Asim Dasgupta at Strategy Summit 2006. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

State finance minister Asim Dasgupta chose a B-school platform on Friday to reiterate that talks were on with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for faculty members from the Sloan School of Management to come down to Bengal on a regular basis.

They would deliver a series of lectures at leading tech and management institutions such as IIT Kharagpur, Calcutta University, Indian Statistical Institute, Presidency College and Jadavpur University.

Dasgupta was addressing the Strategy Summit 2006 ? Excellence and Global Competitiveness organised by ICFAI Business School, in association with The Telegraph.

?Importance of human capital and knowledge management is vital in today?s context of global competitiveness. Knowledge does not and cannot have any geographical barriers. We have had talks with the MIT faculty and they seem to be open to the idea of interaction with their counterparts in Bengal,? claimed Dasgupta.

The finance minister said Sloan faculty would be coming down to Calcutta during their summer breaks or during sabbaticals. Logistics such as salary and transportation costs would be borne by the Ivy-league institute, while the state government would take care of hospitality.

The programme in the long run could well be a two-way traffic with faculty members from institutes in Bengal making their way to Sloan as well.

Dasgupta also extended the invitation to other private institutes to take advantage of such programmes to provide their students with a wider understanding of global economic, capital and trade markets.

Debasish Chakraborty from Central Michigan University, said: ?Globalisation, in its simplest connotation, is the free trade of goods and services, and a free flow of capital. If public policy can be linked with international trade, it is perfect. However, developing countries are substituting domestic economic policies and growth with global competitiveness. This is an unhealthy trend, and cannot serve as a short cut to economic growth.?

The summit on Saturday will see the likes of R.P. Goenka, Pradip Baijal, chairman, TRAI, and S.B. Ganguly, chairman, Exide Industries, amongst others, coming together on a common platform, and discussing the effects of globalisation and India?s quest towards becoming a knowledge superpower.