A successful technocrat who likes low profile

Tuesday, 16 December 2003, 20:30 IST
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LONDON: Kumar Bhattacharyya is one Britain-based technocract who believes a low profile is necessary for success - even after being knighted. Born in Bangalore in 1940, Kumar is an academic, engineer and guru of manufacturing with friends in high places. Kumar is the head and founder, in 1979, of the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), part of the University of Warwick and Britain's answer to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His job, he says, is to break down barriers between education and industry, to make both sides see that unless they work together no advanced economy will function properly. With the title of a professor, Kumar is an academic entrepreneur whose university department has revenues of £100 million a year, 90 percent of it from industry. As a teenager in India, he reportedly built a car from scratch "just for the hell of it". Hong Kong University has awarded him an honorary doctorate for his services to industrial links between China and the former British colony. "It is always nice to have one's work recognised," he said last week after receiving knighthood, but believes that a low profile is essential to carrying out his work successfully. WMG, with its worldwide network of satellite operations, educates 5,000 post-graduates and managers each year and has just started an undergraduate programme. For years, Kumar acted as a personal adviser to politicians -- Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair included -- and business leaders around the world including those in India. Kumar is also a personal adviser to the South African President, Thabo Mbeki. "There is just so much to be done in that country," he told The Times. "We train a lot of people in South Africa, and if I can help with whatever knowledge I have then I am happy to. I do it for free." Kumar also travels frequently to China, where he has an open door to the power elite. "We must have trained 10,000 Chinese at WMG over the years. Now some of them are captains of industry and chairmen of big organisations". He has strong opinions and is not afraid to air them, perhaps because WMG has made him independently wealthy and beholden to no one. Academia is still full of too many "snobs who think they are a cut above industrialists", and industry is full of "illiterate people unable to grasp the complexity of the challenges they face", he says. He laments the rise of the management consultant and their endless jargon. And he detests the MBA system, which he says churns out graduates who think they know how to run companies. "Why have pharmaceutical and chemical companies done so well? It's because they attract the best scientists, not because a few managers have done their MBA," he said. Corporate and social responsibility are at the heart of his beliefs, which is why one of his three inspirations is Tata. (The other two are Eiji Toyoda, the man who turned Toyota into a world-beater, and BMW). "The key problem in this country today remains how to improve the intellectual asset base if Britain is to compete." He points out that the thirst for knowledge in some undeveloped parts of the world is years ahead of Britain. "Their mental attitude and desire to achieve is just remarkable. That is Britain's challenge," he says.
Source: IANS
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