am a member of International ACAC, have trained on several aspects of Admission Counselling (transcripts, essays, and Letters of recommendation, scholarships) by International agencies and have done a course on US Admissions by University of Pennsylvania. I was invited as a panelist at USIEF for US Universities to help them understand challenges faced by college counsellor. A finalist for the International ACAC Scholars programme 2017 has only reinstated my belief that I am on the right career path. My background in Clinical counselling empowers me to understand the needs of students as well as parents.
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Abhimanyu Bose studied BSc Economics from ISBF. After taking his GRE after graduation, Bose (as he likes to be called!) was given a chance to intern at NDTV. Having always had a penchant for writing, he decided to give it a go and eventually liked the work so much that he joined them full time.
So, from being barely interested in daily news and politics, he got thrown into the nerve centre of one of India's premier news organisations and the news desk managing content for the best online news platform in the country.
He is currently a sub-editor with the news team, dealing with everything from politics to petty crime. His background in economics helps in identifying deeper meaning behind government policies and schemes.
Apart from editing articles, giving them good headlines, he also plays a role in managing the NDTV homepage. He feels his job has taught him the importance of paying attention to detail, being editorially balanced and most importantly, trying to push himself further every day. |
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| 1. Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani flew in an Indian Air Force helicopter from Bangalore to Tumkur in Karnataka to address an election meeting. But something happened before Advani could complete his speech, and he was thus compelled to send the helicopter back and return to Bangalore by car. What had happened? |
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2. Amitabh Pandey has worked as a communication design consultant with the UNICEF office in Patna and did something during his tenure as the faculty member in communication design. His objective was to symbolise the masses without barriers of caste, education and economics through his efforts. What did he do?
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3. This method originated in an observation made by Horatio Rogers in 1897 that the voter “has no knowledge through his senses that he has accomplished a result.” Internationally known as the Mercuri Method after Rebecca Mercuri who discovered the solution to Rogers’ observation, it was introduced in 8 of 543 parliamentary constituencies as a pilot project in the 2014 general election and was first used in any election in India in September 2013 in Noksen (Assembly Constituency) in Nagaland. What method are we talking about?
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4. Meera Sanyal and G R Gopinath are not the first corporate citizens to have tried their luck at the hustings. In 1971, Naval Tata contested as an independent on the South Mumbai seat, losing to S N Narula of Congress, however, there was another maverick candidate, hailing from Mangalore, who stood third. He later successfully shifted his base and contested a Lok Sabha election, unsuccessfully, as an independent. Name him?
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5. This poet and brother of a more famous regional poet was the last Congress president to not head the party’s own government, a distinction that changed at the Calcutta Plenary Session of AICC in 1998. Famously, he served as the president of the INC during the emergency. Who are we talking about, known for an infamous bit of circuitous sycophancy?
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6. Lok Sabha recently passed Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill, 2017 to extend a certain facility to a unique demography. The amendment paves the way to remove an “unreasonable restriction” posed by Section 20A of the Representation of the People Act. The amendment involves the usage of a facility often used and more often abused, and originates in the Medieval Latin word for “I manage, administer”. What “unreasonable restriction” on which demography am I talking about?
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7. He was the first Vice-Chancellor of Burdwan University. As a mark of respect and to perpetuate his memory, the road leading from G.T. Road to Golapbagh has been named after him. The ability of India's leaders to refrain from interfering with a certain machinery, as well as their decision to retain the Indian Civil Service gave him and his colleagues the freedom to adapt the machinery used by the British for a national first. Who am I talking about?
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8. In the 1990 elections that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Soviet version of a particular electoral strategy led to new elections with new candidates in 200 races of the 1,500-seat Congress of People's Deputies. More than 100 incumbents representing the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were defeated in the run-off, leading to Boris Yeltsin to later say the strategy “helped convince the people they had real power even in a rigged election, and [it] played a role in building true democracy.” This is considered to be the first modern iteration of what, that has recently resulted in the ECI receiving criticism from the SC for introducing it in Rajya Sabha elections?
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9. A National party can have only 40 such, while registered unrecognized can only have 20. What are we talking about?
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10. He dropped his studies and moved to this destination while on a religious voyage. It has been 20 years and he hasn’t looked back ever since. Today, he rocks sunglasses and saffron sarongs, carrying his long beard in a smart knot as he meets the people who come to fulfil his heartiest cause. Who are we talking about and why exactly do the people who come to fulfil his cause display our country’s unwavering dedication to a commitment or how?
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Answers to the quiz:
- Enforcement of Model Code of Conduct
- Designed the logo of Election Commission of India
- Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) system
- George Fernandes
- Dev Kant Barooah, who coined “India is Indira. Indira is India”
- NRIs voting by ‘proxy’
- Sukumar Sen, Chief Election Commissioner of India's first general election
- NOTA
- Star campaigners
- Mahant Bharatdas Darshandas. According to the election commission, no citizen should ‘ordinarily travel more than two km to reach the booth’. A polling booth is set in the middle of a dense, isolated jungle every year for his solitary vote. Every vote does matter!
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