When Napoleon Bonaparte, amidst the deepest of crisis, would strategise to bail himself out of his predicament, his glowing face, soon after his emergence from deep strategic session, was the vindication of his optimum level of confidence to win the war. However, in the state of deep distress, whether in case of corporate or individuals, the humongous nature of crisis, seldom avails the management or individuals to strategise but to act upon impulse, one’s intuition. Whereas the botched lockdown plan-inexplicably, Tavleen Singh, in her last column on Sunday heaped praise on the Prime Minister’s handling of the same-presented the worst nightmare to those languishing at the bottom of the social pyramid. Whereas the well to do, in the schadenfreude syndrome, almost gloated over the nightmarish situations confronted by the proletariat running helter skelter in their desperate endeavour to return home, there was a hero of heroes-whereas Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta has credited the students of Ashoka as superheroes-the real super hero the nation had discovered amidst the humongous crisis engulfing the nation during Covid, was neither the Prime Minister- whose wisdom in prescribing the banging of Thalis and lighting of wicks for driving out Corona, baffled one and all -nor the corporate leaders who, like predators, desperately searched for the ways to fleece the people in distress; in fact, the real hero nation had discovered during such critical times, was an adolescent village girl who dared to bite the bullet and intuitively decided to do what Napoleon Bonaparte would take days together to strategise. Jyoti Paswan, the hero, in fact, heroine that nation had serendipitously stumbled upon during the engulfing crisis. A young girl, from Darbhanga district of Bihar, the sacred land of Mithila, is the perfect case study of Harvard; in fact, a living exemplification of decision making in situation of gravest crisis when absolutely no precedent was available. Jyoti’s resolution to negotiate with the calamitous crisis by cycling her ailing father from Gurugram to Darbhanga district of Bihar, not only accords her, in all legitimacy, the sobriquet of Modern Shravan Kumar, but makes her valour a case study for all management institutes including that of Harvard. Her exploits, no less chivalrous than that of the great Napoleon Bonaparte, needed to be showcased at the global forum. Let Harvard, along with other global management institutes, take a suo moto cognizance of her unprecedented valour and teach her illustrious life to the students across the world. No wonder she is the brand ambassador of this new India.
