The 12th Convocation of the University of Petroleum & Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun was organized at the Siri Fort Auditorium, New Delhi. Shri G M Rao, the group Chairman of GMR Group delivered the Convocation address.
A total of 1620 students were awarded the Degrees out of which 10 students were awarded Gold Medals by Shri G M Rao, the group Chairman of GMR. In addition, 33 Silver medals were awarded to meritorious students in different courses. Cairn Laureate Scholarship was awarded to Aamir Lokhandwal and Shivam Saxena. L&T Scholarship was awarded to Lakshmi Narsiman B and Siddharth G.
In addition, under the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE), PhD degrees were also awarded. A total of 16 PhD degrees were awarded to working professionals and faculty/ staff of UPES. Vice chancellor of UPES, Dr. Parag Diwan was also present in the ceremony.
Following is the full text address by Shri G M Rao, the Group Chairman of GMR:
Respected Dr. Aziz Qureshi, Governor of Uttarakhand,
Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Pro-Vice Chancellor,
UPES’s Faculty members,
Eminent Dignitaries on the Dias and Off the Dias,
Graduating Students and their Proud Parents
Distinguished Guests and Media,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
A very good evening to you all
I am truly honored to be the Chief Guest on the occasion of the twelfth convocation of your prestigious University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, a one of its kind the only Institute in the country which can be truly commensurate as ‘Nation Builders University’.
UPES progressive vision of creating specialized professionals in the core sectors that can contribute in the economic growth of the country is highly admirable. Today, with the rapid development of the country especially in core sectors like Infrastructure, Transportation, Aviation, our nation needs enormous skilled manpower to sustain the growth. And, I am so glad to note that UPES is the first Indian institution to offer 76 specialized programs across Oil & Gas, Power, Transportation, Infrastructure, and Logistics & Supply Chain sectors. UPES in true sense is providing the fuel to the economic engine of our country.
Dear students, today is your day and a very special one indeed for you and your dear ones. I am truly happy to be with you to share your joy and excitement. As you cross this important milestone in your life and embark on your professional journey, I am sure all of you will contribute significantly in bringing the economic prosperity to our beloved country.
Today, India is all set to become a global superpower triggered by the advent of this new strong and progressive government with a very decisive leader with the only mandate of “development” thus kick-starting growth, creating millions of jobs and spreading prosperity.
As per recent McKinsey report, the path of inclusive reforms envisages investment stimulation, job creation, farm productivity, and drastic improvement in delivery of basic services to the bottom of the pyramid. This would allow India to achieve an average GDP growth rate of around 8 percent by year 2022 which will eventually lift 580 million people above the poverty line, thus leaving only 1 percent of the population below the poverty line by year 2022 – virtually eliminating extreme poverty in less than a decade. This will be a profound and historic step forward in India’s economic and human development.
This bright future of our country will be boosted by the strong fundamentals, abundance of natural resources, favorable demographics and resilient economic structure of the nation. Our economy over the years has moved from agro-based to knowledge-driven. With great pride, I can say that no multinational company can afford to be absent from India because of its enormous intellectual manpower.
At the same time, India enjoys the huge demographic dividend with 50 per cent of its population being under 30 years of age. It is estimated that India will account for 25 per cent of the global workforce by 2020 which essentially means every one out of 4 people on this planet will be an Indian. This will create a vast pool of consumers and human capital which will eventually drive growth.
Therefore my dear friends, India is a perfect place be it your professional or entrepreneurial journey and what could be the better time than this, I think this is a ‘perfect time’ for you all.
Let me tell you, India is the future not only for Indians but for the entire world and there is no second thought about it. In fact, the whole world has started taking cognizance of Indian leadership and Indian corporates. Indian companies are buying foreign companies and turning them around into profitable ventures, the classical example of which is Jaguar and Corus. Indian management is becoming the case studies in leading business schools across the globe. With all this, gravity of the world is shifting from west to east.
One more interesting trend is emerging which you will start experiencing soon and that is creation of new economic block involving India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Middle East and North Africa in the initial phase. This has just been started with Shri Modi Ji inviting all the SAARC countries for his swearing-in ceremony. In the next phase, Turkey, Indonesia and Myanmar will emerge thus causing the geopolitical re-balance.
During the next one year or so, most of the countries are witnessing the elections like Indonesia in coming July; and Turkey next year. With this we will witness the new era of emerging leaders with very different dynamics of geopolitics. These new leaders of emerging countries will further add fuel to the geopolitical re-balance and will expedite the already shifting center of the world towards east and we all will become the focus of the world.
And on top of all this, as I mentioned earlier now we have got Shri Narendra Modi ji as our new Prime Minister who has got just two point agenda ‘Development’ and ‘Governance’. Yesterday only, he has released top 10 points policy agenda seeking to unblock an investment logjam and setting deadlines for action in order to revive the economy. Not only this, he has also told his cabinet ministers to prepare a roadmap for the first 100 days of their respective Ministries outlining priority areas and resolving critical issues of concern. Education, health, water, infrastructure, transparency, policies implementation among others are his key priorities.
All this will further create great opportunities as entrepreneurs and as professionals for today’s young generation of this country like you all. Therefore, my dear friends all of you have enough reasons to be proud of your roots, rise up and dominate this world.
However, to dominate this world what is required are Self-Belief, Right Attitude and Values which will eventually define the success in your life journey ahead.
Swami Vivekananda has said - “to me one who does not believe in himself is an atheist”.
Unwavering Self-Belief in a person is a must. Ordinary people, when they hold on to extraordinary beliefs, become extraordinary people. Rich people are rich because they believe they deserve to be rich and the poor are poor because they don’t believe they can be rich. Our lives are manifestation of our beliefs. Whatever you will believe - abundance or scarcity will happen in your lives.
My dear friends, your beliefs will define your success. It is well proven that all successful people are not always the first rankers or academically brilliant people. Some of the backbenchers did not remain backbenchers for life, but have made significant contributions to society in all the arenas of life.
Whether it is school drop-out Bill Gates or Steve Jobs; Dhirubhai Ambani working in the petrol pump; 10th standard failure Sachin Tendulkar; tea seller Lionel Messi; Abraham Lincoln who stitched the shoes at his childhood days; Rajnikanth a bus conductor…..the list is endless. What is common in all these people is their strong self-belief system.
Next is ‘Attitude’, my dear friends let me tell you that it is the right attitude what matters. You need to develop and cultivate the Positive ‘Can Do’ Attitude. I will share the importance of right attitude with a small story of two brothers.
A poor man lives with his two sons in a one-room apartment. His wife had died many years back. Every night he comes home drunk and creates nuisance. The elder son quietly leaves, settles down under a street lamp and studies. The younger son also leaves and does not return the whole night. This becomes an everyday routine. With the passage of time the two boys grew up.
One day, the elder son is given the ‘best citizen of the town’ award; on the same day his younger brother is caught stealing, and is put in prison.
Media asked the younger son “What made you like this?” He replies “My father was a drunkard, I had lost my mother at a very young age, no one was there to take care of me, and I lost my way. My father is responsible for my failure.”
Same media asked the elder son “What made you successful?” He replies “The secret of my success is my father. He was an alcoholic and we were very poor. I decided that I should not be like my father so I studied hard to make a better life. I am ever grateful to my father for showing me not to be like him.”
Now as you can see, the same situation viewed differently depending on your attitude. Therefore, my dear friends let us not blame or make excuses. We always have a tendency to blame others for our shortcomings. When we do that we make someone else responsible for our lives. The moral of the story is, we have to take responsibility for our lives. We must learn to use what life gives us, and not blame our parents or our circumstances.
Next is ‘Values’. The fundamental of all values is Humility. As success comes, one develops ego. This ego spoils relationships, reduces listening capacity, stops growth and eventually leads to the downfall. Hence, humility is the bedrock of all values.
Once you develop and nurture humility, it will open you for learning, learning all the time from everyone and everything. It will help in developing excellent relationships; will help in team building; will assist developing trust and confidence among the stakeholders. Humility will eventually keep you down to the earth close to your roots.
With the strong self-belief, right attitude, values and sound education; I am sure you will be able to sail through your life journey with flying colors. However, in order to achieve ‘Growth’, to move from one stage to another higher stage in your lives, my dear friends, you have to come out of your ‘comfort zones’ and take ‘risks’.
Let me tell you that you don’t need a strong base or any background to achieve success; you can start with a zero base and achieve whatever you want. There are numerous examples of the same.
If you see the old successful entrepreneurs like Narayana Murthy who relentlessly worked to create the biggest software company of India or Dhirubhai Ambani who kept moving from one business to another leaving his comfort zone all the time.
If you see the today’s new successful entrepreneurs like Phanindra Sama of Redbus and Bansal’s of Flipkart. They were working in the multi-national companies with handsome compensations, however they came out of their comfort zones believing strongly in themselves and created the whole new business models in their respective industries and are today highly successful.
If you talk about professional leaders, there are numerous Indian leaders heading the large multi-nationals like Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Indra Nooyi of Pepsi, Anshu Jain of Deutche Bank, Ajit Jain of Berkshire Hathaway, Harish Manwani of Unilever and many more. All these leaders have never been in their comfort zones.
If you talk about the political leaders, then who could be the better example than Shri Modi ji himself. He was the Gujarat Chief Minister and could have easily stayed there happily, however he left his comfort zone and prepared a three year plan to become the Indian Prime Minister.
My dear friends, whatever I am saying is based on my life experience of last four decades. Forty years back, I started with zero base with just three lacs rupees, in a remote village of Andhra Pradesh with population of less than five thousand people.
My father was a very small time trader in the village and even for education I had to fight with my father.
You people see me as a very successful entrepreneur; however my life has been full of adversities which threw up challenges all the time. I strived hard to do my best overcoming the situations and turning them into opportunities. I could successfully sail through all the adversities because of my strong Self-Belief, Positive Attitude and Values.
I started 28 businesses throughout my life journey and was never in my comfort zone, I kept on moving from one business to another. I was a very successful banker in the past and had created ING Vysya Bank, however I left that comfort zone as well and moved to Infrastructure, otherwise I would have always remained as a banker and would have never got this beautiful opportunity of creating national assets.
Just to share with you, when we took over the management of Delhi Airport, we were very new to the northern part of our country and we had to build one of the largest terminals in the world in a challengingly short period of 42 months whereas similar construction across the globe takes on an average of 60 to 80 months.
At the same time, we had to maintain highest quality standards, with lowest inconvenience to the passengers, using state of the art latest technology and keeping great service up. Moreover, we had to work with three thousand employees of Airport Authority of India with different mindset and lots of airport land with encroachment and not available to us for the development.
We worked and coordinated with 58 different Government agencies and department simultaneously. We had to work with 3 different partners Airports Authority of India, Fraport and Malaysian Airports, hence we had to demonstrate highest levels of governance and transparency. Overall, we had very complex situations; however we completed Terminal 3 successfully against all odds because of our positive attitude, values and beliefs. We were never complaining. We stuck to our attitude and successfully delivered the national asset ‘Terminal 3’ of Delhi Airport well ahead of the time in just 37 months.
This Delhi Airport when we took over was ranked 101 globally and today it is ranked as the second best airport in its category across the globe for consecutive last 3 years. This has brought tremendous pride to our beloved country.
See, the miracles will happen if you will have self-belief, right attitude and strong values. These attributes only made us achieve the impossible.
My dear friends, with so much of geopolitical changes, attention of the world getting shifted to east and globalization happening at its peak, the world is becoming increasingly inter-connected where the information sharing with any part of the world is happening at lightning fast speed. Today, the world we are living in is becoming increasingly Volatile, Complex and Unpredictable.
To add to it, in today’s highly complex globalized environment with cut-throat competition and high pressure from all the quarters, anxiety levels are going up rapidly. It is affecting work–life balance very badly.
In order to sustain through such stress and strain of life and have sustainable growth, ‘Work-Life Balance’ is a must. You read in the newspapers, successful executives dying of heart attack at a very young age. You hear about very talented corporate executives suffering from depression. You also hear about fast rising managers and CEOs addicted to alcohol. We are seeing many people chasing material success, but spending all their savings in medical expenses after the age of 40. This is a terrible tragedy in our society today. Success at the cost of the health is no success.
If you have to lead a sustainable growth, you have to manage yourself first. And to manage yourself physically and emotionally you need spirituality and yoga which is irrespective of any religion. Universities today are doing excellent job in imparting education for learning to earn. But they are not able to teach life’s complexities such as work life balance, how to live happily, and do self-management. Any small unpleasant incident happens in life, they crash. Unfortunately, circumstances are controlling our emotions and behavior.
Spirituality and Yoga help in coping with these challenges and provides a perfect harmony of body, mind and soul. It reduces stress and brings clarity of thoughts and greater focus in whatever you do.
In conclusion, let me sum up that you must have strong self-belief and come out of your comfort zones to achieve growth and success in whatever you do. You must nurture core values in life and inculcate positive attitude without ever complaining about the situations. Eventually to sustain this for a long term, please have a work-life balance.
However let me caution you, please do not expect success all the time, there will certainly be failures and setback in your journey, you should have right positive attitude towards your failures and learn from them. Please remember –
“Success is a Motivator, and Failure is a Teacher”.
Also, please do give back to the society because it is our fundamental duty to give back as we owe so much to the society where we live in.
My dear graduates, what truly matters is how you evolve as successful human beings. If your means are value-based, the end is always heartening. All of you are the authors of your own destinies. Always remember that -
“There are two important dates in your life - the day you were born and the day you find out why you were born”
“You have born not just for living but for to make your mark in the world”
On this very special day for you, dear students, I extend my hearty congratulations once again to each one of you and your families, on reaching a glorious milestone in your personal life today!
I thank Chancellor, Vice Chancellor and Management for inviting me to be a part of this great convocation event. I am Grateful to you all.
Enjoy the evening! Thank you
About UPES:
UGC approved and NAAC accredited, UPES offers more than 77 graduate and postgraduate programs to more than 6200 students in the high growth sectors of Oil & Gas, Power, Aviation, Shipping, Automobile, Infrastructure, Electronics, IT, IB and Logistics & Supply Chain. UPES is India's and Pan Asia's first Energy & Core Sector University.
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