TALK BY PROF. JAYA INDIRESAN

The IEEE Delhi Chapter and WIE affinity group, organized a lecture by Prof. Jaya Indiresan on “Towards Leadership : Overcoming Barriers” at Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi on 13th November 2014. Four students Vishal Yadav (15124), Upender Yadav (15109), Parmod Saha (15125) and Tushar Mehmi (15108) from CSE Department attended the lecture.

Prof. Jaya Indiresan was formerly professor of Higher Education at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi. Formerly, she was at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Manitoba, Canada and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Michigan, USA. Currently Prof. Indiresan is a free-lance consultant to several national and international organizations.

Prof. Jaya Indiresan has authored various books such as Education for Women’s Empowerment: Gender Positive Initiatives in Pace Setting Women’s Colleges, Institutionalization of Innovation in Higher Education and Inclusion vs Exclusion: A study of Women in Police. Prof. Indiresan has also produced training manuals on Women in Academic Leadership and Decision Making and Team Building Skills for Women Managers, sponsored by the University Grants Commission. She has several research publications in national and international journals, produced several research monographs and undertaken several evaluation studies for various organizations. Her areas of interest include Institution Building and Human Resource Development, with special reference to women. She is deeply involved in training for capacity building in various sectors like educational administrators, women in agriculture, women in police and women in science and technology.

As the lecture on leadership, therefore Prof. Jaya Indiresan started the lecture by the giving the basic definition of a leader. Leader is a term that has several meanings, but in a ordinary language a leader is a person that leads or conducts other people. So, to be a good leader an individual should possess good leadership qualities. Leadership can be defined as the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations. She also discussed about the different types of leaders such as academic leader, political leader, spiritual leader, business leader etc. All these are leaders from different fields, but one thing that they have in common is the leadership qualities that they possess.

Prof. Jaya Indiresan also discussed about the ratio of men and women in the leadership positions. She told that the numbers of women in the top leadership positions are very less as compared to the men. Women are not present in the top leadership due to many reasons like the mentality of the people, the social thinking of the people and many other reasons. Women should also be given equal opportunities as the men are given and if a woman is capable of any leading role then she should not be apprehended from that.

Prof. Jaya Indiresan ended the lecture by giving the audience her best wishes and blessings to be good leaders in our life. It was a wonderful experience for us as there were a lot of things to learn. The session was very much interactive as the speaker and the audiences were fully involved in it.

Some Glimpse