In a bid to foster leadership in students, Rotary Club of Salt Lake Metropolitan held a two-day Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) at Delhi Public School, Newtown. 

The event saw participation from students of different schools and clubs. The chief guests were former police commissioner Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti and Rotary district-governor Pinaki Ghosh. 
How to heal the world

Before talks on leadership, there was an extempore competition for students on global warming. Medha Priya, who represented the Calcutta South City Tower Club, recited two poems on the topic, emphasising on the greed of man and the hope to overcome climate change. “Stop felling trees and start sowing seeds,” said the student of Class VII. 

Varun Kharkia from MCKV School, Liluah, cited examples of how man’s necessities are endless. “Our future generations would blame us if we don’t take this issue seriously,” said the Class XI commerce student. Vinay Goyal of The Heritage School concluded his speech by singing a few lines of Michael Jackson’s Heal The World.
Sriya Kundu of the host school focused on the consequences of global warming and on how chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) was depleting the ozone layer. “We can head towards a better environment if we join hands today,” said the Class IX student who went on to win the contest.

Next was a session by Satya R. Agarwal, a businessman who has done his M.Tech in nanotechnology. He explained how nanotechnology could be the answer to global warming. In a world where glaciers are melting and causing sea levels to rise and coastal cities to head towards submersion, Agarwal threw light upon research that could arrest this. “A team at Stanford University has designed solar panels which could reflect 30 per cent of sunlight back into space,” Agarwal said. 

He also spoke about how technology is being used to save electricity. “The Japanese government has spent billions of dollars to install sensors which automatically turn off electrical appliances in a room once its occupants walk out,” explained Agarwal.

Next was a discussion to help students choose the right careers. The panellists were S.P. Dutta, a retired army doctor, Richa Deb Gupta, one of the directors of Fortis Hospitals, Sayantani Raychaudhuri from banglanatak.com and Sandip Sarkar from IDP Education, an oversees education consultancy. 

“A student going into the army should know that life there is not a bed of roses. But yes, army life is adventurous and focuses on team work,” said Dr Dutta, the retired lieutenant- general. 

The panellists advised students to choose their career with care. “Health care is a recession-proof industry with a lot of job security but anyone opting for a profession in this sector must be willing to serve others with a lot of patience,” said Deb Gupta, bringing down the curtains on the first day of the event. 
E for engineer, H for Hitler 

Day Two started with a discussion on the relation between leadership and an MBA degree. The speaker was Prof Chandradeep Mitra from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta. 

Mitra began by saying that 90 per cent of the students in B-schools today were engineers. “So if engineers can enter a stream completely different from what they studied for graduation, anybody can study management,” he said. 

Leadership, he added, was not given but had to be earned. “But before trying to lead others, ask yourselves if you are leading your own life,” Mitra said. He said that while a B-school would train students, real understanding would come from facing real-life problems. “For example, a person trying to learn swimming can learn about specific gravity and displacement but he won’t know what the water feels like till he actually dives into the pool,” said Mitra. 
Questions were also raised on the dark side of leadership. Citing the example of Adolf Hitler, Mitra said that a good leader should be charismatic, confident and have a powerful personality while maintaining a moral compass.

“Sometimes a person’s success is judged too early but ultimately it is the impact he makes by which he leaves his mark,” he said, asking students to grab every opportunity to learn and experience leadership. 

Thereafter, it was back to the students. Debarati Paul of the host school won the singing competition by crooning Adele’s Skyfall from the latest James Bond flick. There was a debate on social responsibility and a lecture on photography by photographer Surajit Hari. 

“While buying a camera, don’t blindly choose one with the highest megapixel. Instead, choose the camera that best suits your needs,” Hari said. 

The last event was a quiz, in which the host school bagged the first prize.

“Along with the students, we too were feeling rejuvenated after the two-day event,” said Aruna Tantia, the secretary of Rotary Club of Salt Lake Metropolitan.