Page 6 - Demo

6 JANUARY’19-JUNE’19
THE REVIEW
PUNE AGM 2018
like the Red Cross and and UNICEF have received the Nobel Prize—I believe we should strongly recommend THE, not a, Anglo-Indian woman
for the Bharat Ratna in India, because she has helped emancipate subsequent generations of young women in India. We were meeting some press people and there were about five journalists there... they were all women. And I said, ‘You have to thank our women.’ They asked why. I said, ‘Because our girls went out and worked’. So, I am going to propose, for the first time ever, for all that you ladies have done as a mother, as a sister, as a wife, as a girlfriend——for all the ways you have influenced our lives, today all men should standup for your nanas, aunties, sisters, mums, girlfriends, wives—let us give the Anglo-Indian woman a standing ovation.
Actually, Anglo-Indian women should be given
the Bharat Ratna and they should also all join the circus. Let me tell you why. Because they know how to balance and walk the tightrope. They can manage everything so beautifully. I was, as a man waiting for a long time to pay a rich tribute to the better half our community. We just did. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
Leadership
The world, friends, is in many ways going in
a very positive direction, but is also going the wrong way. To rephrase Charles Dickens, the famous opening line of A Tale of Two Cities: It is the best of times, it is also the worst of times. It
is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness. I’ll just touch on a few of the positives of what
I think is happening in a wonderful way in the world. According to me, the concept of leadership is changing in the world. Young people who
are leaders and will become leaders, please understand that the role models of today are Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada; Macron, the president of France; the prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern. Guess why she didn’t come to office for a few weeks. She was having a baby! And then she took her baby to office, I am told. I recently saw a photograph of
a member of parliament actually breastfeeding
her baby in the house while speeches were being made.
So, the concept of leadership is changing. The leadership of not being visible does not exist.
The concept of a leader not being connected,
the concept of a leader not singing with you,
not dancing with you, not being with you—that
is an archaic, old-fashioned, outdated style of leadership. Leadership today is what you saw in the football World Cup Final prize distribution. The Croatian president Grabar-Kitarovic and the French president Macron and Putin were there. Putin was the only guy who had one person with an umbrella behind him. The other two were getting wet in the rain. They were actually singing in the rain and hugging their sweaty players.
Can you imagine it thirty or forty years ago? In
no country would it have happened. Margaret Thatcher would never have hugged a sweaty player because it wasn’t done then. Leadership was different. The more aloof you were, the more mysterious you were, the bigger a leader you were. Times have changed. Those of you who are youth presidents or going to become leaders tomorrow, please understand you have to connect. Only if
you connect will people embrace you. And guess what? Like your husband or spouse, when a person embraces you as their leader, they embrace you with all your perfect imperfections. They will accept you as you are. Please connect.